The MLK Holiday and After
"Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God." ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam," (1967)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Day has come and gone. For the first time in my life, however, I’m glad that it’s over. Not because King isn’t one of my heroes. He is. Not because his mortal sacrifice on behalf of racial equity, economic justice, and anti-imperialism, is no longer relevant and valued. It is. I’m glad it’s over because we went into MLK Day as a nation divided by race, gender, class, sexual orientation, faith, and political affiliation, and we remain so in the days after. We will remain so for the foreseeable future. King gave his life for systemic change, and we’ve honored his legacy with one day of reminiscing. Given the current assault on voting rights, the demonizing of critical race theory, growing educational inequity, lethal health inequities, and dystopian levels of economic inequity, not only have we not made the “dream” a reality, we’re moving in the opposite direction.
The same White supremacist mentality, power, and practice, which killed Heather Heyer in Charlottesville in 2017, murdered George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey, and scores of others in 2020. These dark forces then laid siege to our Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Since then, Donald Trump’s sycophants in Congress, have grabbed the bigot baton and sprinted toward the complete evisceration of the franchise for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). In four years, the latter, and our White accomplices, have been lynched in the streets, and a guillotine was erected for dissenting members of Congress, on the steps of what used to be the citadel of republican democracy on earth. And yet, amidst the dark haze of emboldened White supremacy and insurrectionism, many of us marched to honor King, and his mission, on Monday. We chanted, sang, posed for pictures, hat in hand, asking for justice and praying for better days.
Frederick Douglass, however, said, “power concedes nothing without demand.” The booming ultimatums of Black Lives Matter protests in 2019, seem like echoes of a more piercing period of direct action now—distant, muted, and relegated to the corners of our minds. Even Monday’s marches paled in size compared to those of 2021 and 2020. American education is still Eurocentric, inequitable, and trauma-inducing for BIPOC peoples and the under-served. The wealth gap widens, hate crimes skyrocket, and corporate America crafts diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) “statements,” while appeasing White resistance to change, at the expense of adaption, innovation, the future viability of their enterprises, and most importantly, their moral authority.
Meanwhile members of BIPOC communities are mired in colorism and infighting, and are often more interested in pursuing comfort, and the illusion of inclusion trafficked by “good White folk,” than they are about the clear and present danger to our mental and behavioral health, and our lives. Those who sacked the Capital with Confederate flags, and the leaders who incited and enabled them, do not care about how light or dark BIPOC peoples are. They, and their paternalistic, progressive counterparts, will turn on us, terminate us, and try to litigate us into poverty in a heartbeat.
King said it best, however, "paying steep prices for liberation, however, is a requisite for true freedom. In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth. We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul saving music of eternity?"
"Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, 'Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?' But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear."
So, do I still honor and celebrate our prophet of equality and peace? Yes, 365 days a year. I’m just not as interested in symbolism as I used to be. I choose to embrace the tired, yet courageous and selfless King, who, by 1968, animated his soaring rhetoric through fearless truth telling, unrelenting protest, strategic planning, and equitable public policy. King was not an entertainer, but I saw a lot of performances on Monday, and a return to the status quo in the days after. Two years ago, we were singing the blues with King’s “fierce urgency of now," but just like that, “the thrill is gone.”
Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker, is the Founder and CEO of Diamond Strategies, LLC., a decorated educator, author, community engagement leader, motivational speaker, and Cornel University certified diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist. He can be followed on Twitter at @Dr_Whitaker and DSC can be followed on Twitter at @dstategiesllc.