MLK Day 2011

“In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.” – Walter Benjamin

Reflecting on the life and tragic death of Martin Luther King, Jr. is now a four-decade long American tradition. Every tradition, warns Benjamin, risks “becoming a tool of the ruling classes”. In the case of Dr. King, this risk has become reality.

During his life, Dr. King was a controversial figure who opposed US militarism in Southeast Asia, supported guaranteed employment and income for all Americans, and believed that organizing a social movement of disempowered people was the only way to create real social change. In his death, the Reverend’s memory  has been appropriated by those in power – those whose interests Dr. King fought against. As a result, we are fed an image of a man who had no politics, who wanted for his children to “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” because – we are told – our society should no longer acknowledge race.

Dr. King was shot in Memphis while supporting striking Black sanitation workers. After participating in a movement that ended the worst forms of legal segregation and discrimination, King knew his work was not nearly complete. In its next phase, he hoped to bring poor people of every race together to demand economic justice for all. The Poor People’s Campaign was in its early stages when the shot was fired. The campaign went on in his absence but fizzled out, as did the dream of meaningful social equality.

Dr. King would be amazed that his struggles bore the fruit of a Black president. But he would be pained to know that 43 years after his death, economic inequality is far worse now than when his life was cut short. He’d be shocked to know that black families have 20 times less wealth than white families. And that a quarter of young black men are either in prison or on parole or probation.  And that our wars in West Asia have taken countless innocent lives.

Even before Glenn Beck quite ridiculously pronounced Dr. King as one of his own or a multinational corporation used “I Have a Dream” on their TV ad, MLK’s memory was co-opted by institutions that perpetuate racial and economic inequality rather than fight them. Boston University, the school I currently attend memorialized Dr. King today as it does every year. But what would the former School of Theology student  think about BU’s military technology research? Or their denial of institutional grants to undocumented students (including the scholarship that bears King’s name)?

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, Dr. King wrote about the need to rock the boat to make social change in the face of injustice. Now, Dr. King has been taken aboard the boat. We need to keep pushing until he is back at the sides of those who fight for racial justice.