Where we came from and where we are going
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” — Dr. Martin Luther King jr, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, April 1963
I remember that as a student (particularly in public schools), Martin Luther King Day was kind of a big deal. Of course our teachers involved MLK as part of our lesson plans. But I remember listening to his speeches on the radio at home as well. Once I joined the so-called real world, MLK Day was no longer a holiday. I objected to this silently (especially with the inclusion of Good Friday as a paid holiday) but until this year never did anything about it. This year, I took the day off. I thought it was the least I could do, but it seems like an empty gesture on it’s own. So I’ve spent a little time today, listening to the speeches again, and reading what people think about King’s legacy nearly 40 years after his assassination.
It’s too bad we don’t get more of this as adults because there are certainly subtleties that one doesn’t catch as a child. And I think a couple of experiences over the past few years have really made a difference in my understanding of “the King legacy.”
One of the things I’ve come to realize is that while it’s tempting to say that the Dream has been attained, we’re still a long way off. And even if you were to say we are 95% there, the last 5% is by its nature the hardest 5%. It’s the silent racism of the bigot but also the prejudice of the Progressive who believes he is above all of that. It’s not only new fears manifested in injustice aimed towards Latinos or Muslims, but the recurrence of old ones whose targets may be Catholic or Mormon. I’d be unwilling to say I’m without prejudice but it’s an extremely difficult thing to place a finger on or admit to oneself. It’s tempting, if nothing else, to say we’ve come as far as we can. But I don’t think that’s true and becoming complacent opens the door for backsliding–and, well, for the things that generations before us fought hard for to disappear.
And that’s the second thing that strikes me. I took the fact that I went to school with Blacks and Latinos for granted. I believe my teachers, old enough to know better, wanted us to know that it wasn’t that long ago… But even in 1990, 1968 seemed to me like a long time ago. 1954? To my 10-year old self, that was practically pre-history. Unfortunately 2008 seems awfully relevant right now–I see the treatment of Latinos–even of people who have been in the country for generations–to be at a dangerous point. Ultimately, it is the same fears that have generated the anti-Latino backlash.
My most recent learning experience came while standing in Kelly Ingram park in Birmingham this past spring and listening to an older man describe having firehoses and dogs turned on him when he was a child, marching in the Children’s Crusade. Walking around in Birmingham was not a comfortable experience in many ways. My wife and I definitely felt like we stood out. It felt irreverent to take snapshots. It was different than being White in a predominantly Black or Latino neighborhood in Denver or even Cleveland. But in many ways, it feels like the Southern cities have come further in dealing with the inequities of the past than Northern cities.
But my realization of a final subtlety came in reading Deepti Hajela’s AP article on King, which points out that King also had other fronts on the Civil Rights fight, pointing out his anti-war stance and his support for striking sanitation workers in Memphis–something I certainly gloss over. But hence the “single garment of destiny.”
We can’t continue assuming (to extend the metaphor) we are all strips of that same happy 1968 cloth and that our own interests are separate from everyone else’s.
