According to Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown, black pastor, doctorate from Princeton, author of I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., the longer King lived, the more radical he became. So the "mature King" can best be discovered in some of his 1967 speeches, not his famous 1963 speech, the "I Have A Dream" speech. Dyson's book reflects careful scholarship and a lifelong interest in King, beginning at age nine.
Here is a quotation from a December 1967 speech given just four months prior to his assassination; I have dubbed this speech "I Live A Nightmare" but its real title is "A Christmas Sermon on Peace." The "mature King" spoke these sobering words:
"In 1963 . . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream I had had, and I must confess . . . that not long after talking about that dream I started to see it turn into a nightmare . . . It was when four beautiful Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty. . . . I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes." Increasingly, King spoke as a prophet of judgment as he saw America doing little to respond to the desperate economic straits of black Americans. While King never forsook his principles of love and nonviolence, more and more, he sounded like a revolutionary. King said that for years he labored "with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the South, a little change here, a little change there." After years of significant but slow progress, King concluded: "I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values."
According to Dyson, "Since his death, we have made three mistakes in treating King's legacy. First, we have sanitized his ideas, ignoring his [increasing] mistrust of white America, his commitment to black solidarity and advancement, and the radical message of his later life. . . . while schoolchildren grow up learning only about the great pacifist, not the hard-nosed critic of economic justice." To encounter the real King, we must examine "the dream deferred, the hopes shattered, the plans abandoned." The mature, more radical King "was sometimes seen as a threat to American values and perceived in some quarters as dangerous." He was dangerous to those who believed in American exceptionalism, American ethnocentrism/superiority/supremacy, and American expansionism/nationalism/imperialism.
How was King more radical?
1. From dream to nightmare
2. From reform to revolution
3. From civil rights to economic justice
4. From selective justice to comprehensive justice (against Vietnam war)
5. From friend of LBJ (civil rights legislation) to a perceived enemy of LBJ (opposition to Vietnam war)
6. When King changed his mind about race and class, he both enraged conservatives and alienated liberals.
King was an improbable combination of severe prophet and zealous patriot; he held prophet and patriot in difficult tension. Wynton Marsalis eloquently put it: "When I think of King, I think of a man who was the single person in the 20th century who did most to advance the meaning and feeling of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. He is the single most important person in the fight that America has to be itself [good self]." As a severe prophet to America, King fearlessly exposed and condemned the trinity of social misery: racism, capitalism/materialism and militarism. This evil American trinity called for social transformation/revolution; while reform will always be necessary, in this case reform is not radical enough.
Slowly King realized that the principles of democracy were divorced from the practice of democracy, at least as far as blacks and other ethnic groups were concerned. America was schizoid; if blacks pursued the positive route---patroit---, they were dammed; if blacks pursued the prophetic critique, they were dammed. So King and American blacks developed a love/hate relationship with America; they loved the potential promise of freedom, equality and justice for all. But far too often they were denied the above and forced to live with poverty and oppression. King had a deep and abiding belief in democracy---a government of the people, by the people and for the people; that all Americans are created equal and thus should be treated equal; an America, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
For most white Americans, capitalism is a divinely inspired, marvelously productive economic system that has created the highest standard of living in the world. So why did King include American capitalism in his trinity of social evil. One major reason why American capitalism has worked so well is that Native Americans graciously donated free, fertile, resource-filled land and blacks donated free or cheap labor. Building on free land and free labor, any economic system ought to thrive. But to King, if American capitalism is divinely inspired, the owners and operators were demonic. For blacks, the fruit of capitalism seems to be exploitation and poverty.
King concluded that capitalism was irreparably evil so it had to be replaced with something radically different. He began to call this new system, democratic socialism; probably more in line with Swedish democratic capitalism/socialism. I would prefer radical democracy built around economic cooperatives using Mondragon as a model. Mondragon built all of society around the cooperative model; America has chosen the corporate model.
Dyson knows King backwards and forwards; he has immersed himself in King's writings and other relevant literature, and he knows Malcom X as well. I feel like I could write forever on the issues that Dyson discusses. More from Dyson on King.
Instead of a static (the 1963 speech "I Have a Dream"), saintly statue now "honored" by a type of people who once would have vigorously opposed him in the 1960s, Dyson wants to resurrect the prophet, the radical, the vital and complex Martin Luther King. "So much has changed since the glory days of the civil rights movement and so much has stayed the same."
On April 18, on NPR radio, I heard a report on the resegregation of the South; a powerful combination of ethnocentrism/oppression or race and class that is resegregating schools, neighborhoods and churches creating poor black ghettos riven by low-quality schools, broken marriages and families as well as mass incarceration. The old legal segregation took place in the heavily churched South; the new resegregation is taking place in the heavily churched South.
Dyson: "African Americans command their place at every level of society, even the corporate boardroom---yet the gap between the American middle class and the black poor is as wide as ever." Where is the church? Sanctuary-bound or street-involved?
Who was Martin Luther King? A sinful saint with hopeful dreams and tragic nightmares who lived and struggled in a schizoid America that combined the Christian trinity and the American trinity that created and maintained WASP ethnocentrism/oppression that crushed blacks. Dyson asserts that even with his significant flaws, King was the greatest American who ever lived. He was the only national leader who courageously addressed, in depth, America's two great and enduring social evils: ethnocentrism/racism and economic oppression, just as Jesus did in Luke 4:18 and Luke 4:25-30. For me, the revered Washington and Jefferson come in a distant second because both Washington and Jefferson compromised/promoted ethnocentrism and oppression---they owned many slaves. And although Lincoln freed the slaves, he himself was a racist.
King was a complex and multi-faceted person who had to grapple with many social evils including a deeply flawed white ministry/church; at the same time, he tried to live and promote love, reconciliation and justice. I have concluded the following:
1. King was a towering intellectual and a down-to-earth pragmatist.
2. King was an idealist and a man of action.
3. King was a sexual sinner and a justice saint; many evangelicals are sexual saints? and justice sinners; some are both sexual sinners and justice sinners.
4. King was an angry person who despised racism, yet one who loved his enemies.
5. King was a passionate patriot who despised American nationalism/imperialism.
6. King hoped for an American dream of beloved community, but was forced to live an American nightmare of economic oppression.
7. King wanted social harmony, a color-blind society, but he was forced by society to be race-conscious.
8. King hated oppression, but he loved the oppressor.
9. If the law was just, King obeyed the law; if the law was unjust, King put the demands of justice ahead of the legalisms of the law.
After a famous person is dead and memories fade, it is easy for ideologues to pick and choose a few isolated truths about King, then create a caricature of the real King, soften his prophetic message. Dyson aims to recreate the full King with all his loving and prophetic sides. Both conservatives and liberals sought to soften King's radicalness. Conservative said that King supported colorblindness---the denial of racism, pretending that it no longer exists. Liberals rejected the mature King's dawning realization that most American whites were almost incurably racist and ethnocentric; they unintentionally supported an ongoing and pervasive racism. Still true in 2014.
Having earnestly desired but been denied the promises of American democracy---freedom, equality,justice---, King became a prophet who exposed the trinity of social misery---racism, capitalism and militarism or racism, materialism and militarism.
Dyson devotes chapter four to a discussion of King's attitude toward American capitalism. King saw capitalism as an economic system of oppression. A month before his assassination, King spoke in Memphis; the following is Dyson's account of what happened:
"What is especially striking about the occasion is that King is documented in full transition from fighting segregation to opposing class oppression. King had retreated from focusing solely on race when he saw that blacks would continue to suffer if they lacked economic equality. . . . his stepped-up criticism of capitalism and the economic 'manipulation of the poor' got him branded by conservative critics as a lethal troublemaker." "No longer a liberal reformer who believed that the basic structures of American society were sound, though in need of adjustment, King was now a radical revisionist who argued that the fundamental institutions of American life must be made over in fairness to the poorest citizens. King's stringent dissent on the question of economic equality alienated him from most of the few allies that remained. . . . " In order to achieve the necessary radical change, "mass civil disobedience" would be required. To end capitalism's brutal effects, a "massive redistribution of wealth" would be required. King was precise and relentless in his condemnation of American capitalism as a brutal system of oppression.
Next we examine Dyson on King's analysis of American racism:
"Martin Luther King, Jr., hoped for a color-blind society, but only as oppression and racism were destroyed. . . . As he lamented, the 'concept of supremacy is so imbedded in the white society that it will take many years for color to cease to be a judgmental factor.'"
"For the most part, King had been broadly trusting of whites. He believed that even the most vicious bigots [and white ministers] would be won over by black suffering. But during the last three years of his life, King questioned his understanding of whites. . . . In the past, King believed in the essential goodness of whites. . . . Most whites, he sadly concluded, were racist."
"White America had practiced psychological and spiritual genocide against black people."
Now I would like to express some of my reflections on the throny problems of ethnocentrism and racism. King's instincts and life experiences led him in the direction of truth on race/racism, but there was a surprising lack of scientific and sociological precision in both his analysis and communication. Without question, he understood that racism---the belief in superior and inferior races---was wrong. But it is not clear that he fully understood that the concept of race itself was erroneous, invalid both biblically and scientifically.
The only 'validity' that race/racism had was due to the social construction of reality, ideological propaganda had for generations promoted error as truth so that most people in American society had been convinced that there were separate and distinct black and white races and that whites were the superior race. Totally false, yet acted upon as if it were true.
King did invent a rather vague and imprecise term to indicate that there was something deep and abiding in white society that went beyond Klan type bigotry. He called this "unconscious racism." I think he was moving toward pervasive white ethnocentrism---an assumed and unquestioned supposed white ethnic superiority. Race has no scientific validity; ethnicity does. Ethnicity/culture/language differences are real; difference does not mean superior and inferior---ethnocentric. The founding fathers were more ethnocentric than racist. They held a deep belief, especially Thomas Jefferson, that Anglo-Saxon culture/civilization was superior.
Since the issue of race/racism/ethnocentrism was so central to the civil rights movement, King should have been more precise in his analysis and communication. Scientifically and biblically, the concept of race is false, erroneous, totally inaccurate. For ethnocentric and ideological purposes, race was invented by whites. King and his colleagues successfully abolished the worst of Klan bigotry and legal segregation---no small accomplishment---but American ethnocentrism or WASPishness is still alive and well and thriving in 2014.
America needs a better understanding of the problem. We are battling not just racism, not just ethnocentrism, not just pseudo-religion, but a trio of factors, a trinity of social evil. I like the seldom-used term White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant; White or whiteness, Anglo-Saxon culture, and Protestant (think American civil religion or evangelical Protestants). These supposedly superior American traits then are used to sanctify capitalism and nationalism.
In conclusion, another Martin Luther King (or better yet a million mini-Kings) are needed to finish the job. They need to understand that the agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit. They need to create a NT sociotheology built on the teaching about ethnocentrism and oppression; also the combination of love, reconciliation and justice.
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