MARTIN LUTHER KING’S PROPHETIC VISION
Interpreting His Message and Program
After I returned to the United States in 1996, I decided to turn my serious attention to the philosophy of nonviolence and to read Gandhi, King, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama. The fact that all four were moral and spiritual leaders attracted me.
I also appreciated the emphasis that philosophers of nonviolence placed on means as well as ends, and on ethics as well as political victories. While reading King, I could appreciate the nobility of his moral, spiritual, and political quest. From a pragmatic viewpoint, I could also see how it made sense for black people to renounce violence in a country where they are a relatively powerless minority.
An important motivation for reassessing King was the American cultural tendency to him as a national hero who believed in colorblind justice. In this view, King only emphasizes the content of a person’s character and asserts that race should never be a factor in determining social outcomes. According to conservatives, since racial justice had been achieved with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, American society was entering a post-racial era in which the last vestiges of racism would soon disappear.
But King had a very different view. He promoted militant nonviolence and believed that the way to achieve a post-racial society was by ensuring that black Americans had the opportunity to get good educations, decent housing, and jobs that would enable them to support a family. This required structural change in social and economic conditions, and white people would have to make some sacrifices for it to be achieved. There must be no more segregated housing and schools and no more job discrimination in the North as well as the South. During the last years of his life, King came close to losing all hope that white people would be willing to treat black people as equals and support policies that would provide the institutional basis for blacks to achieve material well-being and sustainable families.
Although King’s speeches were eloquent and moving, I was more taken with civil rights icons such as John Lewis who fought in the trenches and experienced white violence in the South at its rawest and most brutal. When I watched the documentary, A Force More Powerful, I was captivated by James Lawson’s successful organizing of the Nashville sit-ins in 1960. It showed me that nonviolent protest could be practical and effective as well as moral and uplifting. Then Stanley Nelson’s documentary, Freedom Riders demonstrated the incredible courage and resolution of the participants who were willing to die in support of their deepest moral convictions. What an emotionally powerful experience to see the freedom riders stand up for racial equality regardless of the consequences to themselves!
In 2019, I went back to King’s writings so I could understand the relevance of his thinking for our time. I read a more extensive selection of his work than before and with greater care. It became clear that King learned much from his organizing experiences and his philosophy grew and developed over time. It was informed by extensive reading of diverse sources that revealed his intellectual sophistication and discernment. He was not afraid to speak out, despite the forceful criticisms that he invited. In my view, he is an existential thinker as well as a socially conscious activist. His existential orientation is grounded in his Christian faith which he linked up with the other great spiritual traditions of the world. This faith also provides the ethical foundation for his philosophy of nonviolence. I was deeply impressed by his willingness to take on the most difficult challenges to this vision and to respond through experience and contemplation, reading and dialogue with great courage and dignity.
The Philosophy of Nonviolence
In King’s view, oppression has been dealt with in three common ways: acquiescence and surrender, rising up with hatred and violence, and nonviolent resistance as popularized by Gandhi. The advantage of nonviolent resistance is that it confronts rather than accepts the existing structures of power but uses means as pure as the ends that are sought. If violence is used and people are injured, then the means are not pure. Through violence, hatred is created within both perpetrator and victim and social divisions are accentuated rather than reduced.
Love plays a central role in this conception, and King notes that love is at the heart of the great religious traditions of the world. The love he refers to should not be confused with affection for or friendship with the oppressors. It is a strong and powerful love expressed in direct action that challenges the evil and unjust structures of society. This kind of love for people is not a liking for them because there is something appealing about them, but loving people because they are loved by God. This means being capable of loving the person who performs an evil action while hating that action.
King adds that such love is overflowing, and it asks for nothing in return. Furthermore, although there is an attempt to defeat an evil system, there is no intention to defeat the people who keep such a system going. Individuals have been misguided, misled, and miseducated. But they can be transformed through suffering. King believes this is possible because human nature is capable of responding to goodness. Human beings have a dual nature with potential for both good and evil. The human being is never totally depraved and the possibility of redemption is always there. Those who take it upon themselves to experience the violence of the oppressors without fighting back are appealing to the positive and moral side of human nature.
King made his philosophy of loving the oppressor a core part of who he was which made himan attractive person. His doctrine of nonviolence is appealing because it is based on a love ethic and represents a way of life. Hate gravely harms both its perpetrator and victim, and our psychological health requires that we love rather than hate. King’s psychological sophistication is evident when he talks about Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving in which love is described as the unifying force of life and as that which integrates the personality. It appears that Fromm’s work provided the modern psychological context for King’s invocation of the ideal of Christian love.
Through his own observations of the behavior of the oppressors during nonviolent protests, King could say that nonviolence is not only a truth but also very effective in practice, since it disarms opponents and leads them to awareness of their own moral defenses. They are shaken out of their self-righteousness and their conscience is engaged. They are at a loss. What King admits, though, is that there are times when nonviolence can induce guilt in the oppressors that leads them to repeat the same actions rather than examine their consciences. This was evident in the brutal responses of many white people in Alabama to nonviolent protest.
Even those who sympathized with the civil rights movement questioned whether black people who had been brutally victimized by white racism could turn the other cheek and not respond to white violence with violence in their own defense. Wasn’t King asking these people for more self-control and forbearance than most people are capable of commanding? King realized that such behavior greatly challenges black people but he put his faith in the ability of his group to train protestors and instill discipline in them. They used sociodrama so that protestors could gain practice in nonviolently dealing with the hate and abuse that would be heaped on them by white racists.
It would be a gross error to think that King shied away from dealing with the issue of power and only focused on love. In his last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) in 1968, King made a ringing affirmation of nonviolence and then added that only love can cure the world’s problems. He also pointed out that if there is no love, power is reckless and abusive. But when love is not harnessed to power, it can only be sentimental and anemic. King was keenly aware that privileged groups are not likely to give up their power to oppress. In the North, he was convinced that the leaders of the power structures would not voluntarily change, despite the progress made in the South toward racial justice. Freedom could only be won by militant struggle.
King is by no means a blind optimist about black American progress in the struggle against white racism. As I have mentioned, he believed that human nature is neither good nor evil, therefore it is possible for people to realize the positive side of their own nature. Given not only the history of white racism in the United States but the history of human injustice, King did not believe in the inevitability of social progress. But he did think that there is cause for optimism about the short-term as well as long-term struggle for racial justice.
In terms of his long-range outlook, King made a significant affirmation in his 1968 speech before the SCLC. He said, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” In the more immediate future, King took comfort in the notion that life’s contradictions are neither final nor ultimate. In his view, it is only when there is darkness all around that the stars become visible. And although midnight brings with it disappointment, sorrow, and despair, midnight is succeeded by morning. He also noted that even when there are no stars at all at midnight, this condition may be the forerunner of great fulfillment. To which he adds, “Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just.”
In his last sermon, “I See the Promised Land,” given right before his assassination, he talked about God’s presence in contemporary history. From his perspective, people all over the world were throwing off their chains and demanding freedom: the people of South Africa against apartheid, the people of Africa against colonialism, and the people of the South against segregation. As a result, a human rights revolution was occurring and if the people of color all over the world were forced to remain in poverty, then the world was doomed. For King, the only practical way to bring about such a revolution is through nonviolence. Otherwise, the violence unleashed will lead to conflagrations too horrible to contemplate, a level of carnage that would threaten humanity’s survival.
A Spiritual Vision
King saw that as the weapons of destruction multiply and proliferate, the world seems to be moving toward its doom. The only hope is that spiritual growth will enable humanity to draw back from the brink of self-annihilation. Toynbee speculated that the Negro on a worldwide scale may lead Western civilization toward a spiritual direction that will enable it to survive. King shared this hope and believed that the Negro could contribute spiritual power to the world through love and nonviolence. He went so far as to say that by adhering to nonviolence, the Negro may be able to challenge the most powerful nations so that they actively search for ways to avoid the path of war and destruction.
In the end, King’s thought leads us into the theological realm. According to the Christian faith, God acts within history and, since God is omnipotent, he can overcome every obstacle. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. Yet, King was aware of the enormity of the problem of evil. He recognized that people have asked why there are great injustices done to individuals and terrible acts of war and inhumanity despite the power and goodness of God. He responded by asserting a lot of the evil with which we are surrounded is the result of folly and ignorance as well as the misuse of freedom. But ultimately, God’s ways are mysterious. What looks like evil to us at the time may serve a purpose that our finite intelligence cannot fathom.
When a black church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and four black children were killed, King was faced with the challenge of how to give meaning to such a hateful act. He spoke of the ways in which the deaths of these innocent children speak to us? They are telling us not just to find the murderers but also to examine the social system, the whole way of life, and the way of thinking that made them who they are. Their death is telling us that we have to make the American dream real at all costs to show that their deaths were not in vain. God can take evil and somehow bring good from it.This process has been demonstrated by history many times. The deaths of these innocent little girls can be a catalyst for our redemption in these dark times.
King knew that there are occasions when people must face great adversity and experience disappointment, disaster, and grief. It is at such times that people can look to God for support. During the Montgomery bus boycott, King had to deal with immense hatred from whites that included death threats. There was a time when he felt so much fear that he wanted to give up the leadership of the campaign. Feeling at the end of his powers to cope, he asked God for help. Immediately, he could hear a quiet inner voice saying to him that he should stand up for righteousness and truth and that God would always be at his side. After that experience, his fear began to recede, and he felt that he could deal with any situation that arose. When his house was bombed three nights later, he accepted it calmly.
His Christian Faith Gives Him Courage
Greg Moses in Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence (1997) raises the question of whether a person of secular disposition can accept King’s philosophy of nonviolence. To answer this question, it is necessary to get clear about some things. King does not claim that only Christianity can provide the faith that enables people to remain centered while passing through the fierce storms and stresses of life. But he does assert that some kind of faith in an intelligent and benign power for good in the universe is required. Otherwise, we will view ourselves as orphans in a meaningless universe that exists for no purpose and in which we have only ourselves to rely on. For King, that is not enough. It is only by aligning ourselves with a higher power that we gain the strength and courage to conquer adversity and achieve peace of mind under even the most fearful and daunting circumstances. This is exactly what King experienced in Montgomery when he asked God for help.
Moses poses an important question about whether King’s Christain faith places limits upon the use of his philosophy of nonviolence.. “Can King’s appreciation for infinite reserves of personality be secularized into a kind of common faith divorced from any particular concepts of God?” In addition, secularists who do not wish to invoke theological principles need to ask themselves whether their experience reveals that there is something deep within them that they can fall back upon when their very lives are in danger. Is there a secular path to a full embrace of justice that recognizes the infinite value of each person and leads to acting on this principle even when it leads to death?” As Moses emphasizes, these are existential issues that anyone who upholds the philosophy of nonviolence must address. We know from the assassinations of Gandhi and King that the leaders of nonviolent struggle must be willing to die.
Nonviolent Protest As Militant Action
Nonviolent protest does not lack the spirit of militant confrontation. The Montgomery bus boycott was a form of militant action. At a time when many whites thought that blacks liked the way they were treated, King argued that it was time to stop being patient. Anything less than freedom and justice was unacceptable. Black people were tired of being beaten down by oppression and injustice so they went into the streets and refused to go along with a segregated bus system that degraded them and robbed them of their dignity. In 1957, in the Deep South, this action was highly confrontational and could only be considered a form of militant nonviolent protest.
It is very revealing to learn from King’s writings just how focused he was on politics. He recognizes the need for Negroes to go beyond their cynical disinterest in politics that serves them as a defense mechanism. By building up their strength and power, politics can become an immensely important outlet for constructive Negro activity. Once this base of political power is established, governments will no longer be able to avoid and evade the demands of Negroes for equal opportunity, for dignity and justice, and for assistance in undoing the cumulative effects of discrimination. He emphasized that black people must become “intensive political activists” because the need for political strength is so desperate. And, as a reminder of King’s impressive grasp of social reality, he called for Negroes to emulate Jewish progress. Even when Jews were poor, they emphasized the need for education plus a commitment to social and political action. Instead of letting discrimination push them into despair and escapism, they actively struggled to better the lives of their community members by developing political sophistication and organizing political groups. They breathed and talked politics, much of it radical politics.
King established a good working relationship with President Johnson and when he observed firsthand the horrible damage caused by the Watts riots of 1965, he called up Johnson and recommended that he initiate an anti-poverty program to get at the real causes of the outburst, the fact that these people needed dignity and work. Johnson agreed. But King realized in 1967 that Negro poverty could not be defeated as long as so many of the country’s resources were devoted to the Vietnam War. It also became clear to King that he could not ask young Negroes to embrace nonviolence without protesting against the violence that the United States government was perpetrating in Vietnam.
The broad scope of King’s vision can be seen from the comments he made about the relation between domestic problems and international ones. He asserted that the war in Vietnam pointed to a much deeper sickness within the American soul. The United States opposed the world revolution in which people are rising up and opposing exploitation and oppression. These poor people of color were resisting the Western capitalists who take resources from their countries and gain profit without concern for their well-being. They know that the great division between rich and poor in the world is unjust and must change. A revolution of values is needed.
King was appalled at the human costs of the war in Vietnam where people were being burned with napalm. And in the US, the deaths of soldiers produced grieving widows and orphaned children, while the soldiers themselves were being taught to hate and came home not only physically damaged but also mentally scarred. Where is the justice, wisdom, and love in such policies? When more money is continually spent on the military rather than on social programs that uplift people, the country is heading toward spiritual catastrophe.
In leveling such strong criticism against the direction that the American nation had taken under President Johnson, King was demonstrating the connection between politics and matters of the spirit. He believed people should not adjust to the demands of a social order that is manifestly unjust and spiritually barren. King praised the maladjustment of the prophet Amos who spoke out in favor of justice, Abraham Lincoln who refused to accept slavery, Jesus of Nazareth who counseled people to love their enemies. “I believe that it is through such maladjustment that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”
It is not such a long step from being maladjusted to disobeying unjust laws. For King, it is clear that an unjust law is not really a law because it violates the moral law, the law of God, which is higher than human law. He defined an unjust law as one which degrades the human personality, and he viewed segregation in that light, since it is a system in which Negroes are treated as objects rather than subjects. The laws upholding segregation are examples of unjust laws because they distort the soul and injure the personality. An unjust law is also one made by a majority in which the minority has no say. This is clearly the case with segregation laws.
The Challenge of Black Power
During the last few years of his life, King’s nonviolent approach to social change was challenged by the advocates of Black Power. In his writings, King does not distort the views of Black Power adherents and his evaluation of the movement is fair and insightful. I became clearer about Black Power as a result of his discussions of this stream of black nationalism which captured the imagination of many black youths in the late 1960s.
His first point is that the slogan of Black Power is confusing since it seems to connote black domination whereas its actual goal is black equality. Beyond that issue, though, he asks whether the Black Power movement brings real benefits to black people. King’s answer is nuanced. The Black Power approach helps black people to get over feeling ashamed about who they are and their heritage. It also attempts to bring together black political resources in order to achieve goals such as the election of black mayors which increase black political power. It further promotes pooling black economic resources in order to increase the economic power of the black community. In fact, King mentions Operation Breadbasket in this context, an organization which the Southern Christian Leadership Conference established. The goal was to get the business community to provide a fair number of jobs for black people as well as to combat discriminatory housing policies. On these fronts, King agreed that the pursuit of power for black people advocated by Black Power is quite positive.
But there are also negative aspects of Black Power. When it is interpreted to mean the espousal of violence and hatred of white people, it must be rejected. What is more, those who talk of black separatism are quite unrealistic, because white and black people share to a significant degree the same music, cultural patterns, poets, material prosperity, and even food. So how can there be a separate white and a separate black path to power? This does not mean that there are never times when separation can be a temporary expedient toward the ultimate goal of integration. King clearly stated that if an integrated organization does not allow Negroes to share power, then starting a Negro group makes sense. “We don’t want to be integrated out of power; we want to be integrated into power.” He also gave the example of the need to improve the life and conditions of the Negro ghettos in the big cities but only as a way station to the ultimate dispersal of such segregated residential areas through the achievement of an open housing market.
But King did not think it would be easy to achieve integration. When he brought his nonviolent campaign to Chicago, he experienced the depths of northern white hatred of black people. Integrating jobs, housing, and education was a much more difficult task than gaining voting rights or making segregation illegal. King clearly recognized the reason for such white resistance to black equality: the vast majority of whites don’t subscribe to injustice but they don’t want to take up the burden of eliminating it. Since extensive structural changes in the current social order were required, a white backlash developed. Many whites proclaimed that black people already have enough and that the civil rights movement should come to a halt. But as King accurately pointed out, it is such white resistance that has led to Black Power and riots. The most direct way of combating black separatism and violence is through implementing the demands of justice.
Critique of Capitalism
As a philosopher who was sensitive to and in awe of the spiritual dimension of life, King could only lament that moral and spiritual progress had not kept pace with dazzling material progress. The ends of life, the good, the true, and the beautiful, are known through inner vision and expressed in art and literature, ethics and religion. The dilemma of modern humanity is that this internal realm has been swallowed up by the external one of techniques and procedures, means and instruments which are actually tools through which we attain our ends. What a dangerous situation when our instruments are highly developed while our souls stagnate and wither! King warned that it is midnight within the social order and even though science has brought us many wonders, it cannot rescue us now.
There is another key trend in our contemporary world causing great upheaval that King identified. The capitalist nations of the world led by the United States have betrayed the revolutionary spirit of modernity. As the exploited and the disadvantaged are rising up to demand equality all over the world and attempting to overthrow the forces of oppression, the United States was leading the counterrevolution to maintain an unjust social order that condemns the colored peoples of the world to poverty and second-class status. King proclaimed it was essential to revive the revolutionary spirit and declare to the world our undying commitment to overcoming poverty, racism and militarism. He further insisted that the world must come together as one. We must recognize that our loyalty is first and foremost to the human race. As we go beyond our tribal identities, we must embrace human equality on the basis of unconditional love. Otherwise, we will not survive as a species.
As the above vision amply demonstrates, King hds a firm grasp of the modern predicament. He was far from being a religious thinker who neglected the cares of this world in order to focus on humanity’s longed-for rewards in the next world. This is what makes King such a rich source of wisdom for me. He is attuned to the highest spiritual and moral potentials while actively engaging the present world. Although He rejects Marx’s position on means and ends, and on the relation between matter and consciousness, he is in basic agreement with Marx’s critical philosophy in two important ways. King does not philosophize merely to interpret the world, since thinking for him is a prelude to changing the world. And, like Marx, who emphasizes that people make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing, King asserts the importance of the social structure, the environment in which people live that may or may not provide them with sufficient opportunities to flourish. Therefore, he cannot acquiesce to an unjust social system which on the basis of race and class denies people a fair chance for a prosperous and dignified life.
Critique of Liberalism
I see King as a forceful critic of liberalism. American political thought has emerged from the liberal philosophy of John Locke. In America, there has been considerable agreement around notions of equality before the law and the rights to property, individual freedom, political representation, and social mobility. As King argued, equal opportunity and equal treatment based on merit have become the guiding liberal principles to ensure equality. But do these principles lead to justice for all?
King noted that after centuries of oppression, African Americans need special treatment to gain universal human rights such as good jobs, education, housing, and the power to influence political decisions. They will be able to compete in a fair and just manner only if what has been taken away during the long years of racial discrimination is restored. Otherwise, the existing structural inequalities will prevent them from gaining the ability to compete on an equal basis. But how many white liberals are willing to make any sacrifices in order to address the structural issues which have continued to keep the Negro down?
Intersectionality
An impressive example of King’s ability to see the big picture is his tracing of the relations between racial, class, and peace issues. Before intersectionality became a fixture in the vocabulary of thinkers with a critical perspective, King was viewing social problems in intersectional terms.
At the time he was killed, King was organizing the Poor People’s Campaign and a march on Washington to petition the federal government for an economic Bill of Rights. Specifically, the demand was for $30 billion a year to eliminate poverty, laws providing for full employment and a guaranteed income, and the building of enough low-cost housing units so that there would be no more slums. By embarking on this strategy, King was shifting his focus from civil rights to economic rights, from issues of race to issues of class. The nonviolent struggle had moved out of the South and into the North demanding drastic improvement in the lives of all people suffering the degradations of poverty. Since two-thirds of the poor people in the United States were white, the actions that King wanted the federal government to take would benefit more white people than black people.
King’s emphasis on economic rights was not an attempt to downplay the importance of racial equality. Rather, he was insisting that both racial and class conflict must be addressed. A better life for black people could not occur without fundamental economic changes as well. The revolutionary transformation to which King aspired could not be brought about through agitation solely directed toward racial justice. He knew that as long as economic exploitation continued, racial integration could not be achieved. Both economic and racial inequalities are driven by the belief on the part of the wealthy and powerful that their interests diverge from those of subordinated groups whether white or black.
Another aspect of the relation between race and class that King examined is the effects of the American economic system on the lives of ordinary workers. To put it bluntly, the capitalist economy relies on a host of poorly paid manual workers. Those who control the economic system have an incentive for keeping these workers without decent wages, opportunities to advance, or the education that would make such advances possible. The owners and managers keep workers down so that they can be more easily exploited. And systematic discrimination on the basis of color means that a large percentage of these exploited workers are black.
King did not limit his criticism of economic injustice to the domestic American scene. He called for a worldwide war on poverty to combat the lack of basic necessities in the lives of many of the world’s people. It is the responsibility of the wealthier nations, the recent colonial masters, to provide capital and technology to those attempting to escape poverty. This is a moral imperative that should be carried out in a spirit of compassion and empathy. King makes a very bold claim that other-preservation rather than self-preservation is fundamental to our nature. We cannot be fulfilled without others and we are only a self in relation to other selves. The interrelatedness of human beings is the key to understanding and accepting our responsibility for social justice. “All life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”
The third structural issue that King brings to our attention is the omnipresent threat of war. Human survival requires that we find a way to prevent war. The leaders of the nations of the world all talk about peace while doing everything they can to get ready for war. There are elites at the top of vast structures of power that use war as a means of preserving their power and its accompanying privileges. In the United States, the power of the military-industrial complex was increased by the Vietnam War as money was diverted from assisting poor people in order to pay for the war. But King asserted that being against war is not enough; peace must be affirmed and we must love peace and be willing to sacrifice for it. “So we must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war.”
A Universal Vision
King has created a political philosophy that is in accord with cosmic patterns and human nature. He shows us that if we are to be happy and fulfilled, we must pursue harmony and find our place in the overall pattern of existence. We are not separate and isolated individuals, apart from nature and other people, and alone in the universe. He rejects the American individualistic creed for a systems view in which mutual dependency is fundamental. We are truly in synchrony with ourselves and the universe when we recognize that our own good depends on the good of all beings and that their good depends on our good. This is a universal vision that King expressed in the idea of the Promised Land that was already visible to him. In the Promised Land, universal love, the ideal of all the great religions of the world reigns.
Still, from our time and place today, more than 50 years after King’s death, it is clear that King has not examined some of the key issues that we confront today. We need to address gender inequality as much as racial and economic inequality. The revival of the feminist movement in the 1970s after King had passed from the scene brought the urgency of ending gender discrimination to our consciousness. Feminists have also taught us that it is not enough for power to be shared between genders; we need to build a society in which the yin and the yang, nature and mind are balanced. But it was not until black feminists like bell hooks began writing about intersectional feminism that the limits of considering gender in isolation from race and class were acknowledged. I want to point out, though, that gender equality can be incorporated within King’s philosophy, since he acknowledges human equality and the evil nature of structures that allow one group to exercise domination over other groups.
The other major issue that occupies our attention far more than it did during King’s lifetime is that of the environment. Although King was well aware of the threat to human survival posed by nuclear war, he did not touch on the ways in which our relation to nature and the earth must be radically reconceived for humanity to avoid its own demise. However, King’s philosophy can be expanded to take environmental issues into account. After all, the community of human beings, the Beloved Community that he talks about, can be the community of all beings. All living things are interdependent, and the destruction of any of them threatens the survival of the rest.
King accomplished much in the realm of thought. He provided a spiritual-moral foundation for a radical political philosophy, a penetrating critique of liberalism, and an intersectional approach to structural disadvantage. He is remembered today for his emphasis on nonviolence as the only sane alternative to the present-day glorification of violence that threatens our continued existence as a species. But his unique and enduring contribution to American political philosophy is his focus on the prophetic dimension.
A Prophetic Stance
Prophetic approaches have played a central role in African-American thought and practice. Cornel West defines prophetic approaches as follows. “I understand these modes to consist of protracted and principled struggles against forms of personal despair, intellectual dogmatism and socioeconomic oppression that foster communities of hope. Therefore the distinctive features of prophetic activity are Pascalian leaps of faith in the capacity of human beings to transform their circumstances, engage in relentless criticism and self-criticism, and project visions, analyses and practices of social freedom.” What West describes as prophetic criticism is what King performed.
The reason why a prophetic stance is so vital for the United States in our time is that it provides a fresh and vigorous outlook that locates the society’s blind spots and shakes its complacency. Prophetic critics such as King, people of vision and courage, warn against business as usual when only large-scale change can get us through. America has continually evaded its responsibilities to bring about a reality that is consonant with its ideals. As King points out, there is little willingness to do anything about racial and economic equality or to diminish the power of the military-industrial complex.
West delineates the meaning of King’s prophetic vision. He saw him as a unique Afro-American Christian leader who performed heroic deeds to bring about reform and made a suicidal attempt to bring about a moral and spiritual revolution. King’s vision of black freedom could only be realized through a transformation of American social structures and habits of the heart. This required a democratic socialist political economy, a conclusion that brought King far outside the mainstream of Afro-American Christianity and American social and political thought.
The only hope for American society today is prophetic leadership of the type that King embodies. Until now, such leadership has largely come from the African-American community and, at its most effective, has reached out to all those who are disadvantaged in the larger society. King is our contemporary prophet. Specifically, he calls out the American evasion of race, class, and peace matters, and insists that the American social system and social structure must be revolutionized, even though they have been insulated from such change since the founding of the republic.
King’s attempt to carry out such social transformation may have been suicidal, but he was not wrong in his diagnosis of the grave ills of the United States and the world. National and human survival have been threatened by the failure to preserve the delicate ecological balance and to establish social justice, and without social justice, humanity will not be able to take unified action against this all-too-real threat to its continued existence. Commitment to the status quo on the part of elites coupled with attempts to turn back the clock by right-wing populist movements are producing greater chaos and disorder. King clearly recognized that the alternative to community is chaos. It hasn’t come as quickly as he thought it would, but it is coming. Jared Diamond, author of Collapse has estimated that there is a 49% chance that the world as we know it will not survive until 2050.
King’s prophetic criticism is clearly appropriate for our time. He identified the necessity for social transformation in the areas of race, class, and war and provides the method, nonviolent direct action, for bringing about such revolutionary change. His importance for the United States is that he has addressed specific American conditions that are the product of a distinctive historical background, but his diagnosis of the current crisis, like that of Gandhi, is relevant to the world as a whole. To his three areas of focus, race, class, and war, we must now add gender and the environment. And as King realized, all these areas are interconnected. Revolutionary change is required in all of them simultaneously or we will not survive as nations and as a species.
King’s Message to Me
How does King speak to me personally? I see him as posing similar challenges for me to the ones that Baldwin posed. They both knew that the day of reckoning for America and the world could not be avoided indefinitely. It has been postponed but it is approaching.
As a white, male member of the professional class, there are built-in barriers to my seeing the gap between ideals and reality. It is easy to deceive myself when so many white people around me are deceiving themselves. It is much more comfortable for me to believe that all is well. To lessen this temptation to fall into hypocrisy, I need to give up my need to belong and be liked, which can lead me to accept the prevailing views. It means being open to those whose views on race take me out of my comfort zone. In particular, this means reading African American writers on race. On the other hand, I have to be careful not to fall into the opposite trap of rejecting people who don’t share the same views.
When I read King, I feel ashamed at indulging in the hypocrisy that caused him much pain in his last years and tempered his optimism. Blindly repeating the self-deception that whites have practiced for centuries is too awful. I owe it to King and to Baldwin to do better. Reflecting on King’s life and thought so many years after his death, I feel he is asking me to make a decisive break with my unconscious racism and to end any cooperation with structures of racial oppression while strengthening my capacity to practice the love that was at the basis of his philosophy of nonviolence. Yet, I ought not to replace my unconscious racism for an anti-white animus that serves my need to feel better than other whites.
I am reminded of the first time I saw the documentary The Color of Fear. Gordon, one of the two white participants, says he is a racist, feels pain about it, and has been trying to overcome it for many years. That was when I realized that I should take responsibility for my actions as a white person. I should accept rather than deny my white identity and do something positive to end racial division in this country. The first big step has to be closing the gap between my anti-racist ideals and my unconscious assumptions and feelings about people of color that affect how I behave toward them. It means really loving all people with the unconditional love that King spoke of. Such love is the moral foundation of all genuine religious and spiritual teachings.
If King were alive today, I think he would instantly recognize the similarities between the white resistance to racial justice today and what he experienced after 1965. The work that he started must be revitalized and continued. That is his message to me.
