Chance would have it that I was in Memphis the weekend before the national holiday that honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is the city that must eternally wear the ugly badge of distinction for being the site where King was assassinated. Not wanting to make assumptions about the lack of King’s presence, I asked the black cabbie who took me to the airport what were commemorations like in his city.
The cab driver sadly explained that over the years the celebrations and media coverage had dwindled. It went from almost 24-hour King coverage in 1969 to barely being able to find something on the cable access channel.
“But don’t the African-American community and other progressive people in this city bear some responsibility for the demise of the holiday?” I questioned him. He agreed.
I thought about our conversation and this country’s commitment to realizing the King legacy that challenged racism poverty, war and other injustices. It led me to the things we choose to tolerate.
Our sensibilities have been dulled by issues we don’t want to get involved with. Our eyes are blinded to conditions that don’t affect our own personal interests. In brief, our social priorities have become skewed by our selfish desires, often ignoring the fact that our lives are interconnected, no matter how hard we try to isolate ourselves from that which we think is “undesirable” or “inconvenient.”
We tolerate dope slingers on the neighborhood corner, but we’re intolerant of their baggy pants. We tolerate sexual abuse, drugs and alcohol in our communities, but are intolerant of their logical consequences. We are tolerant of irresponsible corporate actions, but intolerant of a misbehaving middle-schooler. We tolerate corrupt elected officials, but are incensed by the abuse of $40 worth of food stamps. We tolerate governmental invasion of our privacy, yet we don’t fight for educational programs in prisons.
We tolerate Governor Blunt being asked to present community awards in the name of Dr. King, but we don’t fight his policies that drive our standard of living into the ground.
The desecration of Dr. King’s legacy occurs because we are putting energy in the wrong fights. These are the little fights that clearly won’t have the same systematic impact as the big ones. The fights that pound the victims of an oppressive system for their misguided choices but cower in the face of giants of evil whose actions impact a whole planet.
Let’s not fool ourselves – we are no defenders of the dream. We’ve been lulled to accept the empire’s nightmare.
One happy King note. It looks like Bush did learn an important lesson from pimping last year’s King Holiday. A bodacious Bush violated sacred ground when he put a wreath on the gravesite of Dr. King last year amidst hundreds of angry protestors. This holiday, he chose more controlled situations to continue the pervasion of the King legacy. Like pretending to read and appreciate the Emancipation Proclamation at the National Archives. This from a president, who until recently (needing to get his poll numbers up) opposed re-authorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Our real love for Dr. King must first lead us to confront the destroyers of his dream, no matter how mighty they may seem. Secondly, we have to draw upon Dr. King’s unfathomable courage to work that dream plan for a better world. Otherwise, we’ll look up and see the “I have a dream” slogan as part of some corporate logo.