Can you imagine that?
Just for a moment, imagine King were alive this moment--an older man, no doubt still active, albeit on a calmer schedule. There'd probably be long months when we didn't hear a word from King--maybe he has a heart problem, and can't keep up the erratic schedule of appearances that he committed to in his 30s. But when he does speak--about the Iraq war, which he'd probably liken to the Vietnam war, or about in-fact segregation of our schools and neighborhoods--I wonder what we'd think about what he had to say.
Now that the man's dead, it's easy to count him on our side. Ronald Reagon was the president that signed today into being a national holiday; those who oppose affirmative action quote the "not by the color of our skin but the content of our character" line ad nauseum. Plenty of us attended a speech or or panel today and cheered ourselves at the fact of King's life and work--yes, he was quite a man, a saint, really, thank god for it, how tragic his death, can you believe people were once racist? Etcetera.
Because nobody now would ever say out loud that they disagree with anything King ever said. We may argue about whether or not he'd be in favor of reparations; or affirmative action; or immigration; or what he'd say about the "urban crisis," and it is whatever we believe that best chimes with what King would've believed.
King's legacy has been so sanitized, so sanctified, as to be neutered.
It is convenient that our culture has forgotten that racial justice was only one piece of his philosophy--especially in the last years of his life, he grew increasingly committed to bringing an end to economic injustice and to U.S. militarism. In fact, he saw those three "triplets," as he called them, to be so inextricably linked and so institutionalized, that it demanded more than reform. It demanded more than a a federal act signed by the president. It demanded an entirely new system.
King grew increasingly revolutionary, and even his followers weren't always happy about it. Many criticized him for speaking out against the Vietnam war, or for organizing his Poor Peoples Campaign on Washington D.C.--'stick to race' was the message he got. Lyndon Johnson was particularly put out; he'd supported King on the 1964 voting rights act and was frustrated that King wasn't in turn supporting him on his war in Asia.
From his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, delivered one year to the day before his murder:
From Democracy Now's reflection on King:
"Time magazine called the speech 'demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,' and the Washington Post declared that King had 'diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.'"
I think it's interesting that King wasn't assasinated until he broadened his platform to include direct and powerful challenges to economic and military power. Why was he in Memphis in the first place? To support the strick of sanitation workers--an economic justice issue.
Who learns this stuff these days? Who reads King's words--especially if they don't include the word "dream" and they aren't explicitly about racial harmony? Who knows much about his life and work besides a clip from his Dream speech on a PBS special and a few black-and-whites in a school textbook showing him marching down a road?
I sure didn't--not until I took a class on Black Social Movements at the University of Michigan and read this wonderful book about King from Michael Eric Dyson. And I had more to learn at Haley House in Boston, where I talked with people who'd been involved in the freedom summers, who'd committed their lives to creative nonviolence, as King did. I read more of King's writing and speeches. I wanted to hear what he had to say for himself, not just what others said that he said.
And, as well, it wasn't until I was working in prisons and interacting with homeless and low-income people daily that I began to get it--and to stop seeing myself as a shiny clear conscience who of course thinks King's a great guy, but I began questioning myself, and realized that racism isn't just a matter of saying, "People with colored skin are bad." It's not about wearing a hood and drinking from a separate fountain. Racism is embedded in the actions (or inactions) of every day of our lives--and we'd be fools to think that we as individuals are somehow exempt from the influence of centuries of systematic hatred and discrimination.
This is not about a guilt complex. It's exciting--how much is possible! How much more I can learn, how much further I can go! King too often is characterized as a superhuman, but in fact he manifests what every one of us is capable of--if we choose.
The story's not over. You are it.
Brilliant! Wish I had something to add, but it sounds like I've got some reading to do first.
Posted by: Henry K. | January 22, 2008 at 12:06 AM
Actually, King's birthday is on Jan. 15 (yes I'm pedantic). I remember when I was in high school I checked out a record from the library of King's speeches. One of them was a speech against US involvement in Vietnam which just amazed me since that aspect of King's activism was never mentioned in school/popular history. A good book is Bearing the Cross by David Garrow which is a day-by-day account of Martin Luther King's campaigns against racism and militarism and for economic justice.
Posted by: Liam | January 22, 2008 at 01:49 AM