MLK Column '18

I talked to a young teen recently who had no idea why we celebrate Martin Luther King with a holiday. When I was a good deal younger than that teen, I thought the two smartest people on earth were Adlai Stevenson and martin Luther King because I could not understand either of them.

 How often do we hear the word integration in our time?  We have shifted gears to the  specific social identification where cleavage lines are  again pushed on race, class and gender, but this time from the left. “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.” Mark Lilla’s recent book on citizenship is in the same ball park. Lilla suggests that we try to re-introduce the language of citizens as possessing rights and duties as a way to energize political results for the entire nation. In his views, citizens work together for common purposes. Equal protection is his lodestar for assessing the reality or appearance of privilege. Again, look at the global reach of King’s dream: “This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing -- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

King did not speak to race solely, even as he noted the struggles of integration. “I'm afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation.” In other words, he realized how race and class are intertwined. “It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” 

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ” Here MLK captures the divide between charity and justice. Both are important. One is person to person compassion for basic human needs, but the other is a structural issue. In other words, charity is an unending series of band aids on an open wound. Put in biblical terms, the Good Samaritan went over and beyond a notion of charity, but justice would urge a safe road for travelers in the first place.

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” that education was for all of us, the privileged and the underprivileged. It was a clarion call to find the best in each of us. He trained so many people in the practice of non-violence. At the same time, he would not countenance demeaning those of other races, but he asked us to aspire and achieve a closer walk to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

King spoke often of “the beloved community.” Remember that not only was he a pastor, he was a superbly educated one, with a doctorate from Boston University with an emphasis on social ethics. I think it was an attempt to translate the gospel message of the kingdom of heaven/ of God into more contemporary language. At the same time, he would not permit that gospel vision to be pointed to the afterlife alone, nor be permitted to be such a lofty, abstract goal that it became safe. No, he believed that we are called, all of us, to treat each other under the banner of wisdom, love, and justice step by difficult step.