I think in a sense we have actually probably taken at least a half step backwards as the Left has both lost their alliance with organized labor and continues to abandon the disorganized labor we are left with because they allow the neoliberal establishment to partner with the GOP to erode the ability of labor to freely organize. The Left has also to a large degree lost the rural poor and particularly the White Southern rural poor and small farmers who made common cause with the Reverend Doctor King. The assassination of Doctor King, it could be argued, led to the final unraveling of the New Deal coalition.
Thank you for the link to your Grandfather’s article. A fitting read as we remember Doctor King today.
Three thoughts from a historian on Dr. King. First while you are thinking about the forgotten parts of Dr. King's program, Matt, you should pay attention to the campaign in Chicago. It was all over the questions of housing and access that interest you, and I assume it was part of what Dr. King was thinking about in his comments at the end of the article.
Second, Dr. King had taken his hard anti-war/Vietnam turn by 1968, and he tied those issues pretty explicitly to the politics of both redistribution and race. Money is not perfectly redistributable; it's not clear that money not spent in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last twenty years would have been available to spend elsewhere in the government (maybe that money just doesn't get borrowed/created). But given the size of the spending packages that the Biden administration is proposing, it seems like it would have been nice not to have blown all that blood and treasure elsewhere.
Finally, if you haven't listened to the last three minutes of his final speech (the "Mountain" speech), you should. I always have students listen to it. Then I get them to work out the Biblical reference, which a lot of them usually don't know. Then I play it again. It is King as prophet. He knew--not in a general way, but in a somehow very direct, visceral way--what was coming.
Why isn't this element of king's work more recognized? Or the fact that when he was killed he had something like an 80% disapproval rating? It'd be nice to see these facts mentioned in an mlk day school assembly.
Makes me even more looking forward to finishing "color of law" by rothstein. In particular I think readers of this blog would love his opening exhortation to redress economic disparities not as a gift from whites to blacks but as a duty all Americans of every race have to ensure the constitution is followed and the de jure segregation is truly rectified. That being said, I'm on page 38, so perhaps I'll find his conclusions less agreeable.
Yeah, the MLK I learned about in high school was not the same MLK I learned about in college. In high school he was basically a friendly, morally pure quasi-saint that invited many Sunday school Christ like comparisons. In college, he was a complicated radical who fought everywhere and struggled to gain ground anywhere. I think most people eventually see both sides but choose which one they want to believe in based on what makes them comfortable, it's pretty obvious which one most white people choose. One of the greatest tragedies of the progressive movement is its total surrender of the moral high ground to corrupt mega church pastors aligned with ethnonational Christian movements. The left has to elevate its religious progressive brothers and sisters even if we are uncomfortable with the implications of church and state issues. If we don't, the right will continue to dominate the space and claim it as its own.
What should progressive values be rooted in? Class or race? I think class makes much more sense politically and even morally. King seemed to understand this.
I'm so tired of the leap from mutual cooperation and socialization of large, complex and expensive tasks to Communism. The alternative to working together? It occurs to me this very moment that last week's demonstration/mob riot was a scene from "Lord of the Flies: 2016-2020".
I am curious about when the accusations (both by the government and the segregationists) that King was a Communist, emerged as a strategy for delegitimizing King. In STRENGTH TO LOVE he provided a strong enough Christian critique to the Communist ideology, preached against its moral evils consistently, and yet the smear accusations of his affiliation with the Communist party worked to discredit his work up until his death. I actually think that today most his statements would be considered radical, but not "Communist" in any true sense of the word. Nevertheless I could just as easily see the partisans and hostile media today easily creating a compelling case for an MLK "Communist agenda." Has anything changed?
the nation is welcome to join the new Poor People's Campaign, which exists in over 40 states .. fighting the 3 evils that King was, and also a 4th: ecological devastation,
also too, the false moral narrative of religious nationalism
M.O.R.E. Mobilize, Organize, Register and Educate people to vote
It’s interesting we both take different things from the detour. Let’s embrace that diversity.
My fundamental view on race and equity is that it is divisive to use white men as the equity baseline. So the analysis ends up that if your group is not doing as well or better than white men there is an inequity. So for America to have equity white men need to be at the bottom of all the important statistical categories. The outrage about black men being shot by police isn’t rooted in humans unnecessarily being shot by police. It’s rooted in the relative rate that blacks are shot compared to whites. If only more whites were shot we could solve this problem. If only white parents sabotaged the futures of their children we would have more equity in America because whites would move to the bottom of the lists. This is very bad thinking and you can deny that woke liberals think this way but we all know it’s true. We need to have honest discussions about human development in the black community. I support making investments there.
Yes, politics involves conflict; that has to be recognized, not swept under the rug. But governing is not all zero sum. At a basic level the worst thing that Trump did was frame issues as "us-them." Greater immigration, freer trade, reform of policing, expanded health insurance reducing net CO2 emissions, full employment are not or ought not be "class" issues.
Read the whole thing. Takes you back. King saw and did things people today wouldn't believe. Thanks to your grandfather, who brilliantly captures some of them, and others, they will not be lost in time.
I think in a sense we have actually probably taken at least a half step backwards as the Left has both lost their alliance with organized labor and continues to abandon the disorganized labor we are left with because they allow the neoliberal establishment to partner with the GOP to erode the ability of labor to freely organize. The Left has also to a large degree lost the rural poor and particularly the White Southern rural poor and small farmers who made common cause with the Reverend Doctor King. The assassination of Doctor King, it could be argued, led to the final unraveling of the New Deal coalition.
Thank you for the link to your Grandfather’s article. A fitting read as we remember Doctor King today.
Three thoughts from a historian on Dr. King. First while you are thinking about the forgotten parts of Dr. King's program, Matt, you should pay attention to the campaign in Chicago. It was all over the questions of housing and access that interest you, and I assume it was part of what Dr. King was thinking about in his comments at the end of the article.
Second, Dr. King had taken his hard anti-war/Vietnam turn by 1968, and he tied those issues pretty explicitly to the politics of both redistribution and race. Money is not perfectly redistributable; it's not clear that money not spent in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last twenty years would have been available to spend elsewhere in the government (maybe that money just doesn't get borrowed/created). But given the size of the spending packages that the Biden administration is proposing, it seems like it would have been nice not to have blown all that blood and treasure elsewhere.
Finally, if you haven't listened to the last three minutes of his final speech (the "Mountain" speech), you should. I always have students listen to it. Then I get them to work out the Biblical reference, which a lot of them usually don't know. Then I play it again. It is King as prophet. He knew--not in a general way, but in a somehow very direct, visceral way--what was coming.
Why isn't this element of king's work more recognized? Or the fact that when he was killed he had something like an 80% disapproval rating? It'd be nice to see these facts mentioned in an mlk day school assembly.
Makes me even more looking forward to finishing "color of law" by rothstein. In particular I think readers of this blog would love his opening exhortation to redress economic disparities not as a gift from whites to blacks but as a duty all Americans of every race have to ensure the constitution is followed and the de jure segregation is truly rectified. That being said, I'm on page 38, so perhaps I'll find his conclusions less agreeable.
Yeah, the MLK I learned about in high school was not the same MLK I learned about in college. In high school he was basically a friendly, morally pure quasi-saint that invited many Sunday school Christ like comparisons. In college, he was a complicated radical who fought everywhere and struggled to gain ground anywhere. I think most people eventually see both sides but choose which one they want to believe in based on what makes them comfortable, it's pretty obvious which one most white people choose. One of the greatest tragedies of the progressive movement is its total surrender of the moral high ground to corrupt mega church pastors aligned with ethnonational Christian movements. The left has to elevate its religious progressive brothers and sisters even if we are uncomfortable with the implications of church and state issues. If we don't, the right will continue to dominate the space and claim it as its own.
What should progressive values be rooted in? Class or race? I think class makes much more sense politically and even morally. King seemed to understand this.
I'm so tired of the leap from mutual cooperation and socialization of large, complex and expensive tasks to Communism. The alternative to working together? It occurs to me this very moment that last week's demonstration/mob riot was a scene from "Lord of the Flies: 2016-2020".
I am curious about when the accusations (both by the government and the segregationists) that King was a Communist, emerged as a strategy for delegitimizing King. In STRENGTH TO LOVE he provided a strong enough Christian critique to the Communist ideology, preached against its moral evils consistently, and yet the smear accusations of his affiliation with the Communist party worked to discredit his work up until his death. I actually think that today most his statements would be considered radical, but not "Communist" in any true sense of the word. Nevertheless I could just as easily see the partisans and hostile media today easily creating a compelling case for an MLK "Communist agenda." Has anything changed?
Aren't you blowing your neoliberal cred with this piece? I totally agree with it by the way.
It seems Dr. King would have supported your universalist program ideas. :-)
the nation is welcome to join the new Poor People's Campaign, which exists in over 40 states .. fighting the 3 evils that King was, and also a 4th: ecological devastation,
also too, the false moral narrative of religious nationalism
M.O.R.E. Mobilize, Organize, Register and Educate people to vote
https://twitter.com/revdrbarber/status/1350987532020948994?s=21
It’s interesting we both take different things from the detour. Let’s embrace that diversity.
My fundamental view on race and equity is that it is divisive to use white men as the equity baseline. So the analysis ends up that if your group is not doing as well or better than white men there is an inequity. So for America to have equity white men need to be at the bottom of all the important statistical categories. The outrage about black men being shot by police isn’t rooted in humans unnecessarily being shot by police. It’s rooted in the relative rate that blacks are shot compared to whites. If only more whites were shot we could solve this problem. If only white parents sabotaged the futures of their children we would have more equity in America because whites would move to the bottom of the lists. This is very bad thinking and you can deny that woke liberals think this way but we all know it’s true. We need to have honest discussions about human development in the black community. I support making investments there.
Yes, politics involves conflict; that has to be recognized, not swept under the rug. But governing is not all zero sum. At a basic level the worst thing that Trump did was frame issues as "us-them." Greater immigration, freer trade, reform of policing, expanded health insurance reducing net CO2 emissions, full employment are not or ought not be "class" issues.
Amen.
53 years later, we're still there. In fact, if you think about it, 247 years later, we're still there.
Read the whole thing. Takes you back. King saw and did things people today wouldn't believe. Thanks to your grandfather, who brilliantly captures some of them, and others, they will not be lost in time.
"and I tell you if this country does not see its poor — if it lets them remain in their poverty and misery — it will surely go to hell!”
I guess the last four years have been a fulfillment of his prophecy