MLK Jr. Day, 2021: Make America Dream Again — Confronting our “Inescapable Network of Mutuality”
by Neil Turkewitz
This year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is like no other in our nation’s history. In so many respects, it feels like we are farther from accomplishing the realization of his dreams of economic equality and tolerance than at any point in recent history, having lived through an upsurge of overt and disguised racism in a desperate and misguided attempt to recapture America’s perceived glorious past. At the same time, however, I get the sense that we are on the precipice of an era of enormous potential — that particularly with the broadcast of the murder of George Floyd, white Americans have — at least momentarily, understood what it means to be Black in America…and that they/we were properly aghast and ashamed. That there is a broad awareness that we can no longer delay the Reckoning needed to achieve MLK’s dream of a just and tolerant society. That our “greatness” is perhaps not something to recapture, but to build.
I have more than a little hope that out of present fires the foundations of a new and better society will emerge. That after far too much time pretending that opportunity in America was color blind, that we are beginning to talk about and confront race and its myriad implications. That we are beginning to realize that racism isn’t just about personal prejudice, but about hidden privilege. That none of us are free while some of us are imprisoned. And that black Americans must not have to continue to pay the costs to preserve the liberty of white society.
In a few days, we will have a new Administration that, if nothing else, stands as a repudiation of the regressive and intolerant developments of the past five years. I have previously expressed concerns that the new Administration will be tempted to view the past few years as an anomaly which doesn’t reflect the “real America.” While I would understand such a desire, it is the wrong path.
We have an opportunity to effect changes and to move our country towards turning “MLK’s dream” into the American reality. But to get there, we need to fully grasp that it’s not just that the past four years have been inconsistent with American ideals of tolerance and equal opportunity, but that those ideals never really described life in America — particularly for people of color. We need a new vision. We need to reject any and all versions of making America great again. We need to create policies based on a more accurate understanding that America has never lived up to its principles. That America is a work-in-progress to form a more perfect Union, with “work” being the operative principle. As John Lewis reminds us in his posthumous essay: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.”
There is an understandable huge sense of relief that the White House will shortly have a new occupant. But this relief must not serve as an invitation to any complacency about America being “back.” We shouldn’t celebrate being “back,” we need to move forward. America, in all of its glories and indignities, has never been missing. Treating the ugliness of the past four years as some kind of anomaly would doom our ability to build a sustainable foundation for a more just society reflecting MLK’s vision. Unless we understand that the America of the past four years was also America, we will not be able to fashion a path to form our more perfect Union. As journalist George Packer recently noted in the PBS Special, American Reckoning, Trump’s America “is who we are. It’s not all we are.”
To achieve MLK’s vision, we will need to reject any oversimplifications or easy solutions. Change requires work, and that work involves pain. But pain on the road to healing. Most importantly, we must embrace MLK’s understanding that economic justice and empowerment are an absolute predicate for achieving social justice. MLK is generally remembered as a civil rights leader, but his vision of civil rights was completely intertwined with his drive to expand economic opportunity. That freedom of the spirit was incompatible with lack of economic opportunity. Less than a week before he was killed in Memphis, he gave a speech at the National Cathedral entitled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” in which he contrasted lack of economic opportunity with the founding principles of our Nation. He said:
“We read one day, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”
This MLK Day, let’s commit ourselves to building a society in which life is, for every person, infinitely richer than existence. As MLK observed, the “geographical togetherness of the modern world makes our very existence dependent on co-existence. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.”
Finally, let’s pay attention to King’s prescient words that: “A challenge facing us in this day of revolution is to keep our moral and spiritual development in line with our scientific and technological growth. Certainly, one of the tragedies of the present era is modern man’s blatant failure to bridge the gulf between scientific means and moral ends. Unless the gap is filled we are in danger now of destroying ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments.” MLK warned us about the dangers of recklessness and lack of accountability in the employment of technology. I like to think he saw the internet of 2020. And he was not impressed.
