Dr. King remained hopeful. So can we.
By
All this uncertainty is taking a toll, but uncertain
times are far from unprecedented. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to an
equally uncertain time and found hope in recognizing the necessity of radical
change.
As we celebrate the national holiday dedicated to
King, I always encourage people to take some time to look at his writings — and
I especially do this year. In moments like these, I like to revisit one of
King’s last essays, “A Testament of Hope,” which sounds as relevant today as
the day he wrote it.
“Whenever I am asked my opinion of the current state,
I am forced to pause,” King wrote. “It is not easy to describe a crisis so
profound that it has caused the most powerful nation in the world to stagger in
confusion and bewilderment.”
Sound familiar?
“Today’s problems are so acute because the tragic
evasions and defaults of several centuries have accumulated to disaster
proportions,” King continued. These interrelated problems, he continued, have
“now merged into a social crisis of almost stupefying complexity.”
King specifically named “war, inflation, urban decay,
white backlash, and a climate of violence” alongside “race relations and
poverty” as the cascading crises of his day. To that list we could add the
pandemic and climate crisis today.
Even more than half a century ago, King believed that
the time for small, incremental changes had passed. “The luxury of a leisurely
approach to urgent solutions — the ease of gradualism — was forfeited by
ignoring the issues for too long,” he wrote.
“When millions of people have been cheated for
centuries, restitution is a costly process. Inferior education, poor housing,
unemployment, inadequate health care — each will require billions to correct,”
King warned. “Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost
for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms.”
But for a country weighed down by segregation,
inequality, and the Vietnam War, King also knew that the costs of injustice
were greater — something that feels even more true today.
“If we look honestly at the realities of our national
life, it is clear that we are not marching forward,” he wrote. “We are groping
and stumbling; we are divided and confused.”
In the face of these “deeply rooted evils” and
“systemic rather than superficial flaws,” King offered a remedy: the “radical
reconstruction of society itself” — which King was actually hopeful about,
although he knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“Humanity has the capacity to do right as well as
wrong,” King affirmed. “The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of
tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to our blunders but to our capacity
to overcome them… That’s why I remain an optimist, though I am also a realist,
about the barriers before us.”
King’s “Testament of Hope” is based on a realist’s
assessment of the need for political, economic, and moral change. King is
clear-eyed that America must embrace radical change — which won’t come from the
powerful but from the “naïve and unsophisticated.”
Hope in radical change, for many of us, seems out of
place during this time of tension. Yet there has been incredible change over
the last few years. Rather than return to our dysfunctional past, King’s
“Testament of Hope” points to the need to embrace and advance that change.
As we begin 2022 I find this message as important as
ever.
is the chief of Race, Wealth, and Community at the National
Community Reinvestment Coalition and an associate fellow of the Institute for
Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
