mlk
I am getting ready this morning to participate in observing Martin Luther King Day; there is a speaker and other activities scheduled, although the planned march has been cancelled due to cold weather. As I’m wondering about the day, I can’t help but think about Dr. King’s various messages and how he might see the world today. And I am upset, although not surprised, by the sanitized version of Dr. King’s voice. Somehow the voice of Dr. King has been appropriated, has been co-opted. He is held in reverence as one who was able to make a difference, in stark opposition to the rest of us who must be content to let the great ones make changes. That, I fear, is often the implied message communicated through ‘official’ representation of Dr. King. Dr. King himself was the first to say that nothing he did or was able to accomplish was possible without the dedication and work of all those around him who, today, are rarely remembered or celebrated. Equally disturbing is the fact that, as far as ‘official’ celebration and observation go, the complexity of Dr. King’s messages has largely been ignored and hidden. He was radically against war, poverty, imperialism, and the structures of hierarchy and inequality that allow these to occur. It is these messages that are absent from public and mainstream representation of Dr. King and discussion of his ideas.
As an example, here are some excerpts from a Passion Sunday sermon delivered by Dr. King at the National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, D.C. on March 31st, 1968. It was the last time he would give a Sunday sermon.
“I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.”
“I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing [human]kind is sleeping through a revolution….The world must hear this. I pray god that America will hear this before it is too late because today we’re fighting a war.
I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation; it has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.
It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier—every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty-program; which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.
Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.”
“We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world.”
“It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
The above is just a small sample of Dr. King's writings and speeches concerning these issues. The reason I bring this up is that I remember attending last year a public reading of grade school and junior high essays about Martin Luther King. The essays were positive and encouraging; however, I could not help but notice how uncontroversial and unchallenging they were. Instead of questioning the present, as Dr. King tirelessly did, the essays mostly praised his vision of equality, as if all had been realized. Absent were his views on war and poverty. Missing were his observations on imperialism and the military-industrial complex. This is not to criticize the children who wrote the essays; they were simply reflecting what they had learned and some actually did reach a little into the issues at hand through the lens of Dr. King's voice, as well as recognizing to some degree that his vision of equality is still far from realized. It is, though, a condemnation of the censoring and political sanitization of Dr. King's messages and his life of committed critical awareness and persistent challenging of hierarchical powers and social injustice. To remove these aspects of Dr. King’s vision and action is to render any potential understanding of both Dr. King as an individual and the reality of his convictions incomplete. Even more distressing is the possibility of these incomplete messages being used in ways Dr. King would have found repellent; that is, to service the maintenance of the status quo—to keep things as they are, with no questions asked. If alive today, Dr. King would not allow his voice to be quieted; he would speak out against the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq, the continual repression of gay rights, the U.S.’s role in the occupation of Palestine, the racism and fear surrounding immigration, corporate globalization and neo-liberal trade, the oppression that hierarchy and capitalism demand, and many other issues. To curtail his voice, to conceal those parts of his message that challenge the current powers-that-be, that challenge the state, is a disservice to Dr. King and a telltale indictment of those structures that wish to expurgate his vision.
So, I hope that Martin Luther King is remembered today as an individual who never stopped questioning the world around him. Who never let fear or hopelessness stop him from demanding a better world—one in which racism, fear and hatred, poverty, and war have no legitimacy. And I hope his critical examination and commitment will be applied to the challenges of hierarchy and imperialism we face in the present day.
As an example, here are some excerpts from a Passion Sunday sermon delivered by Dr. King at the National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, D.C. on March 31st, 1968. It was the last time he would give a Sunday sermon.
“I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.”
“I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing [human]kind is sleeping through a revolution….The world must hear this. I pray god that America will hear this before it is too late because today we’re fighting a war.
I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation; it has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.
It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier—every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty-program; which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.
Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.”
“We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world.”
“It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
The above is just a small sample of Dr. King's writings and speeches concerning these issues. The reason I bring this up is that I remember attending last year a public reading of grade school and junior high essays about Martin Luther King. The essays were positive and encouraging; however, I could not help but notice how uncontroversial and unchallenging they were. Instead of questioning the present, as Dr. King tirelessly did, the essays mostly praised his vision of equality, as if all had been realized. Absent were his views on war and poverty. Missing were his observations on imperialism and the military-industrial complex. This is not to criticize the children who wrote the essays; they were simply reflecting what they had learned and some actually did reach a little into the issues at hand through the lens of Dr. King's voice, as well as recognizing to some degree that his vision of equality is still far from realized. It is, though, a condemnation of the censoring and political sanitization of Dr. King's messages and his life of committed critical awareness and persistent challenging of hierarchical powers and social injustice. To remove these aspects of Dr. King’s vision and action is to render any potential understanding of both Dr. King as an individual and the reality of his convictions incomplete. Even more distressing is the possibility of these incomplete messages being used in ways Dr. King would have found repellent; that is, to service the maintenance of the status quo—to keep things as they are, with no questions asked. If alive today, Dr. King would not allow his voice to be quieted; he would speak out against the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq, the continual repression of gay rights, the U.S.’s role in the occupation of Palestine, the racism and fear surrounding immigration, corporate globalization and neo-liberal trade, the oppression that hierarchy and capitalism demand, and many other issues. To curtail his voice, to conceal those parts of his message that challenge the current powers-that-be, that challenge the state, is a disservice to Dr. King and a telltale indictment of those structures that wish to expurgate his vision.
So, I hope that Martin Luther King is remembered today as an individual who never stopped questioning the world around him. Who never let fear or hopelessness stop him from demanding a better world—one in which racism, fear and hatred, poverty, and war have no legitimacy. And I hope his critical examination and commitment will be applied to the challenges of hierarchy and imperialism we face in the present day.
posted by matt iv at 10:19 AM
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