“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
President Barack Obama’s inaugural address echoed that sentiment among other things: “We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself.”
Obama faces enormous challenges — an economy in recession, a housing foreclosure crisis and two wars. There also is the question of how to deal with people who aren’t ready for change. Many of those will be African-Americans rejecting the notion of a “post-racial” society or suspicious of Obama’s style. This group, though small, can help stall progress. The District offers testimony to the trouble such folks can cause.
A decade ago, former Mayor Anthony A. Williams kicked off a new politics, breaking with the race-based brand practiced by his predecessor Marion Barry. Williams was dogged throughout his eight-year tenure: Some African-Americans challenged his blackness; others accused him of being an agent of white, wealthy Washingtonians.
When Williams sought to improve public education, he was accused of trying to destroy the city’s first elected body — the Board of Education. When he tried to upgrade housing for the poor, he was accused of clearing land for his “developer friends.”
Monday on WPFW-FM radio, speakers assaulted Obama and questioned his intentions. That same day, television host Tavis Smiley argued that the new president needed to deal specifically with issues in “black America.”
“The old guard in any society resents new methods, for the old guards wear decoration and medals won by waging battle in the accepted manner,” wrote King. “The time is ripe for broader thinking and action.”
Sustaining a post-racial society requires creating a more inclusive vision and writing a new cultural and political narrative for America.
“History does not pose problems without eventually producing solutions,” King said. “The disenchanted, the disadvantaged and the disinherited seem, at times of deep crisis, to summon up some sort of genius that enables them to perceive and capture the appropriate weapons to carve out their destiny.”
Americans’ desire to pull out of this current crisis and our determination to ignore historical boundaries and differences will continue to be our most powerful weapons to effect change. President Obama is evidence of the fruits our resolve can bear.
