40 Years Later: King’s Legacy
4 April 2008As expected, all three presidential candidates are giving speeches today commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. And rightly so. Dr. King’s struggle was a righteous struggle. By the time of King’s rise to leadership, the plight of blacks in much of America was bleak. The south in particular was engaged in such blatant racial discrimination there was little argument that it wasn’t happening. Rather, it was being justified on all kinds of spurious grounds. Racism was alive and well and many whites truly believed that blacks were inferior and therefore, discrimination was justified and justifiable.
King worked against such thinking and he did so following the path Gandhi had followed to end British oppression in India. King was committed to several things. First he wanted equal treatment for blacks. He wanted the end of black and white counters and water fountains. He wanted the end of black seating at the back of the bus. He wanted a "colorblind society" so that everyone was "judged by the content of their character" rather than the "color of their skin."
And King was clear about how to achieve such a color blind society. The civil rights movement would be successful not through terrorism and violence but through non-violent civil disobedience. King, like Gandhi, believed accepting the consequences of his actions. As a result he willingly spent more than a few nights in jail. That’s character.
Many have since attacked King on many fronts. Some have claimed he was an adulterer. Others claim he was a crook. King is in good company as many of America’s greatest historical leaders have also been thusly attacked. Jefferson has been attacked for owning slaves. Washington has been attacked both for owning slaves and for alleged adultery. In each case the goal has been the same. That is to marginalize the arguments and goals of the one being attacked posthumously.
Whether the attacks come from the left against Washington and Jefferson or from the right against King, such attacks are misguided and wrong. While alive any leader is fair game for criticism and even after death it is fair to look at the facts of a leader’s life. But using such examination in an attempt to negate particular arguments is simply fallacious. It is the logical fallacy of the ad hominem attack. It is mean spirited and betrays an inability on the part of the attacker to defend his or her position on its merits.
I don’t know what kind of man King was personally. I was a child when he was gunned down. But I know that his goals were good goals. A colorblind society was and is a good ideal. And much progress has been made in the last 40 years. Blacks are not relegated to special counters, bathrooms and water fountains. Blacks are able to achieve anything white’s can achieve, something hardly possible in Kings day. But all is not well in race relations. Alas King’s goals have been hijacked.
While there are very many in the black community still working to fulfill King’s dream, many others actively work against it. Instead of working for a colorblind society, they work for a color based society. Instead of the content of one’s character, these people seek to have all manner of decisions based mailing or solely on the color of one’s skin.
People like Jesse Jackson and Georgia Congressman John Lewis have built entire careers on the back of Martin Luther King. While giving lip services to King’s goals, such men have worked against their fulfillment because any successes undermine their own legitimacy. Indeed, if race ever becomes irrelevant they will be out of work entirely because all they know how to do is be victims.
I still have hope that America will grow past all this. But I fear that it will not happen until all those who were part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s have passed away. Until those who still remember how they were treated are gone, there may not be full healing. And that’s really too bad because they, like all our elders, have much wisdom to offer all of us. Unfortunately, for many, that wisdom is buried beneath too many layers of resentment and self imposed victimhood.
I agree wholeheartedly with Martin Luther King’s dream. I too dream of a color blind society where all men and women are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. For character is what matters. But I fear I will not see it in my lifetime because to many are vested in victimhood.
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