Almost 52 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at age 39. His fight for civil rights and liberty equally applied had already made history.
A half-century later, the country is a very different place and mostly for the better. While it would be naive to believe that the United States has achieved some colorblind utopia, younger people don’t remember a time when open racism was the norm. Government-mandated segregation is now looked upon as a dark stain on America’s character and a great evil that still haunts many communities.
Today, the ideal of liberty and justice for all is more accessible than it has ever been. Since King’s death, the nation elected the first African American president and reelected him. African Americans have led both major political parties. Two have been appointed to the Supreme Court. Many more sit in Congress. This doesn’t mean the U.S. has magically overcome racism, but it’s also undeniable that these achievements would not have been possible when King began his crusade for racial equality. We should recognize King’s role in paving the way for progress even as we acknowledge there’s still a long way to go.
Yet it’s important also to acknowledge that those who claim to be carrying on King’s struggle for justice in modern times have strayed far from his dream of his children growing up “in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Instead, they have embraced an identity politics that veers from merely fighting against all forms of discrimination, to carving people up by race, gender, sexual orientation, and placing those distinctions above all else.
The cultural Left’s intersectionality crusade has separated the country into different corners: White people are not permitted to address racial issues, and men are forbidden from speaking about women’s matters (i.e. abortion).
This is exactly what King feared. From his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, he called out the “white moderate” who looked the other way on racial prejudice and the “black nationalist” who had “lost faith in America” and “repudiated Christianity.” He spared no criticism and rejected tribalism in all of its forms.
Just 10 days before he was killed, King addressed the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly. Asked about the argument advanced by a black editor who viewed Arabs as people of color and thus supported them against Israel, King was dismissive.
“There are some who are color-consumed, and they see a kind of mystique in blackness or in being colored, and anything noncolored is condemned,” he said. “We do not follow that course.”
In contrast to the woke Left that tries to oust supporters of Israel from their movement, King went on to say: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy.”
Fifty-two years ago, King renounced the us vs. them mentality and the polarization that afflicts today’s politics.
We are each charged with a moral responsibility: one that demands a respect for equality and requires that we pass that respect down to the next generation — regardless of whether you are white, black, female, or male. As King put it, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
[Read more: MLK’s iconic speech has been balled up and thrown away by Woke America]
