All I want from America is to be true to what you said on paper.
~ Martin Luther King
As an American, as a black man, I really love Dr. Martin Luther King. In his tragically short life of less than four decades, MLK, in a profoundly singular manner, embodied all of the potential, life, hopes and dreams of America – not only for black people, but for all Americans. MLK constantly challenged the powers that be to use their powers for good, to fulfill America's creed "… that all men are created equal."
However, like all great men (and myths) MLK had a fatal flaw. It was a blind spot that he and the entire civil rights movement had that plagues and vexes black people to this day and in my opinion has been a crucial reason why tens of millions of my people for the past 40 years have failed to either fully assimilate into the larger society, or even come close to achieving the "American dream."
What was MLK's blind spot? King and the civil rights movement's singular vision laid all of black America's demands for an end to racial discrimination and racism, for equal rights and true justice under the law, at the feet of white America, yet demanded little to nothing from black America to fulfill their important responsibilities as American citizens.
I call King's blind spot a crisis of philosophy. At the genesis of his rise as a civil rights leader, MLK had a most critical choice to make, which was presented to America by two intellectual prophets of a previous era – Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) and W.E.B. Dubois (1875-1963). Which worldview would King choose to deliver his people from the savage bondage of Jim Crow, de jure and de facto racism, to the promised land of freedom, justice and true equality under the law?
Forty years since the storied protests of the civil rights movement and the assassination of MLK, history has spoken, and it is obvious that King and the entire civil rights movement chose to follow the philosophy of W.E.B. Dubois, a miserable and tragic worldview born of arrogance (Dubois' "talent tenth" philosophy), ignorance (liberalism), despair (anger, protest, litigation), and has forsaken the worldview of Booker T. Washington, born of self-discipline, morality and rugged American individualism (despite the odds).
What did Dubois think was the proper manner for blacks to get their equal rights?
We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a free American, political, civil and social, and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.
In his defining book, "Up from Slavery," Booker T. Washington said:
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.
In a commencement speech to the student body at Tuskegee almost 100 years ago, Washington could just as easily have been speaking to today's young people:
A race or an individual which has no fixed habits, no fixed place or abode, no time for going to bed, or getting up in the morning, for going to work; no arrangement, order or system in all the ordinary business of life – such a race and such individuals are lacking in self-control, lacking in some of the fundamentals of civilization.
Would to God that today's so-called black leaders: Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus and the all rest would trumpet Booker T. Washington's words and ideas to the masses, but they won't because they are all pretenders, poverty pimps, demagogues bought and paid for by liberal Democrat Party.
Returning to MLK, we must not be selective in our praise of any historical figure, but critically examine him in the context of his times as well as his legacy in modern times. JFK said in this manner: "History, the final judge of our deeds." That said, no rational person or intelligent observer of history can say with any degree of authority that MLK and the entire civil rights movement took the right road in following the worldview, tactics and philosophy of Dubois over Washington.
Forty years after King's death one has only to look at the extensive anger, despair, anarchy and pathology throughout the black community to deduce that the civil rights movement's overemphasis on salvation through the welfare state and securing group equal rights from white people was only achieved at the expense of ignoring black people's individual personal responsibilities to God, to themselves, to their family and to humanity.
A case in point is the outrageous hip-hop culture of the black community that for the past 30 years has made an art form combining music, political activism and aesthetics with nihilism. Hip-hop, a once obscure, subculture now dictates to the culture how to think, whom to vote for, who is an "authentic" black leader, who is an "Uncle Tom" … and which "ho" to give a beatdown to who won't follow directions.
Perhaps like MLK I am a dreamer also. However, I liken our contemporary plight to Old Testament Israel during the times of the judges. Because of collective bad life choices, sometimes the Jewish people had to wait a generation (40 years) to give God the requisite time to allow the old generation (and their ideas) to die in the grave before he would raise up a judge like Gideon, Deborah, Jephthah, Samson and others to deliver Israel from its many enemies, within and without. Nevertheless, at the end of this period of Jewish history was that terrible epitaph that is equally apropos in modern times: "In those days there was no king [viable leadership] in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
I often think about how can God deliver a people where over 90 percent of them don't even realize that they need a [political] redeemer.
Where is this elusive American dream that MLK and the civil rights movement so passionately spoke of, wrote about and even died for. Where can this dream be found? Dubois contended that it is found through litigation and by constantly protesting the powers that be in the streets … "assail[ing] the ears of America." Booker T. Washington says, "Do all you can with what you have and never be satisfied."
Can the American dream be found solely by the passage of civil rights acts, voting rights acts, though litigation in the courts, mass protests in the streets, or can the American dream be found in personal morality, discipline and in the monastic solitude of your local library? Can a man be truly free from chains on his wrists and ankles if his mind is still shackled? Never.
While I love MLK and celebrate his legacy, I live Booker T. Washington … what about you?
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