Remembering Martin Luther King

When these things happen to whomever, at whatever time, the impact is always one of deep hurt.
 
Parents strive to treat each and every child equally; teachers concentrate their efforts on trying to be role models of fairness; legal systems focus their attention on arriving at just decisions. The 21st century has seemingly arrived at a consensus whereby legalized discrimination will not be tolerated. Everybody agrees with this principle for the simple reason that nobody would like to be discriminated against.
 
For discrimination to take place, in human terms at least, one needs two persons: the discriminator and the discriminated against. Everybody agrees that it is unacceptable to be placed in the role of the latter. However, is there consensus on rejecting playing the role of the former? None of us enjoy being discriminated against, that is something we can agree on, but how many of us completely and wholeheartedly reject prejudice and snub bigotry and narrow-mindedness?
 
Discrimination at its worst has to be the feelings it leaves the victim with: helplessness, anger and confusion. It is hard to think of any discrimination that is worse than that based on race or gender. The latter is certainly one prejudice that divides the world into two, either as men are good and women are bad, or as men are bad and women are good. Needless to say it is the former that we are nearly always acquainted with.
 
Discrimination in the form of nepotism or ideology is unfortunately as prevalent today as it has been in centuries past. Being treated differently due to the color of your hands or face is regrettably very common throughout human history, appearing in many epochs including the present. The previous century was one that demonstrated discrimination on a gargantuan scale.
 
While the Holocaust is rightfully considered an example of the worst level of human depravity of the 20th century, if not the whole of history, racial bias was also prevalent in many parts of the world. A surprising home for racism was in the US. The US had fought against fascism, Nazism and militarism in World War II, while simultaneously ensuring that its dark-skinned citizens were treated as second-class human beings.
 
America, instrumental in winning the war on behalf of democracy, was far from practicing what it preached back home. A boy aged 12 at the time of Pearl Harbor, however, was to change the national political landscape, as well as the mind-map of millions of Americans. His name was Martin Luther King.
 
His father as well as his grandfather were pastors in Atlanta, and he was to follow in their theological footsteps while proving his academic credentials as well. In the mid-1950s he was able to combine his time and efforts to become a pastor in an Alabama church while also playing a prominent role in the influential National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
 
One must not forget that until 1954 white and black children could not sit side by side in classes; they attended separate schools. Infamously, black people were required to sit at the back of buses. In those tense years, many young black men sought to defend their rights through violent acts. Dr. King vociferously opposed such tactics. He believed violence could never achieve racial justice, the reason being that violence had never brought about a permanent peace.
 
King considered violence to be immoral because the central strategy behind it was to humiliate the opponent, rather than trying to convince through the power of argument and persuasion. Therefore, no means that tried to destroy the opponent rather than converting them could be supported. King earnestly believed in the power of love as a commanding unifying force.
 
Violence rejected love, instead exalting hatred, which was why it could never be explained away. When the aim was brotherhood and community building, it was impossible to reach such goals through violence. For King, the conception of love was intricately linked to religion. This was not limited to his own faith, however. He accepted that love had played a vital role in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, all professing to view it as leading towards an ultimate reality.
 
It was such key features as these that propelled Martin Luther King in 1964 to become the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize at age 35. Most people know of him not for this accolade, but for the famous speech that he gave 50 years ago, at what he himself at the time identified as “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”
 
A quarter of a million people -- overwhelmingly black -- had gathered in Washington to hear Dr. King's address from the Lincoln Memorial. In the speech he paid tribute to the ex-president for liberating black Americans from slavery, though their current lot was “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” As a first-class orator he had travelled near and far, crisscrossing America delivering inspiring speeches and spreading hope to his audiences. In this instance, he excelled even himself, holding steadfastly to “forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.”
 
Perhaps the most often-quoted passage from this historic speech is when he related to his listeners the hopes he held for his family: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!” It is expressions such as these that make the hair on one's neck stand up and cause one to admire a person who in the depths of despair could conjure up such a positive image of the future.
 
Despite King constantly and consistently preaching the rejection of violence, the 1960s was a terrible decade of political assassinations in the US, taking the lives of President Kennedy and his brother Robert. Martin Luther King experienced the murder of John Kennedy along with the rest of the nation but was able to advise his successor, Lyndon Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which rectified previous transgressions.
 
Dr. King was not, however, permitted to witness the realization of his self-declared dream in his country, as he too was assassinated in 1968 while organizing a march to protest the treatment of Memphis garbage workers. A passionate follower of Gandhi's methods of non-violence, he met the same fate: being gunned down by an assassin.
 
Martin Luther King ought to be and is remembered not for the way that he died, but for the manner in which he campaigned for fairness, opposing injustice and racial discrimination. Within his lifetime America took bold, irreversible and progressive steps towards social reform and put an end to state-sponsored, institutionalized racism. While all nations have heroes who have accomplished much, few have truly global leaders inspiring across national borders. Martin Luther King is a very good example of this. He was the anti-racist campaigner par excellence until his untimely death.
 
Wednesday will be the 50th anniversary of his “I have a dream” speech. For those who are old enough to remember it, as well as everybody else who opposes discrimination in all dimensions, the world -- including the United States -- is still far from the one King dreamt of. While racial discrimination in the form of apartheid has long been abolished in South Africa, today tens of millions of women, if not more, are still discriminated against. Moreover, prejudice in the despicable guise of racism is easy to witness in any industrial city center, whether in North America, Western Europe, the coasts of the South China Sea or the Russian Far East. Thus, the challenge of overcoming bigotry remains a major one in virtually all communities and nations. Nevertheless, even in such an unpleasant situation, one ought to remember what Martin Luther King said: “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.”