Comedian Kassem G asked passers-by on the streets of Los Angeles what they know about civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. Part humorous, part annoying and part set-up, the interviews are also quite illuminating about American attitudes towards race, history and knowledge about the nation’s violent past. MLK, as King is popularly known, has a federal holiday named for him (the third Monday of January; King was born was born on January 15, 1929 and was murdered on April 4, 1968).

Watch it here.

Whether it is a set-up, the responses are consistent with public attitudes about the past. In June 2010, The Atlantic reported that “… more Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of ‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’ than could identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments to the Constitution.’ The Atlantic also added that, “… (m)ore than a third did not know the century in which the American Revolution took place, and half of respondents believed that either the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation or the War of 1812 occurred before the American Revolution.”

In October 2003, Gallup quoted psychologist, Daniel Hart, that “[h]igh school seniors who are knowledgeable about American history and government are more likely to become regular voters in young adulthood than are high school students ignorant of the basic facts of civics.”

This ignorance is not by change. It is the consequence of state policy. As The New York Times reported last year, “… History advocates contend that students’ poor showing on the tests [for history] underlines neglect shown to the subject by federal and state policy makers, especially since the 2002 No Child Left Behind act began requiring schools to raise scores in math and reading but in no other subject. The federal accountability law, the advocates say, has given schools and teachers an incentive to spend less time on history and other subjects.

On a related point: MLK is now revered and he has a federal holiday named for him in the United States, but it is worth noting that before he died, most Americans, especially whites, didn’t like him, were ignorant about his aims or just didn’t care for him or civil rights.  In 1999, MLK was the second most admired person of the 20th century pointed out:

“… In the years leading up to his death in 1968 … King did not appear often among the top 10 on Gallup’s most admired list … In 1963, King had a 41% positive and a 37% negative rating; in 1964, it was 43% positive and 39% negative; in 1965, his rating was 45% positive and 45% negative; and in 1966 — the last Gallup measure of King using this scalometer procedure — it was 32% positive and 63% negative.”

One reason for the ignorance about King these days, is that the MLK celebrated in the mainstream is so far off from the actual political activism who burst onto the political scene in the early 1960s. His political views were misrepresented while he was alive; a process that only intensified after he was killed as he was co-opted by all kinds of causes he did not care for or would have opposed while he was alive. Particularly, corporate agendas. In fact, he held very radical views on militarism, the military-industrial complex, America’s war machine, the economy, political representation, worker rights, trade unions, and African liberation, a far cry from the sanitized, liberal view of King reproduced in liberal or conservative media and that King was closer to a democratic socialist.