‘The Fierce Urgency of Now’

“A bill is coming in that I fear America is not prepared to pay. ‘The problem of the twentieth century,’ wrote W.E.B. Du Bois around sixty years ago, ‘is the problem of the color line.’ A fearful and delicate problem, which compromises, when it does not corrupt, all the American efforts to build a better world — here, there, or anywhere.” — James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time,” 1962

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I barely know where to start. As if the grim reality that more than 100,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and more than 370,000 worldwide, wasn’t heart-wrenching enough, to see the collective pain and racial unrest across the nation after the murder of George Floyd (and many other black victims of police brutality) at the hands of an overzealous, white cop, has left me in a state of despair and, frankly, hopelessness that things will change any time soon.

My feelings on the current state of affairs barely register on the scale of what it must be like I can never know and won’t pretend to know to live in constant fear that your body or the bodies of your friends or family members could be broken in the year 2020, in the “greatest nation in the world.” That line is in quotes because we are, as it has been proven over and over, by our collective apathy, by our arrogance, by our selfishness, by our disregard for the interests and safety of black people in America, by our failure to reform the justice system, by our failure to hold people in power accountable and by our negligence, that we are far from the greatest nation in the world. In fact, I’m not sure we even rise to the level of “good” by the scale and scope at which we have utterly failed to protect our fellow citizens and our fellow human beings.

I’m aware of my place in this as a white male who grew up in the South. I’m aware that I can’t escape my upbringing, and I can’t escape the white guilt that comes with it. A white person growing up in the South in the 1980s could hardly escape the legacy of racism and bigotry that is almost soaked into the soil in places like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and my home state of South Carolina. The blood and sweat of slaves during the American Civil War and those who suffered and died during Reconstruction is, indeed, literally soaked into the soil.

I’m also aware of the impulse of white liberals to want to swoop in and “save” black people. A white firebrand named John Brown, who was a domestic terrorist for his half-cocked plan to invade the federal stronghold at Harper’s Ferry and for his murderous escapades in Kansas three years earlier, thought of himself as the literal savior of slaves in the run-up to the Civil War, donning the “armor of God” to overthrow the system of slavery. Unfortunately, God couldn’t protect him from the noose after he and his co-conspirators were caught. In any case, Brown’s actions paved the way for the coming war, and he is largely credited with having “seeded civil rights,” in the words of his biographer David S. Reynolds.

A term, “white savior industrial complex,” was coined in 2012 by novelist Teju Cole, who said WSIC refers to the “confluence of practices, processes, and institutions that reify historical inequities to ultimately validate white privilege” and that it includes a “big emotional experience that validates privilege.”

Brittany A. Aronson, in the scholarly essay, “The White Savior Industrial Complex: A Cultural Studies Analysis of a Teacher Educator, Savior Film, and Future Teachers,” wrote the following about saviorism:

Ultimately, people are rewarded from “saving” those less fortunate and are able to completely disregard the policies they have supported that have created/maintained systems of oppression (i.e. The U.S.’s exploitation in Haiti has contributed to poverty and corruption, yet Americans can feel good about their charity after the Earthquake). The rhetoric around how Americans often talk about Africa—as a continent of chaos, warthirsty people, and impoverished HIV-infected communities, situates these countries as places in need of heroism. This mindset perpetuates the need for external forces to come in and save the day, but what gets left out of this conversation are the roles settler colonialism and white supremacy have had in creating these conditions in the first place.

So, extending this to current circumstances in America, what’s at play here with the saviorism concept is that white people can feel good about sympathizing with the plight of black people, and even support causes that bolster black lives either physically or financially all the while assuaging their sense of white guilt but the underlying problems that created the conditions of inequality and injustice remain unaddressed, whatever good intentions white people had at the onset.

Some in the black community have rejected the notion of having “white allies” outright if it does not work in tandem with requisite political change and the annihilation of whiteness itself as a construct.

In a blistering critique of white saviorism, Gyasi Lake, for the Black Youth Project, wrote last year:

In a reality where whiteness affords you the luxury of choosing whether or not to leverage your privilege and be revered uncritically, despite glaring flaws, Blackness can never flourish. Until whiteness is dismantled indefinitely, white voices will continue to be elevated and championed above the voices of the most marginalized communities.

The revolution can’t be sponsored and/or acceptable to those we are revolting against.

As a student at Clemson University, I took a course that addressed this very subject called “Whiteness in America.” One of the authors we explored was Noel Ignatiev, whose book, “Race Traitor,” argued that “whiteness” should be abolished altogether and that white people should eschew opportunities to use their privilege to their advantage. Race, for sure, is nothing more than a construct.

As James Baldwin said in “The Fire Next Time”:

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality. But this is a distinction so extremely hard to make that the West has not been able to make it yet. And at the center of this dreadful storm, this vast confusion, stand the black people of this nation, who must now share the fate of a nation that has never accepted them, to which they were brought in chains. Well, if this is so, one has no choice but to do all in one’s power to change that fate, and at no matter what risk eviction, imprisonment, torture, death.

We now have a disturbingly long and terrible list of black people who were victimized by police brutality or negligence and who did not deserve to die. They include (far from comprehensive):

George Floyd

Breonna Taylor

Ahmaud Arbery

Trayvon Martin

Eric Garner

Dreasjon “Sean” Reed

Philando Castile

Jamar Clark

Botham Jean

Michael Brown

Freddie Gray

Ezell Ford

Tamir Rice

Laquan McDonald

Michelle Shirley

Redel Jones

Kenney Watkins

Stephon Clark

Compounded with these outright injustices, there is a long list of families in the inner city who live under the weight of a system of housing, justice and welfare that do not serve to make their lives better. In many cases, their lives are worse because of systemic racism that now threatens to rot the core of democracy. Indeed, policies under both administrations, but especially the Republicans, during the last five decades have failed to provide adequate and affordable health care and family support services for low-income families, have failed to make the inner cities safe, have failed to root out drugs, have failed to get guns off the street and have failed to offer compassionate economic policies that lift all of the boats, failures that can not be absolved with a $1,200 check. In fact, policies that prop up the rich and benefit inanimate corporations and Wall Street have been put in place at the expense of low-income Americans. And because we have failed the inner cities and because we have failed black people and because we have failed immigrants and because we have failed to take care of the poor and disabled among us, we have failed as a nation, and we have failed as human beings.

After Barack Obama was elected president, some people were ready to declare that racism in America was a thing of the past, but as we have seen, it hasn’t gone away, and maybe it hasn’t even diminished. The period between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was something of a wandering in the desert for black folks. Black men finally got the vote through the 15th amendment in 1870, and some were even able to win public office, but thanks to the Ku Klux Klan and other fireeaters in the South, black people were intimidated and forced by compulsion to stay away from the polls. Ulysses S. Grant left the presidency after two terms, and Reconstruction fell apart. Civil rights would essentially be at a standstill until the mid-20th century, and former plantation owners in the South simply re-subjugated their former slaves.

The civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and many others, including a coalition of white supporters, experienced a watershed moment with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society social reform programs in the mid-1960s. The nation showed promise as we were seemingly poised to finally address poverty, economic disparity and social inequality. Unfortunately, while many of LBJ’s programs remain in place to this day, the project of improving life in the inner city fell by the wayside in the late 1970s and early 80s with the introduction of the supposed “War on Drugs,” the gradual privatization of prisons and tougher sentencing regulations for nonviolent drug offenses. These, coupled with a host of policies by conservative lawmakers that bolstered the rich at the expense of low-income workers led to the conditions by which inner city black Americans not only felt economic pressures just trying to make ends meet, but racial tensions and built-in, generational animosity among white people about new rights afforded to black folks, was a noxious recipe for a gathering storm of racial unrest that has spilled across the last four decades.

So, when Obama was elected as the first black president in the nation’s history, the racists and bigots, who briefly came out of hiding to dabble in the newly formed Tea Party in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin, scurried back into their basements to listen to Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and the myriad other far-right conservative voices on talk radio at the time.

Thus, the legacy of racism and prejudice in America is bound up with politics, and at the core, while some racism may be learned or is generational, some of it comes from white animosity that stems from the Civil Rights Era, animosity that is completely unfounded since America was built on the idea of white supremacy and privilege, ideologies by which many in power still operate. White people have always been in charge and have held all the cards.

Just because I am writing about racial injustice and care about black lives doesn’t mean I’m immune from the perils of white saviorism or privilege. As such, I must continually remind myself that I write from a privileged position inside my white skin.

That said, I, like many white people protesting alongside black people, want to help in the cause of reforming the police and the criminal justice system, ending systemic racism and discrimination and holding malevolent officers accountable for their actions. We need extremely harsh sentences for cops who wantonly kill black people with overzealous, dehumanizing behavior. We need every cop to have a body camera, one that they cannot deactivate. We need to end the militarization of police. Studies have shown that militarized policemen only fuel unrest. We need policies that, once and for all, bolster the inner city and increase educational opportunities for children. And people who display hateful or racist behavior need to be marginalized to the fringes of society. There is no place for them in modern America; for, we, white people, must take the following posture in solidarity: when racists speak ill of black people, they speak ill of me and this nation. There can be no tolerance for racism in 2020.

And at the very least, I want to raise awareness about the problems we face as a nation, provide some historical context and support my fellow human beings. Because of my health situation, I’m unable to get out and protest, but will continue to advocate for black lives, for justice and for equality.

The time for change is now “the fierce urgency of now.”

Reclaiming the Dream

Being a product of white America in the South, lacking historical perspective and maybe even some early prejudice, I’m ashamed to say that I did not grow up with a lot of admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. Each February when Black History Month rolled around, and usually at no other time throughout the year, I heard about King’s dream for a more equitable society, one in which, even in the Deep South, black children and white children could play together in harmony and mutual admiration and respect. I heard about his call for equality at the ballot box, in the workplace and in retail stores and restaurants throughout the nation. I heard the high rhetoric and remember actually saying, probably simply parroting the opinion of an adult, that, sure, King dreamed big, but what did he actually do to make the nation better?

The ridiculous arrogance and ignorance of that question became apparent to me when, a little later in life, I began to learn about MLK in college and on my own time thereafter. Consequently, I studied Civil War history, and to whatever extent it is related, Civil Rights Era history at Clemson University in northwestern, South Carolina. Clemson can’t escape its checkered past. It has for one of its founders a racist firebrand by the name of “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, along with a hall named in his honor.

The college is home to the Strom Thurmond Institute for Government and Public Policy, which is named for one of the staunchest pro-segregation, anti-civil rights politicians of the 20th century and a true enemy of progress. And for some good, old-fashioned, southern-fried symbolism, as it was pointed out to me by a professor of mine when I was a student there, the sidewalk design near the library that proceeds to run above the Strom Thurmond center, which is underground, is in the shape of the Confederate battle flag’s stars and bars.

And so, as a student, I was aware of the debate surrounding how educators and students, past and present, reconcile what many consider to be the age of the New South — not abandoning the past, but learning from it and fostering a more progressive, inclusive track record on race and culture — in short, how to honor the past but move forward from it into a new era.

After college, I began working at a newspaper about an hour north of Clemson in a quaint town called Clayton, Ga. Here was an interesting mix of wealthy, white Republicans and Democrats, a smattering of black folks, including the chief of police at the time, and a not insignificant Hispanic population. In spite of that eclectic mix of people, the county was mostly populated by local white, low- to middle-class residents, who valued school, church and community. Essentially, this was an even more conservative place than Clemson, but it was here, ironically, that I went even deeper into my research on the Civil War and the push for equality.

I also fully abandoned conservatism because, as I saw throughout American history, it was conservatism that fostered an atmosphere of secession in the 19th century — my home state being the first to leave the union and the last to rejoin after the Confederacy lost the war — it was conservatism that largely led to the failure of Reconstruction, the Black Codes and Jim Crow after the Civil War, and it was conservatism in the early- to mid-20th century which spoke out so vehemently, and sometimes punctuated by violence, against equal rights and equal protection under the law for women, blacks and other historically marginalized groups. I don’t think conservatism alone is a problem, but I think conservatism created the atmosphere, and is still creating the atmosphere, by which some of the most pernicious ideologies in American history could flourish, much to the detriment of our national character and collective conscience.

I had read W.E.B. Dubois’ lyrical work, “The Souls of Black Folk” while at Clemson, but it was here in Clayton that I picked up Dubois’ much longer and detailed book, “Black Reconstruction in America,” which outlined, in painful detail, the part that black people played, as the subtitle suggests, “in the attempt to reconstruct Democracy in America.” I read books and information on people like white abolitionist John Brown, who, terrorist though he was, fought alongside his black brothers for their freedom, which he saw as a right consecrated from on high. I read about white abolitionist newspaperman, William Lloyd Garrison, who wrote vigorously and tirelessly, often at risk to his personal safety, on the importance of racial equality and ending the “peculiar institution.” I read about the lives of slaves and about slave religion and how, just as many slaves found comfort in the story of the Pharaoh’s enslavement of Israel and their subsequent freedom and the story of Jesus, plantation owners and supporters of slavery used the same scripture as justification to keep their property in shackles, since the Bible both condones slavery and offers no rebuke to chattel slavery. I read books on the sometimes tense, but working relationship, between Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. in the run-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and LBJ’s “Great Society” programs that were designed to address issues in education, urban development and housing, transportation, employment and other areas.

And finally, with all of this as context, I come to MLK himself. So, what did he do, to answer my own question from 25 years ago, that specifically warrants honoring him year after year, to rewatch or reread his speeches, to shed new tears over the high-minded, courageous path that few people on earth ever walk?

First, this adoration for the man is not in the least an obligatory gesture, and I would say that if we are only thinking of MLK one day out of the year, or at most, for one month — the shortest month at that — we are doing the man, his legacy and what he stood for a grave disservice. Indeed, given the current environment of prejudice in the highest office in the land and the sustained bigoted remarks that began when Trump was a candidate and has continued to this day, the institutional racism that pervades the justice system and the overarching hostile position our nation has taken against legal and illegal immigrants the last few years, the need to remember what King stood for, how he remained above the fray and elevated a nation and what he accomplished in life and death, the need to recommit ourselves individually and as a nation to reclaiming his dream is as important now as it’s ever been.

The following is a short list of reasons why we honor King today and throughout the year.

Nonviolent resistance

King brought the idea of nonviolent protests to the forefront of America’s conscience in the tradition of Mahatma Gandi. Whereas some justifiably angry black and white activists thought the best way to enact change was through a strong-arm approach, King and his nonviolent protesters appealed to and pricked America’s collective conscience with what he called “soul force.”

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.

Cynthia Tucker, a black columnist working at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the same time as when I got my start at the newspaper, has argued that Black History Month is a relic and we should not just remember the accomplishments of black leaders during one month out of the year, and she argues, echoing King, that the history of black folks in America is inextricably linked to American history writ large.

In short, black history is our history.

First president of the SLCC

It feels kind of silly pointing out the more obvious parts of King’s life and legacy, but as the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King was instrumental in helping to start the political action organization after the Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950s to begin a series of other nonviolent protests across the South to facilitate and support desegregation of public spaces and numerous freedom movements across the nation.

Before the March on Washington, the organization perhaps saw its biggest win come in Birmingham with its goal of desegregating the downtown area. This series of nonviolent sit-ins of businesses that previously denied access and service to black residents was met with a disturbing level of violence by local police under the leadership of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus “Bull” Connor, who, through his virulent opposition to equality and commitment to segregation, came out looking like a true villain, attempting to squash protests with violence and intimidation. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King writes to local clergy about why that was a time for action in Birmingham:

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. … Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.

The march

The full name of the famous event, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, drew somewhere between 200,000-300,000 people and apparently went off without a hitch and without violence or skirmishes. It was organized by King, James Farmer Jr., with the Congress of Racial Equality, Roy Wilkins, with the NAACP, John Lewis, with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and others as a push toward desegregation nationwide and more equality in the workplace and in culture. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was brilliant for the way in which it positioned America’s highest ideals in, not just religious terms, to which many Americans, then and now, understand and relate, but in foundational terms. It explained that the nation has yet to fully grasp the full measure of Thomas Jefferson’s famous line from the Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream today. … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountain side, let. freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

King then ended his speech with some of the most stirring lines ever uttered in American history that thundered back through time and continue to reverberate to the present.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaeeous slopes of California.

But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountain side. Let
freedom ring …

When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,”Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we are free at last!

In October 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in racial justice and nonviolent resistance, and the next year, he helped organize perhaps the second most significant march of the civil rights era, the march to Selma en route to Birmingham to protest inequality and advocate for voter rights. This is the march in which John Lewis, and many other nonviolent protesters, got hosed and beaten by members of the Alabama state police. The incident became a powerful symbol for nonviolent resistance and led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Fifty years later on March 7, 2015, Barack Obama, the first black president in United States history, delivered a speech to commemorate the famous march. I was watching the moment on CNN that day, and I can tell you, seeing Obama’s presidential motorcade rumble over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which was named for a former grand wizard of the KKK, was one of the most powerful and enduring images of racial progress I have ever seen, and it’s something I won’t soon forget.

The legacy

As we know, King was killed April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tenn., as he was in the process of planning an occupation of Washington, D.C., called the Poor People’s Campaign. On April 3, probably seeing the writing on the wall and seemingly foreseeing his own untimely end, based on the hate that had been generated against him from the conservative right in the South and elsewhere, he delivered his final, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” speech, an extremely powerful affirmation of this nation’s First Amendment rights.

… Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

And then, like a lightbulb going off in his mind, he turned inward and one could see tears welling up in his eyes as he could see the end peering him in the face.

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

And in that moment, he looked completely spent, as if all of his emotional fervor and rhetorical power had all been used up in preparation for the next day’s events. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has gone down as the most important of his career, but the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech was the most vulnerable moment of King’s public career in my view.

King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in civil rights, and MLK Day was established in parts of the nation in 1986. Not until 2000 did all 50 states celebrate the holiday.

So, what of his legacy? Despite the almost obsessive efforts of J. Edgar Hoover to discredit King, expose his supposed marital infidelities and paint him as a communist, King was central in putting pressure on LBJ and other leaders in Washington to get the ball rolling on the Great Society programs and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on sex, gender or race illegal. Shortly after King’s death, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed. It’s hard to underestimate the impact of these programs on American politics and culture. While they weren’t perfect and while racism and discrimination were far from resolved in King’s lifetime — they are still far from resolved now — these were obviously landmark achievements that may not have been possible without King’s persistence, intelligence, courage and unshakable faith in humanity. Working in tandem with his dedication to nonviolence, King was also against the disastrous war in Vietnam.

I have said all of that to say this: I might not have known much about MLK and Civil Rights starting out in high school and the early part of college, but the more I learned, the more convinced I became in adult life that wherever we go as a nation, we must go together as different people unified in mutual respect and understanding and be committed to the idea, even if previous generations were not, that all men, all human beings, are created equal — full stop — without qualifiers and without exception.

We must be committed to the idea, the idea for which King gave his life, that there is no white America or black America. There is only one America. And while in this era of blatant bigotry and hostility to immigrants spearheaded by Trump and his largely white, unlettered supporters, we can’t give in to apathy. We must believe that we will overcome ideologies that attempt to divide us and that we will overcome racial prejudice and injustice and create for ourselves a better tomorrow. Perhaps King’s greatest legacy to us, then, was that he offered more than a dream. He opened a door so that we could begin the long march toward its ultimate realization.

[Cover image: “I Have a Dream” by DeviantArt user Rachel Laughman.]

50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

I’ve seen surprisingly little coverage of this, but today yesterday June 2 marked the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, perhaps the single greatest achievement of our time. As we have seen from the bogus Hobby Lobby decision, which set the dangerous precedent that merely professing a sincerity about a belief makes that belief legitimate, the work of equality is not complete until all people without exception have access to health care, personal liberty and marriage equality under the law:

Note: I had every intention of posting this on June 2, but life apparently got in the way.

O’Reilly, the professional liar in a suit and tie

Here is Bill O’Reilly recently during an interview he conducted with Democrat talking head James Carville:

in which he said

No Republicans and no conservatives were invited.

That, of course, was, at best, a false presumption and at worst, an outright lie. In fact, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Eric Cantor and John Boehner were all invited to the event and all declined for one bullshit reason or another.

One would think at least one person in the House of Representatives, with its 233 Republicans in office, or someone in the Senate, with 46, would grow a spine for this one day and at least pretend to care about the causes championed by Martin Luther King Jr. and at least feign respect for the original March on Washington and what it represented. That more than 270 GOP politicians in Washington did nothing is a sad commentary indeed, especially since politicians on both sides of the aisle came together to support civil rights 50 years ago. I call that a digression.

I mean, seriously. Why would 270 Republicans need to be invited in order to participate? Why couldn’t they — perish the thought — actually ask to be part of the festivities given the historic and crucial importance of the march. Hell, I’m beginning to think that conservatives in the 1960s had more balls than the gaggle of clowns sitting on The Hill here in 2013.

To his credit, O’Reilly aired a correction and admitted he was wrong in his assumption (Ass-U-Me):

Obama on MLK: ‘His words belong to the ages’

I’m not going to say a lot about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, mostly because the newspaper for which I write just published a lengthy column of mine on the topic, and as a practice, I generally don’t blog about topics that I cover for the paper. Suffice it to say that King’s abilities in oratory and rhetoric, his intelligence and his command of an audience and a microphone rivaled that of any American past or present. His power to inspire shook the nation’s conscience to its core, changed the social and political landscape for the better and bent the course of history toward freedom more so than anyone since Abraham Lincoln.

His “I Have a Dream” speech, in particular, is a study in rhetoric and should be required reading for all American students. One doesn’t even have to watch the video of the speech from 1963 to feel King’s rhetorical and emotive power; genuine tears flow just from reading the text. If you watch closely in his speeches, when he concludes, he looks completely exhausted as if he had just harnessed some immense force in delivering his timeless message of nonviolent resistance, equality and mutual trust and respect among people all of races.

Here is the video from 1963, along with the last part of his last speech, known as the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” sermon, which was delivered April 3, 1968, the night before he was killed.


El artículo más loco del día

Now, thanks to this article from The Daily Beast‘s Reihan Salam, we have comparisons of Glenn Beck to Malcolm X? In the words of Sheila Broflovski from South Park: what? What? WHAT?

That’s, according to Salam, Beck is a white version of X. Here’s Salam:

Whereas Malcom X embraced militant black separatism, Beck marries a stridently emotional style with political views that wouldn’t have been out of place at a 1950s Elks Lodge event. But like Malcolm X, Beck terrifies mainstream liberals, who see something sinister in his inexplicable ways. And just as Malcolm X mellowed in his old age, embracing a more traditional interpretation of Islam shortly before his death, Beck seems to be self-consciously moving past the politicized anger that defined his program for much of the past two years towards a heavy emphasis on spiritual uplift for his people.

I think this is a fairly ridiculous claim (See title). For one, as Salam claims, if Beck is attempting to enact some sort of spiritual awakening, he would be no different than the throngs of fervently religious — that’s not to mean terribly moral — politicians and evangelicals since the days of the Moral Majority and later, the Christian Coalition.

Second, Salam claims that Beck’s audience is mostly old and white. While that is true to some degree, it’s been fairly well-established that a number of black people follow the Tea Party’s credo, as well as quite intelligent young white people. Here’s some data from Gallup.

Also, Malcolm X’s followers, so far as I’m aware, were young black militants.

Salam also says:

Instead of accepting or embracing this transformation, a large and growing number of white Americans are, knowingly or otherwise, taking a page from minority protest movements of the past by asserting themselves and demanding recognition from political and cultural elites. Many on the left find this sense of anger and alienation risible, seeing in this movement of “are-nots,” as opposed to “have-nots,” a class of ignoramuses duped by Fox News into acting against their supposed economic interests.

Yet it seems more plausible that Fox News is following its audience rather than leading it — that this anger and alienation has existed for years, and has only now found a decidedly unconventional tribune in the form of Glenn Beck. Though this is a class with economic grievances, it seems more concerned with psychic injuries — with a profound sense of disempowerment in the face of centralized political power.

It is true that FOX News is following its audience rather than the other way around, for that’s what it means to be populist. And if Beck is anything, he’s a populist. Solutions to complex problems, as President Obama well knew prior to taking office, but well understood after taking the oath, are rarely popular, and more times than not, decidedly unpopular. And we can, I think, be thankful that within the framework of our free, democratic society, that some politicians have the guts (And I don’t exclude George W. Bush in some cases) to do that which isn’t necessarily popular for the common good. For the general public, more often than not, neither knows what it wants or what is best. It’s quite easy for Beck to lap at the trough of the popular movement of the day, one he helped create, but he’s no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr., or any other transcendent leader. He’s a charismatic, very successful capitalist. That’s about it.

Sharpton vs. Beck: Round 1

Credit: Kevin Wolf/AP (left); Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post (right)

So, should we reclaim the dream or restore honor?

As it turns out, it depends on who you talk to. Whichever ambiguous path you choose, it’s sure to curry favor with either the Rev. Al Sharpton, who led an event today to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic March on Washington in 1964, or Glenn Beck, and we all know his reputation. As it happens, Beck, the presiding FOX News lunatic who was holding his “Reclaim the Dream” rally in Washington on the same weekend, a gathering that he said was not, necessarily, planned, to coincide with King’s famous march and speech. Sure.

Here’s how The Washington Post has framed it:

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, steps away from where it was delivered, Sarah Palin and other speakers at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally staked a claim to King’s legacy and to that of the Founding Fathers. They urged a crowd that stretched to the Washington Monument to concentrate on the nation’s accomplishments rather than on its psychological scars.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Beck said from the base of the Lincoln Memorial. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

The event was billed as “nonpolitical,” and Beck steered clear of the partisan commentary that has made him a hero to many conservatives and a nemesis to many on the left. But political overtones were unmistakable, and the rally drew a large crowd – including many who said they were new to activism – that was energized and motivated to act.

The effort by Beck and Palin to lay claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement drew protests from the Rev. Al Sharpton and others who marched in a separate and much smaller event, to the National Mall from Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, to commemorate King’s speech 47 years ago.

“The ‘March on Washington’ changed America,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said at the Sharpton rally, referring to King’s speech. “Our country reached to overcome the low points of our racial history. Glenn Beck’s march will change nothing.” ((http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/28/AR2010082801106.html))

Not only will it not change anything, at least not for the good of the country, it will further splinter America. Beck, in all his civil rights fake-profundity, forgets that the tax cuts that he so trumpets nearly every day on his TV show will hurt many Americans who are the very people he claims to so embrace in the rally: low- to middle-income Americans.

Of course, there’s much over-excited banter from the other side as well. Here is Avis Jones DeWeever, executive director of the National Council of Negro Women:

Don’t let anyone tell you that they have the right to take their country back. It’s our country, too. We will reclaim the dream. It was ours from the beginning.

It is, indeed, black folks’ nation as well, but DeWeever, I think, misunderstands the point the Tea Party crowd, Beck, Palin and others have been attempting to make all along. They aren’t attempting to take the country back from black people or any race (That would be a perversion of the original intent), but from what they refer to as the liberal movement. Now, to me, the word “liberal” is a meaningless term. Even so, the point on Beck’s part is a political one, not a racial one.

And now, let me turn to numbers.

The Washington Post reported that thousands had descended on Washington for the Beck event, while Beck himself estimated that between 300,000-500,000 had attended the event. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), talking to a crowd after the Beck event had this to say:

We’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today – because we were witnesses.

I find her use of the words “We were witnesses,” interesting. The numbers at the conservative event balloon from 300,000 to 500,000 then to a million? And yes, because we were witnesses, a million turned out to Washington to rail against the government. And because “we” (the gospel writers) were witnesses to the event, Christ performed miracles, raised Lazarus from the dead, exorcised demons and appeared before the disciples after death, and hundreds or maybe thousands were “witnesses” to UFO sightings or abductions and others were “witnesses” to paranormal activity and myriad other happenings that transcend the laws of nature. To simply establish that a person was a witness to a certain event doesn’t make the said event true. It makes the claimant either trustworthy, misunderstood, deceitful or, most plainly, wrong.

As it happens, the actual March on Washington likely consisted of between 200,000-300,000 people without any gross, and in Bachmann’s case, terribly gross, number-fudging.

Here is King’s monumental speech on that monumental day:

Obama: ‘Hope over fear’

Watching the inauguration speech today, it seemed evident to me from Barack Obama’s tone and content that, while the speech included much of the inspirational verbiage we heard in Philadelphia’s Speech on Race and Denver’s Democratic nomination address, we were listening to a man who’s position in history — and his high calling amid numerous national and global crises — had been fully realized.

As was mentioned in a local newspaper editorial, the irony of the moment was palpable. Forty-five years to the day that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, Obama stood in Denver and accepted the nomination to lead the Democratic ticket. A day after the holiday honoring King for his service to the country, we inaugurated Obama as the first black president.

King Jr. famously said: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Today, Obama stood inside both those moments. Surely, it was a happy, triumphant occasion for his family and himself. But it was also a day where the critical position he found himself in, as frigid air beat down on the crowd of a million or more — the largest ever to assemble in Washington — must have come crashing down around him.

Photo by The Associated Press

Photo by The Associated Press

Some Republicans have claimed he’s just another politician. And he may very well prove to be nothing more. And even if he is nothing more, we will still be able to say that, for a time, he made many hope and believe a better day was coming — that a betteer day and a more perfect union was within our grasp, just as 40 years prior, King helped us believe the same. Even if Obama turns out to be a dud, at least he gave us that.

But, of course, I sincerely hope (and think he will) turn out to be much more. He’s not a wonder-worker. But these things he brings to the table, which have been missing for awhile: poise, thoughtfulness, careful deliberation (almost to a fault), compassion and erudition.

As the next months and years play out, we should get behind him and remember his Inaugural Day words:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Social commentator or just loony?

Today, upon hearing of the story about the fellow in Florida who was charged with threatening Barack Obama with a death threat, I figured this was a guy likely reacting to Obama’s largely Martin Luther King Jr.-esque message of hope and unity. True, Obama’s message, as laid out in his speech on race in Philadelphia earlier this summer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8flxGDg6Nho&feature=rec-fresh

was not one that some want to hear. MLK, of course, brought a message that was radically different than what many in the population of the time wanted to hear. And he was assassinated for it. I have often listened in awe at Obama’s speeches, erstwhile worrying that he could have the potential, if elected, to suffer the same fate. But Obama must know this. He must know that, to say the things he has said, he is treading in dangerous waters. The truth is, while many people embrace his message, MLK’s message and other trailblazers, some do not. Some are still mired in racism that is entrenched generations deep and will never accept the kind of world MLK, John Lennon, Obama and others envisioned. And that’s tragic. Just as tragic is that the MLKs of the world, the Lennons and Obamas of the world can’t speak out as powerfully as they do without putting their lives on the line. True, we have come a long way socially in this country. But we haven’t come far enough.

Now, back to this joker, Raymond Hunter Geisel. At first, I thought he was one of those who could not accept the humanitarian message of Obama and others, but apparently, at least according to the CNN article, he’s an equal-opportunity potential assassin, possibly targeting, not just Obama, but Bush.

Agents say that classmates of Geisel reported that, between July 25-28, Geisel used a racial slur toward Obama and said “if he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.”

A classmate said that, one day after class, she also heard Geisel say “that he hated George W. Bush and that he wanted to put a bullet in the president’s head.”

So, there you have it. I’m not sure what to make of this guy. Far from some violently, social commentator, it appears he’s just crazy — or full of hate, take your pick.