[Mb-civic] What King really dreamed - Rich Benjamin and Jamie
Carmichael - Boston Globe Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Sun Jan 15 06:31:41 PST 2006
What King really dreamed
By Rich Benjamin and Jamie Carmichael | January 15, 2006 | The
Boston Globe
READY YOUR gospel choirs, America. The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is
upon us, and the carnival is gearing up to sing saccharine once again.
Politicians, nearly 40 years safe from that Memphis balcony, will shroud
themselves in the content of his character. A few thoughtful people will
dedicate a day of service to their communities. Banks may dangle
checking accounts that are ''Free, Free at Last!" In San Antonio, a huge
parade in honor of King will even feature a military fly-over.
The icon we celebrate today is an anodyne specter of the true article's
dynamism and dissent. In a huckster nation, this opportunistic conjuring
of King's brand identity is hardly surprising. But there are pressing
and specific reasons to revisit the true legacy and words of the
preacher from Ebenezer Baptist more carefully than we have in years past.
''We must rapidly begin the 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, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of
being conquered." King spoke these words at New York City's Riverside
Church in 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated.
Powerful people fall over themselves to celebrate King's racial tonic
because doing so is the deftest way to avoid the harder topic: his
economic prescriptions. King's defanged biography jumps from his heroic
involvement in Selma (March 1965) to his assassination (April 1968). The
1965-1968 caesura hides the critical effort of King's abbreviated life:
His increasing focus on economic inequality and the launch of his Poor
People's Campaign, a challenge to the most fundamental patterns of the
US economy and caste system. ''Now our struggle is for genuine equality,
which means economic equality," he told garbage workers in Memphis the
month before his assassination.
Now, as then, people are less comfortable with this King than the
Benettonesque Teddy Bear we're so often peddled. Racial segregation,
while endemic to our history, is indeed un-American. Economic inequality
is pretty much apple pie; it's taken less seriously by elected leaders,
and it has grown more pronounced since King's assassination.
In 1960, the top 20 percent of the wealthiest enjoyed 30 times the
wealth of the bottom 20 percent. Four decades later, this gap increased
to 75 times. More children are growing up poor in America than in any
other industrial nation. Millions of workers are making less money in
real dollars than they did 20 years ago. Working Americans are working
on average more hours than ever before. Forty-five million Americans --
eight of 10 of whom have jobs -- have no health insurance. Overall, 37
million Americans live in poverty, and poverty levels are now on an
uptick since a record low in 1973.
We've always justified economic polarization with a debatable but
compelling argument: who cares if the market system yields inevitable
inequalities, so long as it provides equality of opportunity? Well,
we're pooching that one, too. In making college less financially
accessible, Congress actively thwarts young people's opportunity for
mobility. Congress recently cut nearly $13 billion from student aid, as
much as doubling the interest rates of the federal educational grants on
which middle- and low-income families depend. Meanwhile, the real cost
of college tuition has outpaced inflation by 40 percent over the last 25
years, also outpacing the average growth of middle-class wages. Research
by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that a poor American child has
no better chance of getting ahead than a poor child in Britain, France,
Germany, or Sweden.
And yes, you can still make it racial. As Meizhu Lui of United for a
Fair Economy points out, African-Americans earned, on average, 55 cents
per dollar of white income the year King was assassinated. They were
earning 57 cents, on average, for every dollar of white income in 2001.
At that rate, we'll have income parity in 2582. Our purpose is not to be
the Grinch who stole King Day. Children should still draw the March on
Washington, and any day is a good day to revisit ''I Have a Dream." But,
in the clap-happy kumbayah that will suffuse many of this weekend's
celebrations of what King stood for, the government and the media must
not deliberately forget what he stood against.
Assassins snuffed King as he began his most challenging campaign of all:
the fight against inequality of capital and opportunity. Ignoring this
campaign suppresses an incisive message, offering up a palliative
charade precisely when his economic vision of substantive change is most
needed.
Rich Benjamin is senior fellow at Demos in New York. Jamie Carmichael is
a playwright.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/15/what_king_really_dreamed/
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