What Trump doesn't get about Martin Luther King Jr.
Lemon: Trump's MLK remarks painfully ironic 02:44
Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently "Stokely: A Life." The views expressed here are his.
(CNN)The
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have celebrated his 89th
birthday on Monday. This year, the federal holiday in his honor, which
takes place every third Monday of January, falls on his actual birthday,
January 15.
And since April will mark the 50th anniversary of King's death, it is worth remembering, now more than ever, how he lived.
President Donald Trump's symbolic affirmation
of the King holiday on Friday came amid global condemnation for his
disparaging and racially inflammatory statements regarding Haitians and
Africans the day before.
Trump's
public praise of King is belied not only by his private words but also
by his deeds. King is not widely remembered as a policy expert, but he
should be. Federal civil rights, voting rights and open housing
legislation all passed, in part, through the pressure he brought to bear
on Congress, presidents and wider democratic institutions.
Peniel Joseph
Indeed,
Trump's latest burst of rhetorical violence against non-whites serves
as an important reminder of the work that needs to be done in order to
fulfill King's dream of a "beloved community" free of racial oppression,
economic injustice and war. The King holiday offers a moment for the
nation to reflect on the meaning of American democracy, citizenship and
justice.
In 1968, King celebrated
his birthday against a climate of political tension, racial strife and
economic injustice strikingly familiar to our own time. King -- then the
world's leading social justice mobilizer -- tapped into grassroots
anti-poverty efforts to help organize a "Poor People's Campaign" and
stage a "camp-in" in the nation's capital. Its aim was to push Congress
to pass meaningful anti-poverty legislation.
King's
adversary-turned-ally Bobby Kennedy approved of these plans, telling
Marian Wright Edelman (the future founder of the Children's Defense
Fund) to bring the poor to Washington so that the nation could see the
truth about poverty with their own eyes.
MLK nephew: Trump is racially ignorant 01:04
King
recognized economic justice as an issue capable of binding together
disparate groups toward a unified movement for radical democracy, one
that could lift up farm workers in California, rural whites in
Appalachia, sharecroppers in Mississippi, Native Americans living on
reservations and urban residents confined to ghettoes. Today, the Trump
administration's efforts to institute work requirements for Medicaid
recipients stands in stark contrast
to King's efforts toward economic justice, which promoted a guaranteed
income for the poor, health care, jobs, education and an end to racial
segregation in housing and public schools.
King's
plans to coordinate a caravan of the poor, representing the nation's
multi-cultural and multi-racial makeup, found natural allies among
Latino farm workers, Native Americans, poor whites and mothers on
welfare who schooled him on the intricacies of federal policy in ways
that humbled and enlightened him.
Throughout
the early part of 1968, King traveled across the nation, delivering
speeches against racial and economic injustice. The descriptions of
hunger and want from black residents in Marks, Mississippi, moved King
to tears -- so much so that he decided to headquarter the caravan
destined for Washington in what he characterized as "the poorest county
in the United States."
Andrew Young on MLK : 'I don't think he even heard' the shot 00:56
King
imagined democracy as a living, breathing organism imperiled by the
sickness of racism and the disease of poverty. He diverted precious
energies from his plans to spend the summer in Washington to travel
several times to Memphis, where he spoke in support of over 1,000 black
garbage workers on strike for a living wage. He did not live to see the
conclusion of the strike or spend time in "Resurrection City," the tent
village that survived for two months in the nation's capital.
Undoubtedly,
King would have been deeply disappointed by Trump's disparaging remarks
against Haitians, immigrants and Muslims. King's extensive travels to
India, Africa and Europe imbued in him a cosmopolitan sense of humanity
he called "the world house."
For
King, the concept of a "world house" moved beyond an ethnic- and
tribal-based understanding of the international community toward an
ethic of mutuality and interdependence. He believed that like a
butterfly effect, what happened in the smallest corner of the world
impacted the rest of humanity for good or ill.
Accordingly,
King forged political alliances through personal connections. He argued
that humanity's fate remained interwoven in a broader political and
spiritual tapestry than widely acknowledged.
Immigration in the shadow of Martin Luther King 00:56
The
most ironic part of King's legacy is that his holiday was signed into
law on November 2, 1983, through bipartisan efforts by President Ronald
Reagan, an eloquent conservative figure who publicly admitted to having
disagreements with the civil rights leader.
The
holiday did more than simply recognize King's individual
accomplishments. It celebrated the civil rights movement's successful
inclusion of the idea of racial justice and human rights as fundamental
principles of American democracy.
But
the holiday has also allowed us to hide from ourselves. King might not
recognize himself in the uncomplicated, even timid, figure that much of
the nation and the world celebrate today. The risk-taking King who
defied presidents to protest war is often missing in our popular memory
of him.
We must not forget the
radical King, who marched shoulder to shoulder with garbage workers,
locked arms with Black Power militants and lived in Chicago ghettoes in
an effort to stimulate social change. And yet, the revolutionary King
who proclaimed that America's greatness remained in "the right to
protest for right" has all but vanished from public memory, replaced by
generic platitudes about freedom and justice that can be claimed by
anyone.
Through
non-violent civil disobedience, King leveraged social-justice
transformation in American civil society even when institutions,
including the church, largely disagreed. King longed to change hearts,
minds, public policy and laws, too. He viewed the political as personal
and believed the reverse true as well, offering moral and political
witness for reimagining an American democracy as a beacon, especially
for groups left out of its original conception.
King's
legacy will endure long past the Age of Trump. More importantly, it
reminds us all that American power resides not in any fantasies of
exceptionalism but in the souls of millions of ordinary people who
risked their lives to reimagine the contours of freedom, democracy and
citizenship.
King's revolutionary
life, fearless love of the poor and wretched and uncompromising stance
against war and violence offer hope for a better future. His life also
provides a framework for resistance against rising levels of inhumanity,
racism and injustice that he would find all too familiar today.
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