Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun
Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come
Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again
Today is Martin Luther King Jr day and it's gotten me in quite a contemplative mood. I find it immensely frustrating that the US seems to have taken so many steps forward in some respects but has regressed in others. Electing a black President must have been absolutely unfathomable during Dr. King's lifetime and having Barack Obama in the White House is truly the fulfillment of Dr. King's most famous dream. Other dreams, however, have yet to be realised - the Cat Stevens song above, written 3 years after Dr. King and Robert Kennedy's assassinations, is shockingly (and disappointingly) prescient. I've been listening to a lot of Cat Stevens lately and it really gets me wondering where the good music of this generation is... but I'm getting off track! I'll save that rant for a different entry.
Back to Dr. King... another area in which we have regressed, other than the war (as that's not actually what I wanted to write about but Cat Stevens and Peace Train is in my head and on my ipod so it just kind of ended up there inadvertently!), is social justice.
This article starts to outline Dr. King's focus on social justice as a means to racial equality. The famous March on Washington at which Dr. King delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech was actually called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dr. King spoke equally about economic justice as he did racial equality. Of course as school children we were never taught that Dr. King was anti-capitalist - the horror! - and held a second march on Washington in 1968 as part of the Poor People's Campaign, which advocated for societal transformation, not just economic reform. A few days before his death Dr. King spoke in Memphis to sanitation workers who were striking for better wages and working conditions. He said to the strikers:
This dream - of economic equality and social cohesion - still has a long, long way to go. I wonder what Dr. King would say today about the state of race relations and (black) poverty in the US. I wonder if he would say that his worst fears had come true - most people will give praising platitudes to his work and talk about how America is entering a post-racial era, yet the underlying racism that leads to ghettos filled with under-educated, malnourished black children goes unchecked and instead the poor are qualified as lazy and undeserving of the 'productive' citizens' tax dollars.
You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the worth and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called 'big jobs.
But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.
You are reminding not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.
This shameful attitude has manifest itself recently in regards to the hurricane that hit Haiti a number of days ago. As much as it pains me to write about facebook (and believe me, it does), there has been going around a 'status update' that implores others to re-post in their own status concerning a benefit concert hosted by celebrities that was raising money for the hurricane victims. It states:
Shame on you America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed medication, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. 99% of people won't have the guts to copy and re-post this.
Firstly, I will offer up a rhetorical question: would the (all white) people who have posted this be doing so if the Haitian earthquake victims were not black?
Moving on, I don't really understand why someone would be compelled to post such a thing - surely they can try to improve their own community (volunteer, pay for an elderly neighbor's expensive prescription, host a foster child, etc.) while still giving $20 to help the thousands of people made homeless and children orphaned by the earthquake?
Yet the general sentiment is exactly what Dr. King was fighting so hard to avoid - the illusion of racial equality that leads to the masking of economic inequality and want of opportunity. One may wonder if it's really possible be people to be so devoid of compassion. Yet when the overriding American myth, which is also transferred onto non-Americans, is that people are poor by virtue of their own actions (and not due to factors outside of their control - like US involvement in the case of Haiti) and therefore undeserving of charity or empathy, it becomes fairly unsurprising.
As a school child I, like the rest of America, only learned about Dr. King's history insofar as he dealt with racial equality. This is regrettable, as this vision was meant to go hand-in-hand with his economic vision; a manifesto that is ever-relevant and ever in the shadows.
Moving on, I don't really understand why someone would be compelled to post such a thing - surely they can try to improve their own community (volunteer, pay for an elderly neighbor's expensive prescription, host a foster child, etc.) while still giving $20 to help the thousands of people made homeless and children orphaned by the earthquake?
Yet the general sentiment is exactly what Dr. King was fighting so hard to avoid - the illusion of racial equality that leads to the masking of economic inequality and want of opportunity. One may wonder if it's really possible be people to be so devoid of compassion. Yet when the overriding American myth, which is also transferred onto non-Americans, is that people are poor by virtue of their own actions (and not due to factors outside of their control - like US involvement in the case of Haiti) and therefore undeserving of charity or empathy, it becomes fairly unsurprising.
As a school child I, like the rest of America, only learned about Dr. King's history insofar as he dealt with racial equality. This is regrettable, as this vision was meant to go hand-in-hand with his economic vision; a manifesto that is ever-relevant and ever in the shadows.
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