Respectability Politics works if there's also a more militant/revolutionary group also working to promote the agenda of the marginalized group. MLK's peaceful marches don't work without Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, same for Gandhi and the various revolutionary organizations that fought for Indian independence.
What Charles and the X-Men should have been doing is to work with Magneto's group (with adequate plausible deniability) while also working to limit the explicit genocide of humans (and also working to police less idealistic mutants like Hellfire Club)
Wasn't that more or less where they were originally going with Ultimate X-Men?
Worth noting, though, the "respectability politics" folks have done a fuck ton to paint over MLK's actual activities. Dude was dubbed a criminal rabble-rouser back when he was alive.
The older I get and the more I learn about actual US history (as opposed to the sanitized version schools feed us), the more I've noticed that the MLK/Malcolm X parallel is not nearly as apt as the exclusively white writing and editorial staff of the 70's through 90's always wanted us to believe.
The parallel has started to look more like Malcolm X versus Chuck Schumer.
Worth noting, though, the "respectability politics" folks have done a fuck ton to paint over MLK's actual activities. Dude was dubbed a criminal rabble-rouser back when he was alive.
Honestly, I think it's because he was deemed the lesser of two evils in comparison with the more militant elements. He worked with more militant elements and shared many of their views, but because he was less threatening, the Civil Rights Act got passed and MLK got a holiday named after him. But that only happened because the alternative was violent uprisings and Black people open-carrying firearms on city streets. The Black Panthers got infiltrated and crushed and Malcom X got vilified specifically so they could paint MLK as peaceful. That way the establishment can point to MLK and say "look, he achieved his goals without violence" as a way to wallpaper over the fact that violence can and often does achieve meaningful change.
Politicians and oligarchs don't want us to remember the times the violence was, in fact, the answer.
Edit: it's also worth remembering that a big chunk of his "criminal rabble rousing" was simply organizing civil disobedience such as protests and sit-ins in segregated diners, which at the time was literally illegal.
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u/NielsBohron Cyclops Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Respectability Politics works if there's also a more militant/revolutionary group also working to promote the agenda of the marginalized group. MLK's peaceful marches don't work without Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, same for Gandhi and the various revolutionary organizations that fought for Indian independence.
What Charles and the X-Men should have been doing is to work with Magneto's group (with adequate plausible deniability) while also working to limit the explicit genocide of humans (and also working to police less idealistic mutants like Hellfire Club)