Dr. King weighs in

I find myself thinking a great deal as I'm getting started this morning about problems of social, economic, and racial injustice, and how those realities are sometimes reflected well by the dominant discourse from which we sampled last week in class, and likewise how they often are not. Many of the opponents of pogroms of social uplift cite the horrors of "reverse-discrimination" and appeal to the infinite wisdom of the market's invisible hand to solve all our injustices, and I've recently found myself responding to selective quotations of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, in which he pleads for judgment according to the "content of character". Unfortunately, most people are only ever exposed to this small snippet of King's intellectual legacy, replayed ad infinitum each year when we celebrate his birthday. To those familiar with the body of King's writing, however, his outspoken support for race-conscious affirmative action, and further, aggressive wealth redistribution as a way to address fundamental economic injustice stemming from the racist institution of slavery and Jim Crow, is abundantly clear. King described the situation of African Americans as runners in a race, being told that all the rules are now equal, but having to start the race several hundred years late. He understood that, in his words, just as something special had been done against African Americans to harm them, something special must be done for them to help them. In light of some of the prevailing arguments and themes I've heard in my classmates' posts, I thought the following passages might be instructive for our continued debate:

"The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity. Overwhelmingly America is still struggling with irresolution and contradictions. It has been sincere and even ardent in welcoming some change. But too quickly apathy and disinterest rise to the surface when the next logical steps are to be taken. Laws are passed in a crisis mood after a Birmingham or a Selma, but no substantial fervor survives the formal signing of legislation. The recording of the law in itself is treated as the reality of the reform."

"Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of disadvantaged black people. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.
When millions of people have been cheated for centuries, restitution is a costly process. Inferior education, poor housing, unemployment, inadequate health care - each is a bitter component of the oppression that has been our heritage. Each will require billions of dollars to correct. Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms. This fact has not been fully grasped, because most of the gains of the past decade were obtained at bargain rates. The desegregation of public facilities cost nothing; neither did the election and appointment of a few black public officials."

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."