Stolen Dreams?
(Tariku Abas Etenesh)
A
well-intended praise of Martin Luther King Jr. by a friend who said there would
never be someone of greater prominence as MLK, giving him the once in a thousand years
sort of phenomenon in the history of the black people’s struggle for
freedom and justice in America, caused this reflection. It seems that in
regards to the-still-ensuing struggle for equality and justice, there is a
danger of not valuing the everyday struggle, little but deserved steps in the
direction of justice and the need for more to be done as part of the echoes of
MLK’s dreams. Part of this is what seems to be the act of stealing the dream
from the person by recreating King of the people into king of the embellishers.
The Peoples’ King
Martin Luther King Jr. was an
uncontested great man of the civil right movements and of USA. This was
attributed to not only his unique gifts of oratory, great academic background
,his service as a pastor and his uniquely ready-made spirit to lead, but also
to the fact that he stood on the shoulders of great men before him as all great
men before him did.
As Maya Angelou, the great American
poet and who was one of the young volunteers who worked with Martin Luther
King, said about MLK, ‘he comes to
the stage with two hundred thousand people with him; and you can’t help
noticing it.’ This was attributed to him being the man of the
moment, the man ready as well as capable to carry the responsibility of a
generation and of a black people of USA in order to pass the batons of conciseness’
to the next generation.
The historic March on Washington that
led to the most memorable -I Have a Dream- Martin Luther King- moment was like a
lap in the relay-race of ‘human solidarity’
that saw the forerunner like Asa Philip Randolph, Baid Rustien, Rosa Parks and
others who run their portion with unheard-of stamina and daring defiance against
the wind of repression blowing against them from all direction especially from
the direction of Washington. They all run as if their shoes were winged with dream
which was personified in Martin Luther King Jr.
Propelled
by the momentum of those who came before him, who dared to dream, who paid with
their blood, who dared to sing while still in shackles’ I open my mouth to the
lord and I shall not return; I will go, I shall go, to see what the end is
going to be”; who passed 400 years old baton of courage to dream, personified
in Martin
Luther King Jr who did dream so courageously that he gave his life for it. In
his hands the batons of struggle, he was strident because his words rose from
the hearts of millions; he was graceful because he reflected the aspirations of
millions; and most of all he was the mouthpiece that turned the century old
shriek of pain of the black man in America into a potent voice that cracked the
icy cave of chilling injustice and ushered in a possibility of resting a firm
hand on the wheels of history to cruise through the high tides of difficult
times.
The ‘Embellishers’ King
Like most historical accounts or
personalities of greater renown such as Mandela and Malcolm X, MLK is not immune
to historical and politician embellishers who manipulate his legacies to codify
him as the-distant and god-like King. These embellishers seem to have a sane
looking intention of establishing King’s historical place firmly. But the
unintended, and fatally unlike- King, consequence of such ventures is the
creation of the King who was an island who was all but human, who has dared to
do the impossible alone. A disconnect that amounts to mythologizing the person
and his works. Such was not only contrary to the spirit he had lived on and the
great ideal of human solidarity he had always preached, taught, marched, and died for.
The history of the black man’s struggle
for freedom and justice both in African and US America declare surplus in
regards to the leaders are either cut short and labeled to distance them from
their people or are put in towers of mythology.
The embellishers, craft a mythology
that alluringly starts by shining the searchlight of historical records only on
the crown jewel, the actor that took the lead role of a great movement of a
great people, and in doing so cutting him/her out of the stream of connected endeavors
that added up to the greatness it became and celebrated. This might sound a
bizarre point to make, but it is not. On a serious note, the struggle for human
solidarity and equality among all races and colors is not a holiday excursion
or a popularity contest where the crowning of one marks the culmination of the
tour. When celebration of people replaces the celebration of the ideals they
represented, the movement dies and the man starts to become god and distant.
The place MLK has attained in the
history of America and the world is deserved. MLK merits the greatness he
has deservedly attained but that was not the question; was his goal the
popularity and celebration of his name that some seem to portray it be? As he
has spoken in his last speech before his assassination, the ‘Mountain Top
Speech’, after talking about the promise land of equality he said “….I may not
get there with you; but we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” So the
question is and always should be and the movement before joined by MLK and
after should always have asked “have we reached to the Promised Land of
deserved social justice and equality?”
Reducing king of the people to ‘King of
history’
Like any historically event with sublime
import, the culmination of such movement’s great movements seems to end with
the glorification of the great man. And this happens not in the physical death
of the individual hero, but in the embellishments that over and above the
intent of the movements paints a saintly image of the hero and practically
detach him from the psychology of the mass that produced him. The idolization
of MLK will be defeating his visions if not coupled with the ground work for
the realization of his dreams.
If a child in a kindergarten can’t
think that MLK is a man and I can be like him; that he was someone who started
from modest beginnings and rose up represent justice and equality for all men,
that not because of accident but because of sheer hard work and focus, would this
not thwart the coming of the “promised land” of social justice and
equality?
The problem of such embellishments is
in not telling the facts right, but in telling the selected facts. The MLK who
was assassinated was not as passive as the often portrayed. He had indeed, laid out the challenges that are not still wrecking the black man in USA and elsewhere not controlling the fate of his own community, and of breathing through borrowed lungs.
has he was clear in his own words:
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long
funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk
too long. …
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major,
say that I was a drum major for justice. I won't have the fine and luxurious
things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life
behind. And that's all I want to say.
Had MLK been around, the peaceful resistance of passivity would have had long been evolved to peaceful
resistance of action, whereby an economic as well as
social plan of action coupled the passive resistance with progressive
economic measures for the practical development of the downtrodden and the unprivileged
black people.
As the nation celebrates MLK, the struggle to
end mass-incarceration, the struggle to lift the mass from poverty, the
struggle to end drugs -violence, the struggle to assert ‘Black Lives Matter’ all
should still echo dreams differed and that MLK is still relevant not as a mystified
distant personal but as a question mark to the current generation: where is my
dream? With the batons of the struggle for better social justice and equality in
your hands if you just commemorate days like far gone past, are you not
becoming dream stealers.
Justice for all!
