An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Here, King describes the root of racist ideas and thinking that shape this
society: settler colonialism. More importantly, he articulates a crucial
understanding of the function of racism: that it bled into the realm of
American popular culture.
US popular culture is one of the key ways that ideas about Black and
Indigenous people circulate. Indeed, land dispossession and erasure in the
realm of popular culture go hand in hand in further dispossessing Native
people, and erroneously educate the general populace, including Black
folks, that Native people no longer exist. Again, I cannot reiterate enough
how important it is to understand the relationship between literal
dispossession and symbolic dispossession through representations of Native
people within popular culture. For example, although the Washington
Football Team has decided to get rid of its racist symbol and nickname, two
Major League Baseball teams, Atlanta and Cleveland, have yet to drop the
“Braves” and “Indians,” respectively, in their team names. Neither has the
Kansas City “Chiefs.” I love me some Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the
brothas on that team, but it ain’t a good look to be asserting Black Lives
Matter while not also critiquing the nickname of the team. I hope they at
least get rid of the tomahawk chop and chant. King correctly noted that “our
literature, our films, our drama . . . all exalt” the erasure of Native people.
Finally, King was also correct in asserting that “it was upon this massive
base of racism that the prejudice toward the nonwhite was readily built, and
found rapid growth.” 23
It should not be surprising, then, that King understood the connections
between race and class. Indeed, in May 1967, at a Southern Christian
Leadership Conference retreat at the Penn Center in Frogmore, South
Carolina, he told his staff, “We must see now that the evils of racism,
economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together, and you really
can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the others.” 24 He essentially
understood these three things are key facets of colonialism. 25 Up until the
end, just months before his assassination, Dr. King did not forget the plight
of Indigenous peoples. He also seemed to warn his primarily Black
audience about the limits of trusting white liberals.
In Dr. King’s last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or
Community? (1968), he reminded his readers that there was a reason why
white folks did not embrace equality with Black folks and eliminate their
antiblackness: “In dealing with the ambivalence of white America, we must