HONORING THE LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
By Rev. Dr. Arthur Chang
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48)
Martin Luther King Jr. fell into that category of one who lays down his life for human kind. The scourge of Black Americans by structural racism can hardly be imagined if you are not black. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Throughout history, White Americans have shown several examples of this, which includes their treatment of peoples of Africa, brought to America as slaves and exploited in the worst imaginable ways.
Africans were brought to America as slaves as early as the 1500’s although the official Jamestown date is somewhere in 1619.
On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, henceforward and forever, free.”
King observed the freedom to vote cost America nothing. However, the real price would come with the call for equality, at which time America would be asked to improve housing, education and opportunities for the African American people. This is when even greater resistance would come.
King’s letter from a Birmingham jail addressed the “Three Evils of Society,” The evils of Racism, Poverty and War.
Black people have been subject to all three of these from the Emancipation until now.
King demonstrated an unfaltering belief that truth is integral to justice. “All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’”
Dr. King never wavered from his invocation of that truth — regardless of how uncomfortable it may be — it is critical to America’s ability to live up to its stated ideals. He never lost his faith in the power of truth, either. As he said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
The vision of a truly just, fair and equal America, which Dr. King spent his life working to build, is still being shaped today, and we all have a crucial role to play in its creation.
Structural racism and other forms of systemic discrimination and inequity have worked against Black equality and justice.
The arbitrary killing of George Floyd by law enforcement in full public view is merely a sampling of the countless injustices Blacks have endured through time.
Most killings of Black people has been private, as in the 2020 case of Ahmaud Arbery, recorded by a young woman by cell phone. This evidence led a jury in the US state of Georgia to find three White men guilty of the murder. The men had followed Arbery in a truck as he ran through a neighborhood.
In December, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis partnered with a group that has sought to ban from classrooms a book about Dr. King. This was to announce an anti-truth measure that promises to be, in the words of a press release from the governor’s office, “the strongest legislation of its kind in the nation.” Florida’s “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” replicates scores of anti-truth bills already in play in more than 25 states.
The idea of being “woke, “a term originating in Black American vernacular (e.g., “stay woke”) has been co-opted as a derisive blanket dismissal of the concerns of historically marginalized communities. Florida’s anti-truth measure reveals what this backlash is really about.
The hopes and dreams of Black Americans, described by Dr. King, and those of the majority of White Americans are likely the same. Perhaps there will never be compensation to Blacks, who did the yeoman’s work of setting this nation on its great economic path, receiving nothing but structural racism for their efforts. Curiously, when masses of poor Whites came to America, they were given lands to own and cultivate.
Martin’s dream cannot be in vain even where there are deliberate steps in several states to take away the right of their citizens to vote.
Millions of White Americans who have already matured beyond the narrow limits of the tribalism that is racism, will need to keep these three statements by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in mind:
1. The three Evils of Society are Racism, Poverty and War.
2. All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper’ and…
3. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
