Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a medium-skinned black man who spoke with a very evident Southern Negro dialect.

He never sought any elective office, but then again he was murdered when he was only 39.

So how did this preacher from Atlanta convince America that segregation laws weren’t such a good thing?

It was his ideas.

It was the truth of his ideas.

That’s what got through. The whites, who then and now constitute the nation’s majority and its power structure, decided he was right. They didn’t focus on the speaker. They listened to the speech.

Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail.

We don’t do that enough. Sen. Harry Reid’s much-discussed evaluation of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s electability shows today’s emphasis is more on whether a person looks good and sounds good. Politicians are packaged and sold like soap. It matters very little whether they have anything to offer. What matters is closing the sale.

Today, the ad hominem rules. The Latin term describes what is, factually, the weakest form of persuasion. Responses that focus on a speaker rather than the speech are most often used to create a distraction from what was said. Political correctness is what dictates that Reid be attacked despite consensus from all corners that what he said about Sen. Obama was accurate.

We should recognize the ad hominem form, but usually don’t. We listen very little to ideas. We use our preconceptions about a speaker as a weapon. Like Haley Barbour? He’s right, no matter what. Don’t like Haley Barbour? Nothing he says or does is worthwhile.

To see ad hominem in action, all a person has to do is read an Internet blog or watch a TV talk show for five minutes.

Some people have a strict allegiance to President Obama. Some people have decided anything he does will be wrong.

Newspaper people are familiar with the ad hominem. We call it “killing the messenger,” another reference that dates to ancient Rome. Lots of people react to stories they find unsettling by blaming the reporter.

The ad hominem carries the day on most talk radio shows and especially in cyberspace. After two or three people weigh in on a topic, the discussion descends into name-calling. “That’s how you feel because you are a racist.” “Only a Yankee would be that stupid.”

The racial alignment in Dr. King’s day was very different than it is today.

Dualities in society were by custom, backed up by law. Dr. King wrote that when he took his daughter for a ride in Atlanta, he was at a complete loss to explain why a park was off-limits to her. She couldn’t get out and play. The park was for white children.

That’s something every parent could identify with.

Dr. King is not around to say, but he might be less than impressed with how America has dealt with matters of race in the 42 years since he was assassinated. Unresolved tensions poison our nation. Much of it is because we put too much stock in who says something and too little in what was said.

While there were certainly people who wanted to dismiss Dr. King as a medium-to-dark-skinned black man who spoke with a very evident Southern Negro dialect, such a response wouldn’t — couldn’t — do away with the fact that he was flat-out right. No nation could call itself a land of opportunity for all and, by law, segregate people by color. Dr. King could compete in the marketplace of ideas in his day, but it might be harder to hear him in today’s culture.

When people spend more time listening to each other’s ideas without gearing up to respond with shallow, personal remarks, things will be better. To get there, people have to recognize that ideas matter more than who has them.