The problem
ON 2 November 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill marking the third Monday of every January, which is around King’s birthday, January 15, as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This was only one honour among many others that have been showered upon Martin Luther King Jr. since the day of his assassination on the 4th of April 1968. King’s assassination marked the end of an era but it did not put an end to his dream, though America continues to be a broken and divided society. As Godfrey Hodgson underlines in his book on Martin Luther King, ‘Perhaps as many as half of black Americans, those who were able to take advantage of educational opportunities, to finish high school and graduate from college, or simply acquire professional or vocational skills, have found that they could aspire to the basic elements of the "American Dream"… For the other half or so of the African American population, and perhaps it is more than half, the dream has not so far been fulfilled.’
1Add to this news headlines which frequently report on American police officers killing unarmed blacks who only ‘looked’ dangerous enough to be annihilated. According to James Baldwin, ‘the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.’
2 King was quite aware of this. But, he was not a pessimist, because he expected many things from himself and from the others. If Gandhi had an immovable faith in the ultimate victory of truth, King’s optimism was illustrated by a strong belief in the forces of justice and love. ‘Justice’, he said, is love correcting that which revolts against love.’3King considered racism and segregation to be an affront to God’s love for human beings and to the human capacity for love and empathy. That is why he insisted on the inseparability of non-violence as moral means and also as social strategy. Thus, it was only logical for him to conclude that it would be inconsistent to fight for a just and inclusive society by any means except non-violence. King readily admitted that America needed a compelling vision of a better future. Yet, he knew well that changing America into a non-violent society would not be an easy task. According to King, ‘If we are to implement the American dream, we must continue to engage in creative protest in order to break down all of those barriers that make it impossible for the dream to be realized. Now I know there are those people who will argue that we must wait on something. They fail to see the necessity for creative protest, but I say to you that I can see no way to break loose from an old order and to move into a new order without standing up and resisting the unjust dogma of the old order.’
4This meant to King that a nation, incapable of changing its norms and values, is a truncated form of ‘nation’. There is obviously a relationship in King’s mind between the moral dynamic for the survival of the American Dream and the dynamic of a global revolution of values. As such, King was not alien at all to the intercultural nature of universal values. For a long time he had preached that the revolution of values should take place at a global level. ‘A true revolution of values’, he wrote in his Autobiography, ‘will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say: "This is not just". It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just". The western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.’
5Fifty years after King’s assassination, it is time to explore his significant legacy of non-violence for peoples and places embroiled in conflict, including his legacy for the civic movements in the U.S. and the diverse movements in 2009-2012 that became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. King was considered by many protesters on the streets of Tunis, Cairo and Tehran not only as a moral choice, but also as a practical necessity for winning the sympathy of soldiers and policemen. As such, for many young Iranians, Tunisians or Egyptians, Martin Luther King turned to the symbol of the ‘American Dream’ as a hope of equity and social justice for every individual beyond the American society.
With the failure of all major political paradigms in the last hundred years, starting from revolutionary leftism and fascism up to neo-liberalism and ideological Islam, it is more than evident that non-violent action is the new paradigm that is attempting to define itself distinctly and overcome the intellectual and political weaknesses of its predecessors. Therefore, there is common agreement among many public intellectuals and civil activists that the main contradiction in our contemporary world is the one between authoritarian violence and democratic non-violence. Though this non-violent paradigm is still in the making, it can nonetheless be characterized as a legacy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
RAMIN JAHANBEGLOO
Footnotes:
1. Godfrey Hodgson, Martin Luther King. Quercus, London, 2009, p. 226.
2. James Baldwin, I am Not Your Negro. Vintage Books, New York, 2017, p. 108.
3. Quoted in Marianne Williamson (ed.), Imagine: What America Could be in the 21st Century: Visions of a Better Future from Leading American Thinkers. Rodale, 2000, p. 337.
4. Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches (edited by James M. Washington). HarperOne, 2003, pp. 212-213.
5. Clayborne Carson (ed.), The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. IPM/Warner Books, New York, 1998, p. 340.
