King's greatest legacy
My friend, Carson, at ContentDoneBetter inspired my Martin Luther King post, today, with his post. I would check out his post on the subject when you get a chance. This was my comment.
"We spent Friday at school talking about King. It was really nice. Ms. Smith, the teacher I collaborate with and this really wonderful black woman I work with and respect, had a really nice discussion in her class with the kids about King.
This is my second MLK holiday celebration as a teacher, and it always surprises me how little seriously most kids take King's legacy, sadly. I work in a majority black school in a poor neighborhood - the exact kinds of kids and people that King spent his life dedicated to helping - and very few of the kids take his legacy seriously, out loud, at least. I've got to hope that it sinks in with some years. But the most vocal thing I ever heard from a kid about King was from one of my really obnoxious black students: "Fuck Martin Luther King."
It's very sad to me that so few kids people openly take King's legacy seriously or appreciate what he and others dedicated to civil rights went through to help create a more color-blind, multiracial, loving, compassionate world. I have all kinds of disagreements with Martin Luther King as I have with most people. But his courage made civil rights finally possible in a country that had denied them for over a hundred years after abolishing slavery of African Americans.
I never told you this, Carson, but when I left grad school, I was a member of a poverty lobbying group called RESULTS. I had been inspired by the calls by Muhammad Yunus for an international poverty movement at our annual RESULT International conferences that I attended in Washington D.C. and had been talking about the possibilities of an international poverty movement for a year or two, at that point. When I left grad school, I wrote emails to many people about my intentions of starting an international poverty movement. Most people thought I was kind of crazy. A couple friends were encouraging.
But the more I got to know the real world, the less convinced I became that a social movement could eliminate poverty. The more I got to see poverty up close, the more I became convinced that poverty was too complicated to be solved by protests. It wasn't the same thing as a legal battle over voting rights. It needed genuine and sustained commitment and generosity rather than a single or even a series of political victories which I became convinced created resentment and resistance from those not quite on board and those with legitimate concerns, especially small businesses, who were often in a different position in terms of money available and profit margin, to do all the things that I still think need to happen around wealth equity issues consistent with a market economy which makes so much of the abundance that we all take for granted possible.
I worked for almost a year on the Kaw Valley Living Wage Campaign. It became clear to me that the business community and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce would work with us if they didn't feel bullied into it. And they resisted us when they did feel bullied, for reasons I find completely understandable at this point.That wasn't enough for my Living Wage companions, who were convinced that either they had to bully the business community or nothing would come of their efforts.
As it turned out, the best thing that came of their efforts, I think, was the raising of the issue and the commitment by many businesses to the relatively reliable living wages that Lawrence had to offer when I was looking for work, by businesses who were not compelled by the living wage in Lawrence which only applies to businesses that locate in Lawrence and receive tax abatements.
In the meantime, my liberal friends bullied the shit out of me, too, as I looked for a compromise with business leaders and city council representatives who would approve of a "wage floor" or other comparable voluntary measures but who weren't interested in a legally imposed living wage.
I pointed out to them that their proposal would only touch a small fraction of businesses and employees in Lawrence, since tax abatements didn't impact the vast majority of folks with businesses and employed in Lawrence. And that securing genuine voluntary commitment to living wages would impact the vast majority of people in Lawrence that the law they were fighting for wouldn't touch.
It was classic MLK versus Malcolm X. Change hearts and minds or bully and pressure the unconvinced.
I think Lawrence has made some small progress on this issue because of a town of people who think about these issues more and maybe even facilitated by a campaign that raised the issue. Though, as the Lawrence Journal World pointed out in an article from that time, wealth inequities are still serious in Lawrence as they are any place else, even in the Lawrence school systems and the University of Kansas, the most liberal of institutions in Lawrence and the most presumably committed to alleviating wealth inequities.
Hypocrisy abounds on this issue, amongst liberals and conservatives, rich, middle class, and poor. Just as with race 40 years ago.
Racism gave way, largely, for the reasons MLK argued. Hearts and minds have changed in 40 years. I can only hope that hearts and minds will change on wealth equity issues in 40 more years.
One can totally understand MLK's urgency in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and his impatience with Bobby Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, and black and white religious leaders in Birmingham who told him he was pushing for too much, too fast.
But the reality was and is that important changes in the culture take an enormous amount of time.
I share King's impatience. On race, on poverty, and around the issues, like expanding liberal democratic values, that I care about. But I also bring to the table a realism about the issue, and it's complexity and the lack of easy answers, that we needed and need on race as much as we needed and need on poverty.
Martin Luther King's and Mohatma Ghandi's legacies are two of the finest in the 20th century, I think, as much as anything because they demonstrate the power of ideas of those who do not have formal power but who move hearts and minds. By the ends of both of their lives, they moved more people and were more powerful, in real terms and in terms of a legacy, than any of the politicians of their day. And in the end, it was their courage and ideas and words that captured our hearts.
Today is more complicated because very few of the challenges we face today are by necessity legal in nature as was voting rights.
And the blunt use of force to achieve whatever it is that we say that we want is hardly as inspiring as MLK's "I Have a Dream" or Jack Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". It's much more reminiscent of radical demands of the 60's, backed by terrorist action and violent factions, and Soviet demands of their people, backed by a totalitarian regime.
There are no Martin Luther King's in today's world, save for perhaps Mohammed Yunus or Desmond Tutu, because everyone in the current political period has latched onto the most base of messages from King's legacy: the need to pressure and bully for reform. And just as black radicals used the least of Martin's legacy to rationalize their own ugliness, so too do contemporary liberals and conservatives use the least of Martin's legacy and the legacy of the civil rights movement, in the case of contemporary wealth equity activists, or the abolitionist movement, in the case of pro-life activists, to rationalize their own bullying and worst behavior.
And there's just not much to inspire people in that message. Because it's not inspiring.
Yunus' (and John Hatch of FINCA and other similar groups) strongest legacy is in his creating a workable model for sustainable wealth and anti-poverty business development for the poorest of the poor. And Desmond Tutu's strongest legacy is his commitment to truth and reconciliation in South Africa and a commitment to truth and reconcilitation as an alternative to more recriminatory approaches to resolve longstanding injustices and unfairness between peoples, like the International Criminal Court, which seems to undermine efforts to end genocidal conflicts as an excellent editorial argued is occuring in Sudan in the Washington Post recently.
And what King would be whispering in our ear, today, I would hope, would be, "Why are so few liberals or conservatives genuinely committed to wealth equity? Why do we persistently make excuses for our greed? Why do so many Democrats and Republicans grandstand on the issue in Congress while failing to practice serious wealth equity in their lives? Why are so few liberals and conservatives committed to ending serious wealth inequities in the world, satisfying themselves with a largely symbolic minimum wage increase and avoiding a larger discussion about wealth inequity and greed and their consequences on our democratic life?"
If King had the same kind of cynicism about the capacity for Americans to get over their racism as so many people have about their capacity to get over their greed and our lack of commitment to genuinely overcoming wealth inequities, as a matter of heart and mind much more than as a matter of law or politics, it would have been much more difficult for people to overcome the racism that so substantially characterized northern and southern America in his day.
But liberals and conservatives too often, in my experience, chase the money and take very little real responsibility for the consequences of wealth inequities in America and the world, largely because the issue is so much more complicated than just learning to judge someone for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Bill Gates gives away half his wealth. Warren Buffet gives away a substantial amount of the same and leaves no money to his children to tackle the issue of inherited wealth. Americans are the most generous people in the world in terms of voluntary giving, and generate wealth unprecedented in history because of their vast free and dynamic economies.
But noone, from any country, wants to give up the power that comes with greater wealth, and the wealth that comes with greater power.
Because that power, we arrogantly believe, is what makes things in the world go right. Without it, the world would go to pot, we tell ourselves. With it, we make the world as inspiring a place as it is, ignoring all the ways that it undermines higher ideals.
It's bullshit, of course. But we'll rationalize it, liberals and conservatives, as long as we believe that we can get what we want with all that wealth and power.
I have a dream. I have a dream that one day people will stop playing that bullshit game with one another, as much as possible. And start treating each other like they really give a shit about one another. I have a dream that people will stop making excuses for what dicks they are to one another, all the time, and treat each other like they might like to be treated, the golden rule and all that. I have a dream that people of all backgrounds, all classes, and all ideological stripes will stop engaging in self-righteous grandstanding on every issue that strikes them and to take seriously intelligent and rigorous and respectful and self-reflective engagement and debate and discussion and respect for their neighbors when they disagree without demonizing them because they belong to a different political church, religious, ethnic, gender, racial, class or other group. I have a dream that we will care for one another as fellow human beings because it's the right thing to do, regardless of whether it makes profit or serves our bottom-lines or wins the next election for us.
We could have that dream. But, right now, most people settle for the bullshit that passes for decency and humanity, these days.
King's legacy was, fundamentally, about the golden rule. About treating one another like we would want to be treated.I'm not sure who his heirs are, today. Yunus and Tutu, to be sure. All of us, in some respect since we are people who are, by and large, more favorable to King today than people were to King in the 50's and 60's. And very much like the 50's and 60's, all of us fall short of King's legacy or our best selves beyond King or any of our heroes.
King will forgive us that, I'm sure, just as he forgave Malcolm X and Stockley Carmichael for making his job harder and all of us for the racism that permeated his society up till his death.
And hopefully, as King I'm sure would have wished were true rather than the riots that followed his death, we will jaw-jaw much more than we will war-war over this issue and every serious issue that we face. Because as radicals and terrorists of King's time and our time demonstrate, forcing ourselves upon others rather than changing hearts and minds is an ugly and unsustainable means of changing the world for the better, no matter how self-righteously terrorists or any of us might believe otherwise.
The real King legacy is not in any one of the anti-discrimination or affirmative action laws adopted after his death.The real King legacy is found in young and old black people and white people who treat each other like fellow human beings rather than asserting superiority over one another or the self-righteous claim to bully one another or harboring hate or bias or ugly or destructive feelings toward one another.
That is the most sustainable way to change, and King was its most brilliant proponent. That the real standard for progress is the hearts and minds of a people, not what is imposed upon them.
That's the legacy we should be celebrating today. Because that's the legacy that made the most real difference in the world.
I hope my kids realize how much they take that legacy for granted, someday. Because it's the one that is so easily taken for granted, today. Because the kids (and most adults, thankfully) live within that spirit so much better than they did in King's day."
Thank you, Martin.
Love,
Ben
