(ThyBlackMan.com) Green Bay Packers superstar quarterback Aaron Rodgers made major waves last week for missing his team’s big game at Kansas City after testing positive for COVID-19. Rodgers is unvaccinated despite saying in August that he had already been “immunized.” Shortly after Rodgers news broke that he would miss the Kansas City game, he made an appearance last week on The Pat McAfee Show, a live talk show that Rodgers typically joins on Tuesdays. It was on that show that Rodgers said a lot but did real damage to his reputation with his words, which were a combination of right-wing clichés and false information. Rodgers’s defense of being his being unvaccinated and his anti-science rhetoric have been rightfully criticized but it was even more surprising, ignorant, and insulting that he evoked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his response.
During Aaron Rodgers’s interview last week that has gotten a lot of attention, his quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. stands out. Rodgers referenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with “The great MLK said you have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense.” It makes no sense to incorporate the great Dr. King into any defense about not taking a vaccine. It really makes no sense based on the man that King was and that he was for the liberation of Black people, the poor, and oppressed people. Diving deep into the quote that Rodgers used and the context that King said it makes Aaron Rodgers look as bad as any lie or misrepresentation he has said to the media in recent years.
One of most important historical documents ever written by a modern political prisoner is the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 16, 1963. In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations. This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for “constructive, nonviolent tension” to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.
Incredibly, Aaron Rodgers took his Dr. King quote from this historical letter, which in part King writes, “You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
It is truly disgusting of Aaron Rodgers to co-opt King’s selfless, courageous call for the humanity of Black people into his own selfish reasons for not getting a vaccine. It’s insulting and frustrating when white men distort Dr. King’s messages and philosophies to fit their own selfish agendas. Rodgers joins current Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney, who has made a similar mistake regarding King’s messages in the past, as men who need to really educate themselves on what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was about given King was killed for a cause greater than himself. They should be ashamed of mentioning his name or quoting him for their own agendas given King’s historic impact.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
