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Throughout the United States last month, thousands of universities, colleges, high schools, community centers and faith institutions honored and celebrated the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Since the holiday's formal adoption almost two decades ago, it has become a time when the media routinely runs film footage from King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech from the 1963 March on Washington, D.C. This year even President George W. Bush, whose administration is recklessly pushing the world into war and ruthlessly dismantling affirmative action and civil liberties, had the gall to visit and speak at an African-American church on M.L. King Day. It only goes to show the incredible depths of patience black Americans must have, to allow ourselves to be so insulted by someone in our own house of prayer. Perhaps next January 15, African-American leaders should visit Bush's home church and issue a demand for Black Reparations!
At the end of his all too short life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to realize that the full meaning of the black freedom struggle was not just the achievement of a cup of coffee at an integrated restaurant, or riding in the front seat of a city bus. The "dream deferred," in poet Langston Hughes's words, was America's failure to address poverty, from Harlem to Appalachia, from Indian reservations to the barrio of East Los Angeles. Striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, who were fighting for decent wages, represented the dream deferred. The dream deferred was personified by millions of Americans without adequate housing and health care. Like brother Malcolm X before him, Martin moved from a civil rights agenda, to a human rights agenda. His vision for racial justice had also become a vision of social justice, full human equality, and economic fairness for all. This was the dream deferred beyond considerations of race and color; his dream of economic democracy was not simplistically black vs. white, it was fundamentally about "the haves" vs. "the have nots."
What has become of King's dream deferred? As the events that defined the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, our vision of their significance, grown distant in time, can easily become distorted. Historical memory is always selective. But it is truly ironic; nevertheless, that those conservative political forces that opposed what Martin believed in, and gave his life to achieve, are now saying that he was one of them all along.
In January 2001, in "celebration" of the King Holiday, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed article by Joel Schwartz, a fellow of the ultra-conservative Hudson Institute. Schwartz claimed that King was actually a proponent of Ronald Reagan's philosophy of "self-help" and the "work ethic," and that "King rejected the liberal view that jobs requiring few or no skills were a 'dead end.'" Schwartz implied that the real M.L. King Jr. would have rejected affirmative action and racial preferences, in favor of the "ideal of hard work, meeting high universal standards, [which] had to be central to the education of young blacks." Schwartz even claimed that throughout most of King's career, he opposed looking "to the government to help poor blacks." Schwartz's intellectual dishonesty is easy to see through. Instead of celebrating the life and thoughts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Schwartz wants black folks to celebrate the birthday of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Conservatives remind us frequently that Martin believed that Americans should be "judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character," and to manipulate this quotation out of context is to justify their opposition to affirmative action and college scholarships for minorities. Martin believed, as I believe today, that the ideology of one race being superior and another race inferior was wrong. He believed that our essential humanity transcended the barriers of color, language, gender and class. But he was also convinced that racism would never be overcome unless society took affirmative and corrective measures to compensate for 400 years of legal enslavement and legal racial segregation. Racism is a social cancer, but for the surgeon to remove a cancerous growth, she or he must first identify it.
Martin believed that this nation's flawed and often hypocritical democratic project could be reconstructed to be truly inclusive, reflecting the rich diversity of humanity that makes up this nation. That hope resides in our history, a shared experience of suffering and struggle, forms the foundation of the American story, our collective past. There would never be racial peace without racial justice, and there could be no justice without a common recognition of the deep, structural inequalities that circumscribed the freedoms and opportunities for millions of American citizens. Could we dare to envision another kind of democracy, Martin asked, based on a new social contract between the people and the state, which is anchored in the principles of human fairness and real equality under the law? Could a democratic society be constructed with a public commitment to abolish poverty and homelessness?
Martin Luther King's holiday is increasingly orientated around color-blind appeals promoting "community service" and volunteer activities with local charities. There's nothing wrong with this, but please let's not fool ourselves to say that we are living up to Dr. King's political legacy.
If Martin were with us today, he'd be a proponent of Black Reparations. He would probably be at the head of the civil disobedience demonstrations to halt the Bush administration's drive to war against Iraq. Martin would be campaigning for universal health care, and championing the elimination of Third World debt to Western countries and banks. It's not too late: next year, make every effort to put King back into his own holiday.
At the end of his all too short life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to realize that the full meaning of the black freedom struggle was not just the achievement of a cup of coffee at an integrated restaurant, or riding in the front seat of a city bus. The "dream deferred," in poet Langston Hughes's words, was America's failure to address poverty, from Harlem to Appalachia, from Indian reservations to the barrio of East Los Angeles. Striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, who were fighting for decent wages, represented the dream deferred. The dream deferred was personified by millions of Americans without adequate housing and health care. Like brother Malcolm X before him, Martin moved from a civil rights agenda, to a human rights agenda. His vision for racial justice had also become a vision of social justice, full human equality, and economic fairness for all. This was the dream deferred beyond considerations of race and color; his dream of economic democracy was not simplistically black vs. white, it was fundamentally about "the haves" vs. "the have nots."
What has become of King's dream deferred? As the events that defined the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, our vision of their significance, grown distant in time, can easily become distorted. Historical memory is always selective. But it is truly ironic; nevertheless, that those conservative political forces that opposed what Martin believed in, and gave his life to achieve, are now saying that he was one of them all along.
In January 2001, in "celebration" of the King Holiday, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed article by Joel Schwartz, a fellow of the ultra-conservative Hudson Institute. Schwartz claimed that King was actually a proponent of Ronald Reagan's philosophy of "self-help" and the "work ethic," and that "King rejected the liberal view that jobs requiring few or no skills were a 'dead end.'" Schwartz implied that the real M.L. King Jr. would have rejected affirmative action and racial preferences, in favor of the "ideal of hard work, meeting high universal standards, [which] had to be central to the education of young blacks." Schwartz even claimed that throughout most of King's career, he opposed looking "to the government to help poor blacks." Schwartz's intellectual dishonesty is easy to see through. Instead of celebrating the life and thoughts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Schwartz wants black folks to celebrate the birthday of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Conservatives remind us frequently that Martin believed that Americans should be "judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character," and to manipulate this quotation out of context is to justify their opposition to affirmative action and college scholarships for minorities. Martin believed, as I believe today, that the ideology of one race being superior and another race inferior was wrong. He believed that our essential humanity transcended the barriers of color, language, gender and class. But he was also convinced that racism would never be overcome unless society took affirmative and corrective measures to compensate for 400 years of legal enslavement and legal racial segregation. Racism is a social cancer, but for the surgeon to remove a cancerous growth, she or he must first identify it.
Martin believed that this nation's flawed and often hypocritical democratic project could be reconstructed to be truly inclusive, reflecting the rich diversity of humanity that makes up this nation. That hope resides in our history, a shared experience of suffering and struggle, forms the foundation of the American story, our collective past. There would never be racial peace without racial justice, and there could be no justice without a common recognition of the deep, structural inequalities that circumscribed the freedoms and opportunities for millions of American citizens. Could we dare to envision another kind of democracy, Martin asked, based on a new social contract between the people and the state, which is anchored in the principles of human fairness and real equality under the law? Could a democratic society be constructed with a public commitment to abolish poverty and homelessness?
Martin Luther King's holiday is increasingly orientated around color-blind appeals promoting "community service" and volunteer activities with local charities. There's nothing wrong with this, but please let's not fool ourselves to say that we are living up to Dr. King's political legacy.
If Martin were with us today, he'd be a proponent of Black Reparations. He would probably be at the head of the civil disobedience demonstrations to halt the Bush administration's drive to war against Iraq. Martin would be campaigning for universal health care, and championing the elimination of Third World debt to Western countries and banks. It's not too late: next year, make every effort to put King back into his own holiday.