The Conscience of the King
Monday January 15, 2007
Background: Martin Luther King Jr.
There is a deep irony in the fact that we honor Dr. King with a national holiday, because he enjoyed no such mainstream acceptance during his lifetime. Dr. King was committed to peace, an opponent of hate in all of its forms, but despite this--maybe, in part, because of this--he was a very dangerous man. The white establishment told him in 1960: "You've got Brown v. Board of Education. You've got Kennedy coming into the White House. Be silent." He refused to be silent. It told him in 1966: "You've had your Nobel Peace Prize. The Civil Rights Act is now law. Be silent." He refused to be silent. It told him in 1968: "The FBI is monitoring your every move, and many, many people want you dead. Be silent." He refused to be silent. A gunman silenced him on April 4th, 1968, and now those who benefit most from the racial and economic disparities want us all to believe that he'd accomplished everything he set out to accomplish, that he would smile on the world that we live in today. We should know better.
Martin Luther King Jr. would be 78 today. Had he not been silenced, he would have been of a normal age to run for president in 1996. 1996! Next year, we will have been deprived of his activism for 40 years.
Yesterday, I participated in an ecumenical service celebrating the life of Dr. King. I selected as my reading an excerpt from one of his last speeches. Let's look at it line by line:
Here in Mississippi, 92,000 Katrina evacuees are still living in FEMA trailers as the state government sits on millions of dollars of block grant funding that these trailer residents could be using to repair or rebuild their homes. It is no coincidence that these residents, if denied their block grant funding for long enough, are invariably forced to sell their property to casino developers. Tourism will blossom, gentrification will thrive, and the victims of Katrina will be forced away from their homes because of government-assisted corporate greed. In the midst of all of this, the state government has abruptly decided to boot 55,000 children from the state Medicaid program. Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
In today's America, over 12 million children live in poverty. 11 percent of elderly Americans live in poverty. But this poverty is not race-neutral; the average black household makes $30,000 while the average white household makes $48,000. 25 percent of black Americans, 23 percent of Hispanic Americans, and 8 percent of white Americans live below the poverty line. Conservative state governments fight tooth and nail to keep every possible dollar away from public schools, away from urban public universities, away from any programs or initiatives that might increase class mobility. Here in Jackson, we have a black mayor and a predominantly black city council in a black city surrounded by white suburbs with white mayors and white city councils. To what extent is this progress? Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
It's 2007. The U.S. Senate's lone black member is Barack Obama (D-IL); in the prior congressional session, there were zero. Predominantly black Washington, D.C. has no voting representation in the House or Senate. Predominantly Hispanic Puerto Rico has no voting representation in the House or Senate. The 2000 and 2004 elections were rife with stories of voter intimidation directed against minorities, particularly in Florida and Ohio. There was serious talk of letting the Voting Rights Act expire. Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
And in the broader culture, we are witnessing a disturbing trend towards socially acceptable racism--white fraternities holding blackface "gangsta" parties, families at private high schools holding proms with whites-only signs on the door, Paris Hilton dropping the n-word and getting virtually no negative press for it, online video games where the player shoots at pregnant Hispanic women crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, and the list goes on and on. With the exception of the Michael Richards incident, our culture has shown a remarkably high level of tolerance towards overt racism. This is being praised as a sign that the era of "political correctness" is over, but I ask you: Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
We are numb and apathetic towards the horrors of the developing world. As the Bush administration contemplates adding more funds to the $500 billion Iraq War, Congress is ready to cut $1 billion from the Millennium Development Goals--at a potential cost of 250,000 lives. As the Bush administration contemplates military action against Iran and Syria, the Darfur genocide continues unabated, because the war on terror is presumably not applicable to state-sponsored terror inflicted on the dark-skinned poor. The cheerful obliviousness of the Louisiana state government with respect to the New Orleans levy system tells us that our leaders' apathy towards the dark-skinned poor is not limited those living in the developing world. Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
King Day, to my mind, should not be an occasion for celebrating how far we've come. We don't celebrate Christmas the day after Thanksgiving just because that's the day we happen to put the tree up; we wait until the right day has arrived. We don't celebrate the new year in September just because that's when the fiscal year begins, because the calendar doesn't turn until January 1st. And we shouldn't glibly celebrate our progress on King Day 2007 when we still have so far to go.
Today, self-congratulatory political leaders all over the country will lay wreaths on monuments and heap praises on a man who have would have called them all on their abject hypocrisy. If we are going to bother to celebrate the life of Dr. King, it should be a day of penitence, especially for our leaders. It should be our national Yom Kippur. It should be a means by which they--and the rest of us--may confess our sins and promise to do better, to do more. For all of his progress, that's what Dr. King was still doing up to the very day an assassin's bullet cut him down. To do any less is to make this holiday a cruel parody of his legacy.
See also:
|
Yesterday, I participated in an ecumenical service celebrating the life of Dr. King. I selected as my reading an excerpt from one of his last speeches. Let's look at it line by line:
[L]et us go out with a "divine dissatisfaction."Are we even close to living in that world? You've heard me talk many times about the city I've lived in all my life--Jackson, Mississippi--so when I hear people say that the dream of integrated schools has been realized, I look at the fact that 95 percent of students in the Jackson Public School District, and 51 percent of students in Mississippi public schools statewide, are African-American. When we look at the doctrine of Brown v. Board of Education, that separate is inherently unequal, do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.
Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.
Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.
Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home.
Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education.
Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.
Let us be dissatisfied until men and women ... will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin.
Let us be dissatisfied.
Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God.
Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together ... and none shall be afraid.
Here in Mississippi, 92,000 Katrina evacuees are still living in FEMA trailers as the state government sits on millions of dollars of block grant funding that these trailer residents could be using to repair or rebuild their homes. It is no coincidence that these residents, if denied their block grant funding for long enough, are invariably forced to sell their property to casino developers. Tourism will blossom, gentrification will thrive, and the victims of Katrina will be forced away from their homes because of government-assisted corporate greed. In the midst of all of this, the state government has abruptly decided to boot 55,000 children from the state Medicaid program. Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
In today's America, over 12 million children live in poverty. 11 percent of elderly Americans live in poverty. But this poverty is not race-neutral; the average black household makes $30,000 while the average white household makes $48,000. 25 percent of black Americans, 23 percent of Hispanic Americans, and 8 percent of white Americans live below the poverty line. Conservative state governments fight tooth and nail to keep every possible dollar away from public schools, away from urban public universities, away from any programs or initiatives that might increase class mobility. Here in Jackson, we have a black mayor and a predominantly black city council in a black city surrounded by white suburbs with white mayors and white city councils. To what extent is this progress? Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
It's 2007. The U.S. Senate's lone black member is Barack Obama (D-IL); in the prior congressional session, there were zero. Predominantly black Washington, D.C. has no voting representation in the House or Senate. Predominantly Hispanic Puerto Rico has no voting representation in the House or Senate. The 2000 and 2004 elections were rife with stories of voter intimidation directed against minorities, particularly in Florida and Ohio. There was serious talk of letting the Voting Rights Act expire. Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
And in the broader culture, we are witnessing a disturbing trend towards socially acceptable racism--white fraternities holding blackface "gangsta" parties, families at private high schools holding proms with whites-only signs on the door, Paris Hilton dropping the n-word and getting virtually no negative press for it, online video games where the player shoots at pregnant Hispanic women crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, and the list goes on and on. With the exception of the Michael Richards incident, our culture has shown a remarkably high level of tolerance towards overt racism. This is being praised as a sign that the era of "political correctness" is over, but I ask you: Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
We are numb and apathetic towards the horrors of the developing world. As the Bush administration contemplates adding more funds to the $500 billion Iraq War, Congress is ready to cut $1 billion from the Millennium Development Goals--at a potential cost of 250,000 lives. As the Bush administration contemplates military action against Iran and Syria, the Darfur genocide continues unabated, because the war on terror is presumably not applicable to state-sponsored terror inflicted on the dark-skinned poor. The cheerful obliviousness of the Louisiana state government with respect to the New Orleans levy system tells us that our leaders' apathy towards the dark-skinned poor is not limited those living in the developing world. Do you really think Dr. King would have called it a day?
King Day, to my mind, should not be an occasion for celebrating how far we've come. We don't celebrate Christmas the day after Thanksgiving just because that's the day we happen to put the tree up; we wait until the right day has arrived. We don't celebrate the new year in September just because that's when the fiscal year begins, because the calendar doesn't turn until January 1st. And we shouldn't glibly celebrate our progress on King Day 2007 when we still have so far to go.
Today, self-congratulatory political leaders all over the country will lay wreaths on monuments and heap praises on a man who have would have called them all on their abject hypocrisy. If we are going to bother to celebrate the life of Dr. King, it should be a day of penitence, especially for our leaders. It should be our national Yom Kippur. It should be a means by which they--and the rest of us--may confess our sins and promise to do better, to do more. For all of his progress, that's what Dr. King was still doing up to the very day an assassin's bullet cut him down. To do any less is to make this holiday a cruel parody of his legacy.
See also:
- Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
- Photo Gallery: Martin Luther King Jr.
- Martin Luther King Day Facts
- Dr. King's Philosophy of Nonviolence Resistance
- Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- Documentaries About Martin Luther King Jr.
- Urban Legends About Martin Luther King Jr.
- King's Dream: A Work in Progress
- Barack Obama on Martin Luther King Jr.
Comments
Tom,
Thank you for an excellent post. Your assessment of King’s unfinished
work and the hypocrisy of politicians is refreshing. I am reminded of
the biblical story about the Pharisees in Jesus’ day who would
commemorate — one might even say ‘celebrate’ — the deaths of the
prophets. Jesus told them that such actions betrayed an approval of
their death. Similarly, I wonder for how many politicians who make
such observations of King’s assassination are really just expressing
their approval of the fatal deed. If one does not observe King Day
with a determination of fighting bigotry and injustice, one celebrates
the assassination, not the life.
You are completely on the mark in your assessment of racism in the
United States and, increasingly, in the western world. Many people in
the North think the US Civil War was about civil rights; of course,
slavery played a part. But that part was only about the economic
viability of the South. Plantation owners needed workers for their
field and could not afford to pay anyone; therefore, they defaulted to
the evil of chattel slavery. This was, I believe, the main reason
that the southern states started to secede from the Union. The Civil
War was ultimately about the right of the state to secede, comparable
to the right of a woman to divorce an abusive husband. This is why so
little real benefit for the blacks came out of that war; it was not
about them. For, as brilliant as he may have been, Lincoln was still
a product of his times and was shamefully against social and political
equality between blacks and whites.
This inequality has become institutionalized in the United States, and
I suspect that only something close to a revolution will cause a
lasting change in this regard. King was about that revolution. While
various efforts are afoot to keep that revolution going, much of it
has become realpolitik, leaving the people behind. One of the reasons
for this loss of sincerity is the refusal of others to be vulnerable,
the felt need to always protect oneself against the other. A
corrective for this negative dynamic, in my opinion, would be to have
Truth and Reconciliation meetings televised throughout the US. In
South Africa, that was done, and it brought a lot of healing. In
Morocco, the new king did it to heal the nation after the misdeeds of
his father, and it worked tremendous healing. Curiously, in Germany
after WW2, it was not done, and Germany wrestled for over fifty years
with its national identity and the place for celebrating it within
society. If one wonders why the US is seemingly falling apart, the
haves have more, and the have nots less, I would note that most
dynamics around which the country has traditionally been unified are
the very dynamics that have oppressed others. If the country unified
around truly liberating others to succeed instead of succeeding at
another’s expense (so exploitive capitalism), the social stability
of the country would benefit. As it is, there is increasing unrest,
and the work of Dr King remains unfinished.
Thank you, again.
Hey Tom - That was excellent. Brought tears to the eyes of this cold fish even!
N_J
Thank you so much for this, Tom. Black citizens know the facts you have stated. It is us white Americans who continue to ignore the poor, ignore the immigrants, ignore everything but the pursuit of the allmighty dollar.
We needed Dr. King to be the conscience for the nation, and we need another to come forward and act that part, now that he is gone. Where is the American with enough courage to say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be done?
I say “amen” to your commentary. Well-written and, in my opinion, right on point.
A direct comment to Valerie, and a general comment to all here and anyone with ears to hear.
Valerie, I find the comment about white Americans too broad and blaming…. and segregating.
I am white, and I have not ignored.
While there is no debate that there are whites with the behavior and character talked about, I assure you they are not the whole blame or cure. There are people of all colors that contribute in many ways to the issues discussed. Each by choosing their action or inaction. In addition, please remember that hate knows no color.
During the same times of oppression for blacks, I as a white person experienced racism when my dad worked in Harlem and was 1 out of 5 white men working with hundreds of black people.
Then again years later when we moved to Oklahoma and I attended a school that had just been forced to desegregate and there was ugly tension and abuse. When we moved there, my parents knew that they could choose another means, but intentionally placed our family in an area that they knew would become quickly integrated.
At the time I did not appreciate the abuse nor did I realize the enormity of this decision, but now 35 years later I see that my parents chose to lead by example. Those kinds of choices are far more reaching than people realize.
I too followed the example in a different way by moving to become a minority in an area referred to as little Mexico. While I am not able to converse with most of my neighbors, I still do my best to show friendship in hopes of planting seeds. I could have moved, but honestly, I figure staying here keeps out the kind of people you all talk about, because racism knows no color or boundary. There is judgement for me just as well as a person of color, and believe it or not, sometimes it is related to getting ahead. For example, my kids are not eligible for most scholarships because we didn’t buddy up with the right folks and they are .. well.. too white to apply for most of the scholarships out there.
The issues discussed do still need to be addressed, but I remind you that the path is a winding woven one. MLK said in his “I have a dream” speech that we must not look back but look forward.
Would MLK call it a day? Probably not, but he would most definitely celebrate one of the most astonishing accomplishments of the day.
.. and then he would go back to helping establish the consciousness needed. I think he would continue to remind people to make choices that offer a model of the vision…. to become the change they wanted so much to see manifest.
I encourage each of you to consider what you personally are actively doing to promote equality. I also encourage you to continuously ask yourself if there is anything more you can do or change to show this model to others not yet ready, or not paying attention yet.
The economic playing field all over the world is changing. Opportunity is there to be found, but much like sailing a boat, each person must focus on the destination, while taking note of the winds. Each person must adjust their sails to use that wind to get the momentum needed.
In the meanwhile, I cry tears of joy as I Celebrate that my beloved country has again found Hope and Possibility… and I remind you of the words spoken by Lincoln and more recently Obama in a time more turbulent than now.. We are not enemies but friends though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
Focus on the Destination, and then lets see where we are in 20 or 40 or 60 years from now. Yes We Can
Thanks for listening, Jasmine