‘U.S. government’s handling of immigrants insensitive’

Need for monitoring in a positive way, says activist Martin Luther King III

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King III in Bengaluru on Thursday.

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King III has termed the U.S. government’s handling of people entering the country “insensitive” and added that a process should be put in place where monitoring can happen in a “positive way”.

Mr. King, the son of U.S. civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King jr., is here in the city to take part in the three-day international conference ‘Quest for equity–reclaiming social justice, revisiting Ambedkar’ to mark the 126th birth anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

Speaking to

The Hindu on Friday, he said, “I would say there is something to fear; there is certainly something to be concerned about for those who are entering the United States. The goal is to put a process in place so that everyone can be filtered or monitored in a positive way and that hasn’t happened yet. The way it has unfolded is very clumsy and insensitive.”

Mr. King had met the U.S. president Donald Trump, when he was the President-elect. Months later, he said that the ‘reservations’ expressed with his presidency by certain sections were also issues that he was concerned about.

“I met him when he was the President-elect. I have not had any interaction with him since. They are major issues; they are global issues. Somehow, we as a nation and the world community has to find ways to work through them,” he said.

The caste system in India, he said, is definitely a problem. “I don’t want to run the risk of being exclusively critical of the caste system but that is certainly a part of the problem. When you have a system where they rate you on where you were born in life, it is unfortunate that it exists,” he said.