Martin Luther King, Jr. And America Today
By Ron Forthofer
14 January, 2011
Countercurrents.org
As we honor and celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, I wonder what he might make of the U.S. today. Perhaps his words can give us some insight.
The U.S. today – a snapshot
Clearly lots of things have changed since the 1960s. For example, we have many new technological tools and diversions such as the smart phone, computer games, the Internet and the social networking sites that didn't exist way back. In addition, greed was viewed as a vice in the 1960s whereas now greed is, incredibly, viewed as a virtue. This attitudinal change has led to an even greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few. Despite these new technologies, we still face many key issues today that Dr. King would recognize from the past.
For example, the U.S. was in a long-running war 40 years ago and today still has troops involved in another long-running war, this time in Afghanistan as well as forces occupying Iraq. U.S. military spending, including defense-related items outside the Defense Department, was large when Dr. King was alive and accounts for over half of U.S. discretionary spending today. The spending for military purposes far exceeds the spending on domestic programs such as education, the environment, transportation, and other pressing social and physical infrastructure needs.
Despite overwhelming needs, so-called fiscal hawks now claim we cannot afford spending for job creation or for reducing foreclosures. These hawks somehow forgot their fiscal concerns when trillions of dollars were provided to bail out the financial sector. Their concerns also vanished when the recent extension of tax cuts, heavily tilted in favor of the wealthy, was passed.
States are desperate for funds and, as a result, are cutting back on social support programs just as the need for them increases. Poverty is rife and growing daily with more and more people losing homes and many winding up homeless. Minorities still have high levels of unemployment and are also locked away in prisons at a highly disproportionate rate. In contrast, most of the crooks responsible for bringing the world to the brink of an economic collapse and for the impoverishment of millions in 2008 haven't gone to prison. Instead American taxpayers were forced to bail them out.
Dr. King on U.S. values
Here are a few passages from Dr. King's April 4, 1967 presentation at Riverside Church in New York City:
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
"We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Dr. King on poverty
In his American Dream sermon from July 4, 1965 Dr. King said:
"This is why we must join the war against poverty and believe in the dignity of all work. ... Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. ... I've seen my dream shattered as I've walked the streets of Chicago and seen Negroes, young men and women, with a sense of utter hopelessness because they can't find any jobs. And they see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. And not only Negroes at this point. I've seen my dream shattered because I've been through Appalachia, and I've seen my white brothers along with Negroes living in poverty. And I'm concerned about white poverty as much as I’m concerned about Negro poverty."
Conclusion
Dr. King's words suggest that he would be disappointed in our failures to: 1) become more people oriented; and 2) conquer racism, materialism and militarism. I think that he would also be disappointed in our lack of progress or even regression on the economic front. Today almost one in seven Americans live in poverty, one in six workers are unemployed or underemployed and about one in six Americans lack health insurance. The inequality between the rich and the rest of the population has increased dramatically.
If Dr. King were alive today, I think he would still be in the vanguard of those working to transform the U.S. into a just and compassionate nation.
Ron Forthofer, Ph.D. retired Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, Texas; former Green Party candidate for Congress and for Governor of Colorado
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