Currently... (via FB friend)

"Hey white folks. Yeah you. *taps mic* I have a little something to say.
Lately (and by lately I mean in the last few days) I have noticed that a lot of you have posted memes that feature Martin Luther King and are intended to shame those who aren't behaving in the manner that the poster feels Dr. King would approve of.
Now I know that you mean well, but I have to say that I find these demonstrations of reverence for the late Dr. King to be awfully convenient in their timing, and awfully shallow in their understanding.
For one, I find it interesting that those posting about how Dr. King would be so upset by what's going on, and why can't these protesters be like him, etc, etc ... only seem to post about Dr. King when black people are protesting something. Nobody posts Dr. King's words about non-violence when white people are screaming at security in a state capital while armed to the teeth. When individuals post about armed resistance to gun control measures, including shooting those who might enforce such measures, the references to Dr. King are nowhere to be found. Non-violence, it seems, is only for black people.
More troubling is the very shallow understanding of what protests were like during the era in which Dr. King and the civil rights movement were marching. Apparently people forget that when those marches were happening, despite being peaceful, despite being openly and avowedly non-violent, despite screaming from the rooftops that they would not retaliate even if struck, those marching were still met with tear gas, with fire hoses, with bullets, and with attack dogs by police forces. Those marches were not peaceful, happy affairs where everyone smiled and nothing bad happened. King was heavily criticized for having children join the marches because of this. He was often asked why he would subject children to a march where he knew police might use such tactics. His response was to ask why police would use such tactics on non-violent protesters, some of which they knew were children. King was tremendously unpopular during his lifetime. People accused him of stirring up trouble, of making things worse for race relations, and wanted to know why he couldn't just wait and be patient and calm down. And at the end, even though he was the image of what people today think a protester should be, he was still assassinated. We can't know what Dr. King would say about today's events because a white man shot and killed him. So remember, when you're telling people to be more like him, you're also essentially telling them that martyrdom is a distinct possibility that they need to accept to make sure that you feel comfortable.
But perhaps what bothers me the most is that every time these events play out in our country, inevitably those protesting today get compared to Dr. King. It's like there is only one acceptable way to be black in America, and that is to emulate the heavily sanitized version of Dr. King that exists in far too many white people's imagination -- the Dr. King that doesn't force them to confront their own part in upholding systemic racism and inequality. Demanding that all black people live and act like you imagine Dr. King would in all circumstances is horrifically racist. It is to demand that there is only one model of authentic blackness, and that is the ideal that you have in your head. 
This imaginary Dr. King is not just peaceful, he is passive --  he doesn't take any actions that would inconvenience people or make them angry. Nothing could be further from the reality of who Dr. King was. You can't have the lofty rhetoric of "I Have a Dream" without the incisive cultural critique of "Letter From a Birmingham Jail". You can't have the non-violent protests without the accompanying marches that stopped traffic, shut down bus lines and other businesses through boycott, and upended the social systems in the communities where direct action was taken. You can't have the King who condemns riots without also having the warning that came immediately after -- the call for America to wake up and hear the cry of frustrated and angry African Americans who had been abused and betrayed by society for generations. King demanded that each person be harshly self-critical for the ways in which they helped perpetuate power systems that perpetuate racism and then TAKE ACTION.
You can't just admire Dr. King as an abstraction. You can't just toss out memes demanding that others live like him or behave like he would want if you aren't willing to do the same yourself. If you want people to emulate him, you have to want that all the time, not just when black people are protesting. And you can't toss those memes out from afar while taking no action whatsoever to help things get better. If you're just watching things play out and refusing to be a part of it, you yourself are betraying what Dr. King would want -- because he would want you to examine yourself. Not just your heart and attitudes but the ways in which your actions might be contributing to maintaining the power structures that allow racism to perpetuate. And then he would want you to take action -- whether that means marching with protesters peacefully, or donating to causes that support corrective action, or demanding change from lawmakers."