The University of Michigan student newspaper reports that the KKK has endorsed the anti-race-preferences Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. The MCRI campaign manager sensibly points out that the MCRI has no control over what other groups say; but, the article says,
Receiving support from a group that opposes civil rights has raised questions about MCRI’s commitment to the ideals of equality.
MCRI asserts that the purpose of its ballot initiative is to guarantee equal protection under the law, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex. For this reason, the group presents itself as a civil rights initiative, heralding the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In numerous interviews, O’Brien has invoked the activist days of the ’60s. He has often quoted King?s idea that “individuals should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
MCRI’s connection to King is evident in its mission statement and its petition methods. “Our goal is to finally realize the promise made four decades ago with the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” the statement reads.
“It should be unconstitutional to discriminate,” O?Brien said.
But the KKK does not regard the civil rights era with such esteem. The group’s website contains a picture of King overlaid by a red line. The picture links to a website urging members to protest King’s birthday, claiming that the civil rights leader was a “womanizing promoter of race-mixing and 100 percent communist.”
I wonder how people would take similar arguments about other evil groups. “Receiving support from NAMBLA has raised questions about a proposed gay rights initiative’s commitment to the ideals of consent and voluntarism.” Or, more to the point, “Receiving support from the Communist Party has raised questions about the civil right’s movement commitment to the ideals of democracy and freedom” (an argument that was surely often made during the civil rights era, and that the KKK still seems to be implicitly making today).
In a free country, evil people can endorse even good causes — and the good advocates of the good cause have no way of silencing the evil people. People sometimes joke that “If so-and-so supports this cause, then I oppose it”; but obviously that can only be a joke. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. That’s why arguments that “receiving support from a group” (when the support is just an endorsement, and not, say, a contribution that one is free to return) “has raised questions” about the recipient are pretty bogus.
Thanks to Howard Bashman for the pointer.
UPDATE: Just to make it clear, I’m referring here simply to unsolicited support from the bad guys. I do think that the MCRI shouldn’t organize rallies with the KKK, or endorse the KKK’s views, or even accept any contributions from the KKK when it can return them — there are some groups that are so evil that one ought not work with them even when they happen to share your views on a good cause, and the KKK falls into that category. Movements are properly faulted for those groups that they choose to actively associate with — just not for those groups that endorse the movement, in a way entirely outside the movement’s control.
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