MLK, Jr. & Pynchon's politics

[Doug Millison]

Martin Luther King Jr.: America's all-purpose icon
by Robert Jensen

People who once branded King a threat to the nation will march today in MLK
Day parades. Cities around the country -- even places where King battled
segregation -- name streets after him and put up statues. People of all
colors invoke his name, legacy and memory in support of racial
justice.There's no doubt that this signals an improvement in race relations.
But to make King a symbol acceptable to most everyone, we have stripped him
of the depth and passion of his critique of white America and its
institutions. We conveniently have ignored the radical nature of King's
analysis, and in doing so we have lost an opportunity to see ourselves more
clearly.

Michael Eric Dyson's important book, I May Not Get There with You, reminds
us that toward the end of his life, King underwent a dramatic transformation
from liberal reformer to radical who believed "a reconstruction of the
entire society" was necessary in the United States. But today, King gets
used as "a convenient political football by conservatives and liberals who
attempt to ultimately undermine his most radical threat to the status quo,"
according to Dyson.

If King were alive today, it is difficult to imagine him participating in
the triumphalism and jingoism that is so common, especially around questions
of the "victory" of the United States in economic and foreign policy. I
suspect King would offer a different analysis. Consider this statement from
a 1967 speech:

"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."

Our political "leaders" today preach that "free" markets and corporate
capitalism can bring prosperity to all and that U.S. "humanitarian"
instincts can be a force for peace. King preached a different analysis of
the effects of our economic system and foreign policy.

The "glaring contrast of poverty and wealth" that King warned about in 1967
has grown steadily wider. Around the world, people in grassroots struggles
are resisting the corporate globalization that pushes more people into
poverty and hastens the destruction of natural resources. Resistance to
various U.S.-dominated trade regimens goes on daily around the world,
usually under the radar of mainstream news media. My guess is that King
would be part of that resistance.

Today the United States is still "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world," just as King asserted in 1967. Sometimes that violence is through
direct military assaults, such as the Bush administration's illegal and
deadly invasion of Panama in 1989 or the Clinton administration's equally
illegal and counterproductive bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Sometimes we
just provide the weapons and money, such as the ongoing attacks in Colombia
being paid for by the United States under the cover of a phony drug war. My
guess is that King would oppose such violence.

Of course if King were alive today, no one can know for sure what specific
policy positions he would take. But we can remember the values that
energized and motivated him and the movements of which he was a part, and we
can apply those principles.

As the incoming Bush administration talks of letting defense contractors
line their pockets with billions more public dollars for an unworkable and
unnecessary missile-defense shield, we might remember King's assertion that
a nation which spends "more money on military defense than on programs of
social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

As our unsustainable affluence and orgy of consumption continue to fuel
economic and energy policies that impoverish others around the world and
threaten the very existence of the planet, we might remember that King
called for "a radical revolution of values" in the United States, a "shift
from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society."

On this MLK Day, many people will feel comfortable talking about King's
dream of a world where the color of our skin doesn't matter. But fewer will
be so comfortable talking about his analysis of power and call to "move
beyond the prophesying of a smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm
dissent."

On this MLK Day we should remember that King said our country was on "the
wrong side of a world revolution" of oppressed peoples.

On this MLK Day, we should ask: How long can we ignore King's radical
analysis and still pretend to honor him?

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at
Austin. He can be reached at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu.
 
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