EDITORIAL King's legacy best seen through the gospel's lens
What sense, 30 years after his assassination, are we to make of
the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King?
Seen on history's international stage, where he takes his place
alongside Mohandas Gandhi, King's nonviolent struggles were against racial
bigotry and discrimination, against war ã specifically Vietnam ã
and increasingly, as his assassination approached, on behalf of the poor.
In the United States, King and his colleagues, black and white,
fought against overt social and legal racism and for racial justice and
equality. The racist ethos of the group, the family, the individual, King
believed, could eventually be dissipated through education, understanding and
the inculcation of tolerance.
That transformation is still underway but far from complete.
King's appeals were always to gospel understanding. Even when the
white, liberal pastors of white churches in Montgomery, Ala., did not support
ã while not openly opposing ã his bus boycott, King believed the
tide would turn in time.
And in many ways, over the past three decades, it has.
Though there were still lynchings in the South when King was born,
he was under no illusion that racism in these United States was merely a
Southern phenomenon. As he remarked after a 1960s march from Marquette Park in
Chicago, people from Mississippi could visit Chicago "to learn how to
hate."
Thirty years later, King has his own holiday in January and the
symbols of overt social and legal racism are pretty much gone. The "whites
only" and "colored only" signs are gone; school districts can no longer openly
declare that certain schools are for blacks only; employers and real estate
agents and landlords all know the language of equal opportunity. At least,
there are some laws and language to lean on.
But under the skin of those legalisms, the monster of racism still
breathes and gathers strength.
The distinctions between overt and subtle must mean little to the
child in the inner city, whose playgrounds and public housing hallways are
incubators of crime and whose schools are mere shadows of the facilities a few
miles away in the suburbs. Legalities must mean little to kids who know their
schools might as well hang out a "blacks only" sign, who see the undeclared but
very real disparity in resources as unmistakable racism, even if the law
doesn't see it that way.
On a more personal level, guffaws over racial jokes have turned to
quiet giggles. Subtle racism, like any social or class bigotry, is conveyed by
the faintest of signals between willing parties. The barest flicker on the
face, the slightest semaphoring from body language and the message is
transmitted ã and received. It is also received by the victim, the butt
of the joke. Nature and the need to survive has endowed humans with powerful
antennae. Rarely does the racist signal pass unrecorded by the sufferer.
Overt racism cannot be mistaken, cannot be avoided. Subtle racism
can slip by the innocent, especially the child, unless otherwise educated to
recognize and condemn it.
The letter of the law must be little consolation to the innocent
African-American who is, on the basis of skin color alone, followed around
department stores and made to empty the contents of pockets and purses.
How far apart we remain is embarrassingly evident in our
congregations on Sunday morning, a time King said is "the most segregated hour
in Christian America." Pluralism may be taking hold in spots as we worship, but
most local churches remain identifiable by racial and ethnic composition.
Racism, though perhaps tamed in its rawest elements in the past
three decades, is still being taught and practiced.
King's life and death make most sense when viewed through the
biblical lens he himself used: hopeful in what we can already claim through
Jesus of Nazareth, while understanding that total fulfillment of the promise of
unity and accord remains out of reach. The perspective of 30 years reminds us
that the work for justice is long-term, and that it will take more than most
Americans seem yet prepared to give.
National Catholic Reporter, January 16,
1998
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