OPINION: Karen White Appropriated Dr. King’s Moral Authority on MLK Day
- Logan Foster
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
By Logan Foster | Redress South Bend
Jan. 26, 2026
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, South Bend Councilwoman Karen L. White posted a professionally designed graphic honoring Dr. King’s legacy. The image featured iconic photographs of King, quotations about justice and courage and, conspicuously, her own portrait, name and official title.
If the graphic was meant as a tribute to Dr. King, it landed as something else.
Placing one’s own image into a commemorative MLK graphic is not a neutral design choice. It is a visual act of self-association with a moral legacy she did not earn.
In late November 2024, White co-sponsored South Bend Ordinance 72-24 to rewrite the Common Council’s “Privilege of the Floor” rules. The proposal would have limited what residents could say at council meetings, barred speakers from repeating remarks made by others, empowered council leadership to cut off public speech for violating subjective decorum standards and reduced the role of citizen committee members in council proceedings.
On December 2, 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana warned the city that the proposed ordinance raised serious First Amendment problems. In a letter to the city’s corporation counsel, ACLU attorney Kenneth J. Falk wrote that the ordinance’s ban on repeating prior remarks was “unconstitutionally vague” and “not viewpoint neutral.” He warned that it amounted to “viewpoint discrimination,” because “the determination of whether someone can speak is based solely on the viewpoint they wish to express.” Falk added that the restriction would “chill constitutionally protected speech” and was simply “not reasonable.”
That record matters.
This was not a messaging mistake made before criticism surfaced. It was a choice made more than a year after the ACLU warned that White’s own ordinance raised serious First Amendment concerns.
Dr. King was quoted saying,
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
By many accounts, including Common Council colleagues, Ms. White’s reputation on the Common Council runs in the opposite direction. Karen White is widely regarded as almost never becoming the deciding vote on contested issues. She is often described as waiting until a majority has already formed and then joining the safer position. That governing posture reframes the MLK graphic.
Ms. White’s record also includes votes that place her further out of alignment with the legacy she invoked. In 2025, she voted to raise the fees residents must pay to obtain police body camera footage, increasing the cost from a $9 flat fee to as much as $75 per camera angle. The move was opposed by community groups and civil rights advocates, including the NAACP and Black Lives Matter. The change made it significantly more expensive for residents, journalists, and families to access records that are often essential for police accountability.
It stops looking like remembrance.
It starts looking like brand positioning.
In November 2024, Ms. White helped advance a proposal that would have narrowed public speech, weakened citizen committee participation and centralized control over civic engagement. In January 2026, she aligned her image with the moral authority of a leader whose life’s work centered on expanding public voice.
Those two facts sit in tension.
Dr. King’s moral authority was not earned through symbolism. It was earned through confrontation with power, acceptance of personal risk and refusal to subordinate justice to institutional comfort.
Placing oneself beside his image, absent any comparable record of moral leadership or civic courage, is not homage.
It is appropriation.
And it is not what serious public service looks like.
