Opinion
Mr. Obama, you are not Dr. King
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Also by Paul Pryse:
- Capitalists created Wall Street mess (September 24, 2008)
- Marxism to break country's chains (September 10, 2008)
- 4,000 dead but Bush apathetic (March 28, 2008)
- Mr. Obama, you are not Dr. King (January 21, 2008)
- Chavez proves critics, U.S. media wrong (December 13, 2007)
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As America marks another Martin Luther King Day, we can see the power of Dr. King’s legacy in the Democratic Party primaries. Sen. Barack Obama has adopted the rhetoric of King and the Civil Rights Movement, implying his campaign is the legacy of that struggle. Meanwhile, Sen. Hillary Clinton infuriated the black electorate when she implied Dr. King was less important next to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Ms. Clinton’s willingness to say anything to undercut Mr. Obama came back to bite her. However, Mr. Obama’s adoption of the King legacy has gone unquestioned by voters, despite the fact that Dr. King’s and Mr. Obama’s visions of “change” bear no resemblance.
Although Dr. King gave his life to fighting the injustice of racial inequality, Mr. Obama tries to whitewash contemporary racism. You get the idea of Mr. Obama’s view of race from his famous line, “There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” Anyone who does not believe there’s a white America should take a look around this campus. The same goes for black America and the south side of Mr. Obama’s own Chicago.
Mr. Obama’s unwillingness to acknowledge racism reached disturbing extremes when he said of Hurricane Katrina, “The ineptitude was colorblind,” ignoring the blacks who overwhelmingly suffered from FEMA’s incompetence. Mr. Obama’s colorblindness delighted conservative talk-show host Bill Bennett, who said, “He never brings race into it. He never plays the race card. … He has taught the black community you don’t have to act like Jesse Jackson; you don’t have to act like Al Sharpton.”
Dr. King never indulged in Mr. Obama’s complacency, even after winning many victories. In 1967, he gave a speech on the future of the Civil Rights Movement, calling for further agitation, saying “Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home … Let us be dissatisfied.”
That same year, Dr. King openly declared his opposition to the Vietnam War. His statement was an unequivocal condemnation of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.” Dr. King warned that if Americans did not act immediately to stop the war in Vietnam, it would act as a bridge to wars in Cambodia and Thailand.
Today, Mr. Obama is not warning us about Iraq being used as a bridge for more wars. He is leading the charge himself. Mr. Obama trumpets his willingness to bomb Pakistan and expand George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” to more countries. Although Obama touts his initial opposition to the war, he is silent on his subsequent U.S. Senate votes to fund it. Dr. King said, “As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection.” Can anyone imagine Mr. Obama telling soldiers to refuse to fight in Iraq?
My point is not simply that Mr. Obama and Dr. King have different politics. The more important distinction is between their methods of bringing about “change.” How does Mr. Obama propose to bring about the “change we can believe in” (whatever it may be)? His record gives no indication, as for the past year he and his Democratic colleagues in Congress have failed to stand up to a lame-duck president on any matter of importance, despite the American people handing the Democrats a majority and a mandate to end the war.
When Dr. King explained his strategy, he said “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Few things prove the relevance of these words today than the Jena Six, the six black high school students jailed for a fight retaliating against white students who hung nooses at their school. When word spread around the country that an all-white jury was sentencing six black boys to decades in prison for a schoolyard fight, there were national protests. At University of Wisconsin, the Black Student Union called a rally and hundreds of students marched in solidarity with the Jena Six. The protests have successfully reduced the Six’s charges and proven that the strategy of grassroots organization is not a relic of the past.
When Dr. King spoke, he paraphrased Fredrick Douglass, who said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening.”
Mr. Obama is that man who favors freedom but depreciates agitation. Let us take Dr. King’s advice and organize at the grassroots to demand the things we want: an end to the war, single-payer health care, racial equality.
Let us examine the empty rhetoric of “change,” and let us be dissatisfied.
Paul Pryce (pryse@wisc.edu) is a member of the International Socialist Organization.
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Haha, this article is posted under the CRs chairs name too. I was wondering why she sounded so liberal when I read it…
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I cant believe the badgerherald fucked that up….do they even read the articles and actually comprehend them before they put them in the paper?
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Since this was on Sara’s column, I’ll repost it here:
King: “Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home … Let us be dissatisfied.”
Obama talks about there not being a white America and a black America but the United States of America. You seem to be saying that King only saw things in terms of a racial struggle. This quote is not about race. He does not mention race once, but only mentions those on the “outskirts of hope” and the “slums.” Are you trying to tell me that King wouldn’t care about those on the outskirts of hope just because they were white? That’s sure what it sounds like.
You claim Obama is complacent for not bringing race into everything, but I’m sure if Obama was running as a candidate like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton (who won’t shut up about race), you would dislike him for different reasons. You can’t have it both ways.