When you look at the United States of America today, do you see freedom?
When you look at the United States of America today, do you see equality?
When you look at the United States of America today, do you see justice?
We are 62 years past the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by Martin Luther King Jr., where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech for job equality, civil rights, voting rights, and justice. We are 61 and 60 years past the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, respectively. Six decades have passed since the Civil Rights Movement ended, and despite this, I truly question how much our society has really changed.
At the beginning of January, I began reading “A Testament of Hope: the Essential Writings and Speeches” by Martin Luther King Jr. I was entranced by his thought-provoking messages towards social and economic justice by way of peaceful protest and massive resistance to inequality in America. Through the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King’s “Letter From Birmingham City Jail,” and many other acts of nonviolent resistance, people–black and white alike–fought for full integration and equal job opportunity. Martin Luther King was a peaceful yet powerful force to be reckoned with, and although it’s not talked about often in our youth education system, King was hated by many.Â
Many didn’t like his methods for equality, whether it was too forceful or not forceful enough. Many didn’t like that desegregation wasn’t taken with a smile and accepted, and that Dr. King continued to insist on greater opportunities for underrepresented and marginalized communities. Many didn’t like that he was able to bring together hundreds of thousands of people for a monumental cause under one ideal: true agape love, a word for love in the Greek language that is understanding, creative, redemptive will for all men. Dr. King said, “And when you come to love on this level you begin to love men not because they are like-able, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them and here we love the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does.” How do you look at those who call you racial slurs, those who tell you that you don’t deserve the same rights as them, those who don’t see you as a whole human person, and tell them that you love them? I admire Dr. King because he was not only committed to this testimony of hope and love, he convinced so many others to look past hatred and revenge in the pursuit of peace and justice.
As I read “A Testament of Hope,” the racial violence was not the most horrifying part. Nor was the institutional oppression, the police brutality, and the discrimination and dehumanization of black people. I find that what pains me the most is the shocking and yet unsurprising similarities between today’s society and the experiences of marginalized communities who were fighting for equality during the Civil Rights Movement, and centuries before that. We have been living in the same world, with supposedly new institutions that have the same foundations. Although we live in a society that banned segregation, where all people can go to the same schools, grocery stores, and public spaces, discrimination has taken on a more subtle, more imperceptible form.
And so I want to highlight some of Martin Luther King’s words that struck me, the ones that I think are crucial to our understanding of the connection between history and today’s society, and the systems that threaten to harm us now more than ever.
We are turning back
“We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality” (218).
Martin Luther King, and James Melvin Washington. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco Harper & Row, 1986.
We cannot turn back. Yet all I’ve been hearing in recent years is how this law is being taken away, and that program is being removed, and “is racism even a thing anymore?” This quote strikes me, especially as we enter a new presidential administration, but an old era. We are no longer progressing towards a greater tomorrow; instead, we are being stripped of the rights that we’ve been granted for so many decades. The common, collective ideal is usually that we strive for better lives for our children, but how does it look to them, to us, when we take away their rights to equality, freedom, autonomy? Since Roe v. Wade of 1973 was removed in 2022, abortion is now totally banned in 13. Illegal abortion has led to more dangerous abortions for expecting mothers and has removed the ability for women to decide what is best for the health of themselves and their child. We have lost the right to autonomy over our bodies that was granted to our mothers and grandmothers before us.
Affirmative action, a set of policies passed in 1965 that aimed to reduce discrimination in employment and education, was systematically removed by individual states since 1996, and federally banned in June of 2023. It was banned under the guise that it gave black people the advantage in getting into colleges because of the diversity status it openly strived for. Many people don’t understand that affirmative action mainly benefited white women, by reducing the gender discrimination against them and increasing the female population in white male-dominated work and academic spaces, and then other groups after them. Additionally, affirmative action has never been a “handout” platform that allowed unqualified black people to enter white spaces; it made sure that institutions were NOT completely free to reject qualified black workers and students simply because of their race.
And now. Diversity. Equity. And Inclusion. The term “DEI” has been thrown around recently and weaponized as something that disproportionately benefits black people and should be removed to restore equality. But D.E.I. is not a “black issue” nor is it a new development. Just to list out a few accommodations that are courtesy of D.E.I.:
- Ramps and sidewalk curb cuts
- Subtitles & captions (TV & phone)
- Breastfeeding/pumping stations & accommodations
- Parental leave (time & pay)
- Coming back to a job after birthing a childÂ
- Floating paid holidays
- Veterans support services
- Pay equity & transparency
- Ability to fight against workplace harassment
- Work accommodations for a variety of disabilities
- Flexible work arrangementsÂ
- Size inclusive chairs and beds in medical facilitiesÂ
- Belt extenders on planesÂ
- Various food options for vegetarians/vegans/kosher/gluten-free/etc at medical facilities
- Rooms to pray/meditate at work & other public places
- Materials in different languages
- Multiple religious options at hospitalsÂ
- Accessible bikes and public transit accommodations
- Company-covered mental/behavioral health resources
D.E.I. is not about hiring an under-qualified person for a job just because they’re a person of color. D.E.I. is not about hiring people based on race just to meet diversity goals, something corporations can not do because that is illegal. Rather, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs originated in the 1960s with the intention of giving all people the opportunities and benefits that white, able-bodied, straight, cis-gender men subconsciously are afforded immediately in America. If not for D.E.I. programs mandated by the federal government, individual corporations and institutions in the education, health, business, service industries, etc simply would not go the extra mile to assist their employees and students otherwise. These inherent rights—which every person should be afforded automatically—were taken away, then gradually returned, and are now being taken away from us again.
Things > People
“We must rapidly shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered” (240).
Martin Luther King, and James Melvin Washington. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco Harper & Row, 1986.
Martin Luther King said this quote in 1967, delivering this speech in direct opposition to the Johnson administration’s war policy during the Vietnam War, which had been raging for over a decade at this point. He spoke about America’s involvement in this foreign war in order to promote the spread of capitalism against the Soviet Union’s communist efforts, which was at the detriment of the funding going towards programs to reduce poverty and job inequality. He emphasized that if the American government continues to cater to foreign involvements for oil, iron ore, and power, they will become addicted to further efforts abroad which will be fatal to their millions of citizens who wait while suffering in poverty and drowning in bills.
I read this quote, and I realized I could’ve seen it in a random news article and completely assumed that it was in today’s context. King warned us against continuing to be consumed by the “thing-oriented” mindset 60-years ago, and I would argue that it’s only gotten worse. In general, our society has only gotten more materialistic, focused on the latest fashions, phones & other technology, and money. More dangerously, our government has gotten extremely materialistic, monetarily driven within policymaking to bring more wealth, tax cuts, and other benefits to private corporations. These actions, in turn, motivate corporations to fund campaigns and provide support in donations and affiliation that match their business interests. We must return to a society whose government’s actions are motivated by the will and needs of the people, rather than subjecting the people to a ruined aftermath of an economy where the sole purpose now revolves around the desires of the rich and powerful.
Power And Love
“And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites—polar opposites—so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love…Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love” (247).
Martin Luther King, and James Melvin Washington. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco Harper & Row, 1986.
We live in a capitalist, individualist society that tells everyone that if you work hard and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” you can be successful too. Through this, I believe we have fallen into a state of complete competition, and denied the injustices that enabled this mindset to grow. We believe that, in order to win, you must achieve over or by using someone else to gain that position, that money, that power. And by pitting people against one another, we have lost empathy and compassion and love.Â
The questions I often ask are:
- Why is it that some people who have never experienced poverty, or have left its constraints, suddenly feel no empathy or understanding towards the suffering of those who don’t share the same wealth?Â
- Why is it that some citizens feel no shred of generosity towards immigrants and refugees who are striving for a better life or forced to abandon their homes due to other circumstances?
- Why is it that some white people refuse to acknowledge the institutional racism that has served them on the labor and subjugation of black people for generations?Â
We have gotten so disconnected from one another, in this endless cycle that demands we choose either power or love, instead of embracing both. We have always existed in a system where the powerful and privileged feel that any attempts to support and uplift the underprivileged is a personal attack to their own wellbeing and power. But there is no reason why power must strip people of compassion and understanding to be replaced by greed and self-righteousness. We have to stop denying that the institutionally elite, privileged, and powerful groups have been able to work hard, change legislation, and profit off of the prejudice and discrimination of Black Americans, other people of color, women, immigrants, veterans, and disabled people.
We have been lulled as a society into a false sense of security, the means by which have led to complacency. Complacency of half-baked progressive policies, complacency that individual representations of success in different communities must mean all people are now equal, and complacency that society is just never going to change. I wrote this article in light of Black History Month, especially surrounding recent events, but this fight for justice and equality is not “Black History.” It is NOT about only the struggles of Black people in America and it is NOT history. We are still dealing with institutional, systematic oppression in our education, work force, police force, medical field, housing and development, prison systems, and so many industries that have benefited from the marginalization of underprivileged groups and communities. Everyone in our capitalist, patriarchal society who is not wealthy or able-bodied or male or white is subject to discrimination in a society that was not foundationally built for their success and well-being.
But we must refuse to let that be the end. We must refuse to let acceptance be the end goal. Peaceful protest, education of our youth and our adults, and continuing conversations about injustice and inequality is how our nation will become just and equal. Black people and other marginalized groups in America have worked for centuries to break down the barriers formed against them, and to let those barriers win now would be to let all our ancestors’ work be in vain. Instead, we must keep fighting, keep communicating, and keep loving.