The difference between MLK and Malcolm X isn’t to be found in how much MLK watered down his message, it’s the scope of the message itself. Both were excellent orators and both raised valid points across their lives - King was a socialist and an integrationist, Malcolm X was more of an anarchist - I don’t mean he was chaotic, he just saw nothing in the white led system that appealed to black people and he wanted no part of it - for him the identity aspect of blackness was more important than the socialist aspect of his arguments.

Exactly the same thing is happening on Medium today. There are writers like you and Marley who advocate a separationist more revolutionary stance and writers like me and Steve QJ who advocate for the end of identity based arguments and the socialist stance to win out. There still isn’t an answer about who is right and I doubt there ever will be. The US may benefit from a more Malcolm X approach to race relations, but it may lead directly to a race war. The socialist arguments I propound may be a way to stab poor black folks in the back and improve the lot of whites only.

Either way, something will need to change in the USA, and unless a way forward can be forged by the left, either economic argument or identity argument (it is failing to do both) then the Republicans will bring in someone smarter and far more deadly than the Don.