Dr. King Weeps From His Grave
By CORNEL WEST
Princeton, N.J.
THE Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was to be dedicated on the
National Mall on Sunday — exactly 56 years after the murder of Emmett
Till in Mississippi and 48 years after the historic March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (Because of Hurricane Irene, the
ceremony has been postponed.)
These events constitute major milestones in the turbulent history of
race and democracy in America, and the undeniable success of the civil
rights movement — culminating in the election of Barack Obama in 2008
— warrants our attention and elation. Yet the prophetic words of Rabbi
Abraham Joshua Heschel still haunt us: "The whole future of America
depends on the impact and influence of Dr. King."
Rabbi Heschel spoke those words during the last years of King's life,
when 72 percent of whites and 55 percent of blacks disapproved of
King's opposition to the Vietnam War and his efforts to eradicate
poverty in America. King's dream of a more democratic America had
become, in his words, "a nightmare," owing to the persistence of
"racism, poverty, militarism and materialism." He called America a
"sick society." On the Sunday after his assassination, in 1968, he was
to have preached a sermon titled "Why America May Go to Hell."
King did not think that America ought to go to hell, but rather that
it might go to hell owing to its economic injustice, cultural decay
and political paralysis. He was not an American Gibbon, chronicling
the decline and fall of the American empire, but a courageous and
visionary Christian blues man, fighting with style and love in the
face of the four catastrophes he identified.
Militarism is an imperial catastrophe that has produced a military-
industrial complex and national security state and warped the
country's priorities and stature (as with the immoral drones, dropping
bombs on innocent civilians). Materialism is a spiritual catastrophe,
promoted by a corporate media multiplex and a culture industry that
have hardened the hearts of hard-core consumers and coarsened the
consciences of would-be citizens. Clever gimmicks of mass distraction
yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison
industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown
ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. Arbitrary uses of the
law — in the name of the "war" on drugs — have produced, in the legal
scholar Michelle Alexander's apt phrase, a new Jim Crow of mass
incarceration. And poverty is an economic catastrophe, inseparable
from the power of greedy oligarchs and avaricious plutocrats
indifferent to the misery of poor children, elderly citizens and
working people.
The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King's
prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision
and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of
mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and
housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits
for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.
As the talk show host Tavis Smiley and I have said in our national
tour against poverty, the recent budget deal is only the latest phase
of a 30-year, top-down, one-sided war against the poor and working
people in the name of a morally bankrupt policy of deregulating
markets, lowering taxes and cutting spending for those already
socially neglected and economically abandoned. Our two main political
parties, each beholden to big money, offer merely alternative versions
of oligarchic rule.
The absence of a King-worthy narrative to reinvigorate poor and
working people has enabled right-wing populists to seize the moment
with credible claims about government corruption and ridiculous claims
about tax cuts' stimulating growth. This right-wing threat is a
catastrophic response to King's four catastrophes; its agenda would
lead to hellish conditions for most Americans.
King weeps from his grave. He never confused substance with symbolism.
He never conflated a flesh and blood sacrifice with a stone and mortar
edifice. We rightly celebrate his substance and sacrifice because he
loved us all so deeply. Let us not remain satisfied with symbolism
because we too often fear the challenge he embraced. Our greatest
writer, Herman Melville, who spent his life in love with America even
as he was our most fierce critic of the myth of American
exceptionalism, noted, "Truth uncompromisingly told will always have
its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to
be less finished than an architectural finial."
King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A
revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a
reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of
our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from
oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.
In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like
Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los
Angeles County supervisor; extensive community and media organizing;
civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers
that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be
coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.
Cornel West, a philosopher, is a professor at Princeton.
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