Wake Me From King’s Dream; And Spare Me the 60s-bred Alternatives
05/04/08 13:18
The following
appears in Pop and
Politics.
I’ve grown tired of the self-serving and sanctimonious invocations of “King’s Dream.” Since his death, it’s reference has been mired in cheap sentiment and easy virtue, recognizable to the daytime TV chat show set accustomed to camera-induced catharsis and the promises of fulfillment just awaiting those who “buy this book” and follow “these easy steps.”
King’s “I have a Dream” speech was no shorcut to racial harmony. It was no paean to the inherent goodness of white people or black ones. It did not state that all black and white people had to do was look into their inherently pure souls and express them, and all would be well. It was a rageful, conflicted work of genius:
"Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."
“Demand,” he said; not “request.”
"This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality."
As elegant a threat as ever posed. King then went on to catalogue some of the injustices to which he’d alluded. And then he spoke of his dream in terms that both soared, and dripped with contempt.
"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nullification' -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."
And then the overtly Christian imagery emerged:
"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.'"
A Christian preacher born in 1929, King was raised on a theology of the risen Jesus, presented as a blonde, blue-eyed white man, the son of the one true God. He would not have known that science would soon show that the human animal (black, white and brown) to be biologically predisposed to associate the negative with those that do not look like them—predisposed to prejudice. He would not have known that research from Olsson et al., reported in Science Magazine would show that:
"…white participants acquired more persistent conditioned fears in response to pictures of black faces than to pictures of white faces when the faces were paired with an aversive (repellant) stimulus, whereas the opposite was true for black participants."
King never stated that the fulfillment of his dream would be seamless, effortless or inevitable. Those are assumptions that his myriad “interpreters” have foisted onto him. He never elucidated what steps it would take to make the dream more of a reality. He simply articulated what was by definition a somewhat unrealistic ideal. Only in our The Secret-fueled modern sensibility is every dream easily attainable—if you buy the right book and follow “these simple steps.”
In King’s time, black Christianity had long been force-fed the image of the white son of a white God. Christianity fueled by such images might bestow super-human powers of righteousness upon whites. After all, they most resembled God and his offspring. While black theologians have diligently chipped away at this image of a white God, history is a living thing and the mainstream culture is omnipresent, and that image remains among its mainstays.
Perhaps this helps explains why, in 1996, columnist Leonard Pitts wrote, “We've spent 387 years in this country trying to get white folks to love us. Might help if we first learned to love ourselves.” That’s difficult if echoes of the very God you worship looks like those who enslaved and reviled you for hundreds of years. It is very difficult when competing attempts to engender that self-love, like the Black Power Movement, betray a loathing of the enslaved people we have been, as opposed to a pride in what we have made of the experience—the forms of worship, speech, music, art, letters, and political action that, should we ever free ourselves from the shackles of 60s liberation models, might form the basis of an empowering, self-determined culture second-to-none.
In his book “Risks of Faith,” black theologian James H. Cole, a major influence on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, defined “black power” as follows:
"…full emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary. The methods may include selective buying, boycotting, marching, or even rebellion.”
Sensibly, part of Cole’s emancipation prescription was freedom from the image of a God that looked like our historic oppressors. However, Cole’s black power movement imagined only two routes to black self-determination. They were “accommodation” or “protest.” Both are self-defeating because they look outward and accept as a given mainstream cultural supremacy. They accept white power as so overwhelming, that it can only be acceded to or violently rejected. They paint black American culture as so powerless that it can only flee or be eaten—the reaction of powerless prey pursued by large-toothed predators.
Cultures that sustain and empower their inhabitants provide a sense of entitlement, and even superiority to those who nestle within them. According to University of Kentucky psychologist Margot Monteith, “To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It's likely a built-in mechanism." If you must flee or be eaten by something, you are essentially powerless against it. Powerlessness does not breed a “sense of entitlement.” It breeds what Cecil Brown described as “negative protest:”
"...a raging, ferocious, uncool, demoralized black boy banging on the immaculate door of White Society, begging, not so much for political justice as for his own identity, and in the process, consuming himself, so that in the final analysis, his destiny is at the mercy of the White Man.”
Whether the modern invocations of King’s dream, or re-imaginings of traditional Black Power movements, 60s models of black liberation and self-determination are as functional in the 21st century as their august and entombed originators. Is it any wonder books hold titles like The End of Blackness, and pollsters ask if blacks of differing socio-economic status are part of the “same race.”
It’s a portrait of a people seeking our “own identity,” and looking backwards in all wrong places.
I’ve grown tired of the self-serving and sanctimonious invocations of “King’s Dream.” Since his death, it’s reference has been mired in cheap sentiment and easy virtue, recognizable to the daytime TV chat show set accustomed to camera-induced catharsis and the promises of fulfillment just awaiting those who “buy this book” and follow “these easy steps.”
King’s “I have a Dream” speech was no shorcut to racial harmony. It was no paean to the inherent goodness of white people or black ones. It did not state that all black and white people had to do was look into their inherently pure souls and express them, and all would be well. It was a rageful, conflicted work of genius:
"Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."
“Demand,” he said; not “request.”
"This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality."
As elegant a threat as ever posed. King then went on to catalogue some of the injustices to which he’d alluded. And then he spoke of his dream in terms that both soared, and dripped with contempt.
"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nullification' -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."
And then the overtly Christian imagery emerged:
"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.'"
A Christian preacher born in 1929, King was raised on a theology of the risen Jesus, presented as a blonde, blue-eyed white man, the son of the one true God. He would not have known that science would soon show that the human animal (black, white and brown) to be biologically predisposed to associate the negative with those that do not look like them—predisposed to prejudice. He would not have known that research from Olsson et al., reported in Science Magazine would show that:
"…white participants acquired more persistent conditioned fears in response to pictures of black faces than to pictures of white faces when the faces were paired with an aversive (repellant) stimulus, whereas the opposite was true for black participants."
King never stated that the fulfillment of his dream would be seamless, effortless or inevitable. Those are assumptions that his myriad “interpreters” have foisted onto him. He never elucidated what steps it would take to make the dream more of a reality. He simply articulated what was by definition a somewhat unrealistic ideal. Only in our The Secret-fueled modern sensibility is every dream easily attainable—if you buy the right book and follow “these simple steps.”
In King’s time, black Christianity had long been force-fed the image of the white son of a white God. Christianity fueled by such images might bestow super-human powers of righteousness upon whites. After all, they most resembled God and his offspring. While black theologians have diligently chipped away at this image of a white God, history is a living thing and the mainstream culture is omnipresent, and that image remains among its mainstays.
Perhaps this helps explains why, in 1996, columnist Leonard Pitts wrote, “We've spent 387 years in this country trying to get white folks to love us. Might help if we first learned to love ourselves.” That’s difficult if echoes of the very God you worship looks like those who enslaved and reviled you for hundreds of years. It is very difficult when competing attempts to engender that self-love, like the Black Power Movement, betray a loathing of the enslaved people we have been, as opposed to a pride in what we have made of the experience—the forms of worship, speech, music, art, letters, and political action that, should we ever free ourselves from the shackles of 60s liberation models, might form the basis of an empowering, self-determined culture second-to-none.
In his book “Risks of Faith,” black theologian James H. Cole, a major influence on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, defined “black power” as follows:
"…full emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary. The methods may include selective buying, boycotting, marching, or even rebellion.”
Sensibly, part of Cole’s emancipation prescription was freedom from the image of a God that looked like our historic oppressors. However, Cole’s black power movement imagined only two routes to black self-determination. They were “accommodation” or “protest.” Both are self-defeating because they look outward and accept as a given mainstream cultural supremacy. They accept white power as so overwhelming, that it can only be acceded to or violently rejected. They paint black American culture as so powerless that it can only flee or be eaten—the reaction of powerless prey pursued by large-toothed predators.
Cultures that sustain and empower their inhabitants provide a sense of entitlement, and even superiority to those who nestle within them. According to University of Kentucky psychologist Margot Monteith, “To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It's likely a built-in mechanism." If you must flee or be eaten by something, you are essentially powerless against it. Powerlessness does not breed a “sense of entitlement.” It breeds what Cecil Brown described as “negative protest:”
"...a raging, ferocious, uncool, demoralized black boy banging on the immaculate door of White Society, begging, not so much for political justice as for his own identity, and in the process, consuming himself, so that in the final analysis, his destiny is at the mercy of the White Man.”
Whether the modern invocations of King’s dream, or re-imaginings of traditional Black Power movements, 60s models of black liberation and self-determination are as functional in the 21st century as their august and entombed originators. Is it any wonder books hold titles like The End of Blackness, and pollsters ask if blacks of differing socio-economic status are part of the “same race.”
It’s a portrait of a people seeking our “own identity,” and looking backwards in all wrong places.