I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up by D.L. Hughley

Author:D.L. Hughley [Hughley, D.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-98626-9
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

GREAT men are a function of great moments in time—and no one doubts that Martin Luther King was the greatest of our civil rights leaders. His greatness was a function of his era. Imagine being surrounded by all those transformative, historical figures: Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, the Kennedys, J. Edgar Hoover. All these people were transcendent. Everything was in flux. It was the fork in the road for this country. America was choosing whether it was going to be what it said it was. One way or another, we were having it out. It was the battle for the soul of our country. King was the right guy at the right time in the right situation.

I think that he understood the importance of his moment, and it overwhelmed him. He felt called to duty by the times because he knew that he could actually pull it off. But he also saw the flipside of the situation. Generally, people who change the world and make it better for all mankind don’t live to be ninety-something years old. Look at how messed up Chairman Mao, Pinochet, Mubarak, and all these people are. They live a long time. They live longer than the average black male lives in the United States. When you’re changing the status quo and bucking the trend, you’re doing something different. And if you try to make things different, there are going to be people who like the way things are just fine. They’re going to make sure things happen to you—and often, those things have the most dire consequences possible.

So when King said, “I may not get there with you,” he understood what that would mean. It wasn’t just a figure of speech for him. He knew that he would die for what he was doing, and he was willing to pay the cost. If you know that something will cost you your life and it ain’t worth it, you stop. I don’t mean cost you your life eventually, like smoking cigarettes or driving drunk. I’m talking about either you quit this shit right here, or somebody is going to put a bullet in your head for real. They weren’t fucking around with him. And that attitude, that defiance at the greatest possible cost, is generally what it takes to make the world move forward.

King framed what had previously been a political issue as a moral conflict. Protecting people’s right to vote, like protecting their right to speak or to worship, is a moral issue. That’s why it’s referred to as the “right” to vote, in the same way we talk about the right to free speech and religion. It’s not a voting privilege or a voting waiver. Rights are not up for political discussion. Politics is what happens after everyone has a seat at the table. Once everyone’s inside, then discussion can begin. King realized that, and he realized that he had to paint matters so vividly that any decent person would know he was right. Eventually even indecent people knew he was right.

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