Rodney King dies at age 47

Now it’s two decades later, and in the wake of his death, people still struggle to put King’s life into perspective. And when I say people, I mean everybody. I mean newspaper readers and radio listeners and office workers and passengers on public transportation and parents walking their kids to the neighborhood park. I mean bloggers and commenters and civil rights leaders.

And the one thing they seem to agree on is this: King was a flawed human being.

Well, of course he was. So is Nelson Mandela, and so was Mahatma Gandhi. So were Mother Theresa, Frederick Douglas, Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer and Sojourner Truth. So is the person writing this column, along with every last person who will read it.

So the beating failed to cleanse King of his flaws. The question is why we feel the need to point this out. What does it mean anyway? What is a flawed human being if not a synonym for a human being?

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King never ceased making us uncomfortable. He kept returning to the public eye no better than he left it. He kept showing up in awkward ways. He kept getting arrested. He kept struggling with addiction. His demons kept haunting him. He never managed to turn into the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He never transformed into Malcolm X.

He never became anyone other than Rodney King, who against all expectations just wanted people to get along.