Martin Luther King was among the greatest Americans—and the most misunderstood

SIX MONTHS after Florida’s board of education banned “critical race theory” (CRT)—in essence, the study of structural racism—from its classrooms, Ron DeSantis, the governor, introduced legislation further restricting what his state’s teachers could say about race. He invoked an unlikely ally: “You think about what MLK stood for,” he told a crowd last year. “He didn’t want people judged on the colour of their skin, but on the content of their character.” Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, invoked King too: CRT, he said, “goes against everything Martin Luther King junior taught us—not to judge others by the colour of their skin.”