Listening to Black Voices on Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Today’s juxtaposition of Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day feels disorienting but also somehow appropriate.
Today’s juxtaposition of Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day feels disorienting but also somehow appropriate. Just blocks from the PRRI offices in downtown Washington, DC, the performance of the peaceful transition of power is resuming. Joe Biden’s last act as president will be to play his part in restoring these important symbolic rituals, after they were disrupted for the first time in American history by Donald J. Trump, who refused to participate in them after losing the election and inciting a failed insurrection in a desperate attempt to stay in power.
As I have watched President Biden navigate these final weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “magnanimity,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “well-founded high regard for oneself manifesting as generosity of spirit and equanimity in the face of trouble” or “superiority to petty resentment or jealousy.” From the perspective of raw power, magnanimity’s forbearance, generosity, and refusal of revenge can appear weak. But both Aristotle and Aquinas considered it a perfection or “adornment of the virtues,” the mark of a great-souled person.
I have plenty of criticism to level at outgoing President Biden. But today, the contrast between Biden’s magnanimity and Trump’s MAGA counterfeit imitation of that virtue will be stark. Despite all the pomp, puffery, or posturing about greatness we’ll see today and in the coming years, Trump continually proves himself not to be the great-souled person whose honors are proportional to his demonstrated virtues but a small, dangerous person who seeks revenge for every slight.
Today, however, I want to turn the majority of my energy and attention to commemorating King’s legacy. Yesterday, I flew back into a snow-encrusted Washington, DC, from the relative warmth of St. Simon’s Island, where I was one of four keynote speakers for the Southern Lights Conference. The annual conference, a gathering of nearly 1,000 predominately white Christians, is organized by my friends
and Brian McLaren, and I was so honored to be there with luminaries such as Rev. Jacqui Lewis, , and . This year, the theme was, appropriately, “Reimagine Faith and the Future of Democracy.” While there was plenty of anger and anxiety in the room, there was also a determined hope, one that bears no relation to the naive emotion that sometimes goes by that name, but one that is animated by truth-telling and justice and rooted in a vision of Martin Luther King Jr.’s beloved community.In honor of King, I want to close out today’s newsletter with reflections by a few African American friends and colleagues about his life and legacy and what lessons it has to offer us in these trying days. And I close with a link to my own column that I wrote two years ago, “Beyond 'I Have a Dream': Meditations on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Hard Words for White Christians.”
In solidarity and hope,
Robby
Bryan Massingale, “To Redeem the Soul of America,” America Magazine
King warned us that this task demands what he called a “long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.”
King was a realist who still never gave into despair. He repeatedly warned that there would be “difficult days ahead.” There will be times when we feel our dreams are destined for futility, and our hope is an act of desperation. Fighting for justice and speaking the truth are never easy and seldom popular.
Perhaps King’s greatest gift to us is the reminder that when we do the work of justice, we work with what he called “cosmic companionship.” We can take courage and hope from a sermon that he often preached: “God is able.”
[Our God is able.] Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men [and women.] This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.
Read the full article here.
Eddie Glaude, Jr., “Creative Non-Conformist,” A Native Son
Despite the howling winds, despite the depression that threatens to overwhelm, we must be creative non-conformists and hold off our elegant despair.
What does it mean to have Dr. King and the movement that made him shadow Donald Trump’s inauguration. It is a startling representation of two Americas, and the choice that confronts each of us. Which America will you choose? Whose legacy will you claim?
We are tasked, on this day and in the days that follow, to break free from the continuous loop — the freedom snatching — and uproot the tragic compromises that have shadowed our days. Let us begin this work right where we are. Let’s choose the America that Dr. King gave his life for. He did not live to see it in reality. We may not either. But let’s go to our graves fighting for it!
Read the full article here.
Robert Jones Jr., “A Wake,” Witness
Indeed: Whether for Black people or for white people, the design of this day insists upon cursory glances instead of thorough examinations. It hides a nefarious evangelism beneath a blanket of ephemeral aspirations. It pulls words out of their context and discourages thorough readings of the source text. It despises memory because it is afraid of what we will remember. These are the schemes devised to make the masses thoughtless, which is to say: patriots.
This day—this constructed day, my dear family—is a pathological liar.
If it is to be of any real use to anyone, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day can only be a day of mourning. Especially on this particular occasion of observance, with the dystopian world order that is being ushered in by a reckless American cult.
Everyone, everywhere, who hears the name Martin Luther King, Jr. should feel…not guilt because guilt is useless…but haunted.
Read the full article here.
Jemar Tisby, “MLK’s Radical Economic Vision,” Footnotes
Every year, we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with quotes about love, unity, and dreams. But there’s a part of his message that rarely makes it into the headlines—his radical economic vision. King didn’t just dream of racial harmony, he fought for economic justice. He spoke boldly about wealth inequality, fair wages, and the redistribution of resources to uplift the poor—ideas that remain just as urgent today as they were decades ago.
Yet, too often, we overlook this side of his work, focusing instead on the more palatable parts of his legacy. Ignoring King’s economic vision isn't accidental—it’s deliberate.
"The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty... The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation."
-Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Quest for Peace and Justice”, 1964Acknowledging it would mean confronting systems of exploitation and committing to real, costly change. But if we’re serious about honoring his legacy, we have to engage with the whole truth. In my latest video, I unpack the radical economic demands King made and why they’re still relevant today. If you want to see the full picture of his dream—and what it means for us.
Read the full article and watch the video here.
Obery Hendricks Jr., “How I Met the Real Martin Luther King,” The Politics of Jesus
So, in truth, I banned King from my pantheon of heroes because I did not know the truth: that beneath the carefully disciplined oratory, beneath his trenchant appeals to love and forgiveness, beneath the countless unchallenged beatings and homicidal assaults, in reality, Martin Luther King, Jr., was more radical than I could have ever imagined….
But now I do know. And may it be known by all that Martin Luther King was not only a dedicated fighter for racial justice. He was also a politically radical thinker who had long nursed the visionary hope of restructuring, in the image of justice, the economic order in this country that so routinely profits the rich and even more routinely impoverishes the poor. To one reporter he acknowledged as much. “You might say that we are engaged in a class war,” he said with remarkable boldness.
But today we have hollowed the boldness of Martin Luther King by hallowing him into America’s apostle extraordinaire of kumbiyah and teary-eyed handholding. The radicality of his vision and praxis is all but lost. Yet in these fraught times we need to reclaim the boldness and clarity of vision of the leader of the most effective movement for justice that this nation has seen, or at least allow ourselves to be informed by it. For with the second, manifestly more dangerous presidency of the hate-sick, racist, demagogic admirer of tyrants and fascists, we are faced with perhaps the greatest onslaught on civil liberties, on love for our neighbors, on social responsibility and justice under the law that America has endured since the evil of the Red Scare, so dangerous that it threatens to rend the very fabric of our democracy.
Read the full article here.
Related on White Too Long
I’ll close by sharing a column I wrote two years ago. Quick take: As we mark King’s birthday, we white Christians need to get beyond the shallow and partial recollections of the safe King highlight reel.
Robbie, thank you for this. I just got up after a long flight from JAX to PDX yesterday after leaving St. Simon’s Island. Your thoughtful post on Martin Luther King, Jr., is just a continuation of the overwhelming passion and hope I came home with from Southern Lights. It seems to me that we have done to MLK what we have done to Jesus. It’s all about LOVE, but forgetting the radical and political Jesus that is actually exposed in the Bible. We can talk about love without having to make any changes in our own personal environment. If we talk about and seek to do justice, then we actually have to look at who we are and how our personal lives affects what we SAY we want to accomplish. That is when the rubber meets the road. Thank you for your contribution this past weekend.
Juxtaposed also, but glad for your amplification of black voices. We have enough rich white voices from South Arica censoring those voices, that they are going to need white allies.
I just did a search on Rich people from South Africa and Elon Musk did not come up on google's search...even though he was born in South Africa
The Internet has been "white too long" and it is only going to get worse...