Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said on Tuesday that the civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be “appalled” at the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it was wrong to “elevate” some lives above others.
In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, the Republican presidential candidate commented on the ongoing civil rights movement, which tries to bring attention to police shootings and racial disparities in policing, as well as greater racial inequalities. The CNN host asked about Clinton’s private meeting with the activists, and what he thought about her remarks that laws needed to change.
Huckabee said it was more of “a sin problem than a skin problem” in his experience dealing with racial issues. Huckabee went on to say, “I’ve dealt with race issues my whole life … as a governor and before that, as a pastor when I integrated an all-white church and did so against death threats. I understand how people have great passions,” he said. “But I understand the way you begin to resolve them is you do it by loving people and treating people with dignity and respect and you don’t do it by magnifying the problems.”
“When I hear people scream ‘Black Lives Matter,’ I’m thinking, of course they do. All lives matter,” Huckabee concluded. “It is not that any life matters more than another. That’s the whole message Dr. King tried to present.”
Civil rights icon was certainly an advocate for nonviolence, but Huckabee’s remarks may be a deliberate misreading of Martin Luther King Jr.’s work. In fact, the reverend received numerous hate threats that closely resemble the kinds of criticism that the Black Lives Matter movement receives today.
Other presidential candidates have received criticism for saying “all lives matter,” including former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who later apologized for the remarks. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said that O’Malley shouldn’t have apologized, and that such criticism against him was ridiculous. “We’re so uptight and so politically correct now that we apologize for saying lives matter?” Bush said.
The movement has begun disrupting political events and directly confronting presidential candidates as a means of making their concerns a national issue.
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