Research Action Postings

Well, I went to the Rainbow/Push coalition's website to see how they talked about racism. www.rainbowpush.org What I found is that part of their efforts on continuing Dr. King's legacy is to push for equality for all on many levels, social, economic, etc. So their website does not directly condemn racism in an overt way. Those words come from the commentaries that Jessie Jackson publishes in his weekly column for the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

I have included an editorial he wrote after the passing of Coretta Scott King. I think this relates to my second point of my working hypothesis:

"The crux of the problem lies in the continued push for hegemony fueled by capitalistic ideals of individualism and self-promotion."

President Bush and Mrs. King
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
2/7/2006 © Tribune Media Services
Coretta Scott King will be remembered this week. She will be sorely missed. For the 51 years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she has shown amazing endurance, strength and resilience. She walked with her husband during the bus boycott. Their home was bombed. She endured the threats and the slanders. When Dr. King was shot in Memphis, I called her to inform her that he had been shot. She organized his funeral. And she came to Memphis to lead the march he was to lead. She shared his sense of commitment.

President Bush has announced that he will attend her funeral to honor her. He will do so after releasing a budget that calls for spending nearly $600 billion on the military next year alone -- including $120 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While military spending is going up, spending on education, on cancer and heart disease, on cleaning up the environment, on worker training is going down. The president is pushing to cut Medicare even as he demands that his top-end tax cuts be made permanent. Student loans will be more expensive; the military’s weapons will be more exotic.

Those are not the priorities of Dr. Martin Luther King or of Coretta Scott King. Dr. King warned us at the height of the Cold War of the terrible moral costs of devoting more of our resources to war and weapons than to moral uplift. It was Dr. King who understood that the War on Poverty at home was lost in the jungles of Vietnam.

President Bush will pay tribute to Mrs. King, no doubt, but she’d much prefer he pay tribute in his budget than in his words. And for African Americans, the announcement of his visit might well be greeted with apprehension. Two years ago, the President laid a wreath on Dr. King’s grave, and then announced he would ask the Supreme Court to outlaw affirmative action. Then he celebrated Dr. King’s birthday and announced a recess appointment of Judge Pickering, a right-wing judge opposed to equal protection, to the federal bench. This year, the wolf in sheep’s clothing will praise Mrs. King but his budget eliminates the Office of Minority Health, and he’s leaving tens of thousands of Katrina’s poorest survivors scattered across the country, with no plan to bring them back. His HUD Secretary says New Orleans will not regain its population or its black majority.

When Dr. King was shot, he was in Memphis marching with sanitation workers for a decent wage. He was planning a poor people’s march on Washington, uniting the poor across lines of race and region and color, to call on this country to open the doors of opportunity. Mrs. King carried on that mission.

But under President Bush, America is becoming more unequal. Poverty is spreading and growing deeper. Homelessness is up. Hunger is up. Poor workers are up. Mr. Bush has not supported an increase in the minimum wage since he’s been in office. His administration has evinced a relentless enmity to workers trying to organize unions. He’s walked away from funding his own reforms in education. He’s failed to extend health care and adequate nutrition to young children. America suffers the worst infant mortality rates in the industrial world. A record 2 million people are in jail, with minorities more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely to be charged, more likely to receive harsh sentences.

Dr. and Mrs. King sought to touch the better angels of our spirits. Non-violent protest assumes that the humanity of every person can be reached. Both Dr. and Mrs. King taught about the urgency of now. Both felt deeply how many children’s hopes were being crushed; how much unneeded suffering was being ignored. In part because of their commitment, this country has come a long way. Segregation is no longer the law of the land. We have the right to vote. From playing fields to college classrooms, minorities and women have moved towards equal opportunity.

But we have so far to go. Like her husband, Mrs. King would decry the terrible human waste and the domestic costs of a $1 trillion war of choice. She would not understand a policy that lavishes tax breaks on the very wealthy even as cutting basic supports for the most vulnerable. She would wonder about the moral health of a country that failed to provide health care and nutrition and pre-school to every child. As he honors her courage, President Bush would do well to learn from her wisdom.

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