“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over…”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
As Tracie and I were readying our signs for the NAACP Martin Luther King, Jr. Day March today in Orange, Texas where she grew up, I re-read the civil rights leader’s landmark speech “The Other America.”
The title alone, pregnant with meaning both historical and topical, was enough to make me leap from my chair.
And the following passage resonated like a kettledrum in America’s current cacophony of political discourse:
- There must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is. It is the nymph of an inferior people. It is the notion that one group has all of the knowledge, all of the insights, all of the purity, all of the work, all of the dignity. And another group is worthless, on a lower level of humanity, inferior. To put it in philosophical language, racism is not based on some empirical generalization which, after some studies, would come to conclusion that these people are behind because of environmental conditions. Racism is based on an ontological affirmation. It is the notion that the very being of a people is inferior.
50 years have passed since King was murdered at age 39. And today we will march to honor him and his legacy.
I highly recommend this New York Times article, published yesterday, on black Americans’ “frustration and disappointment about the direction of the country.”
I also encourage you to visit and browse the Stanford University Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute website. If you can’t march in solidarity today, please take time out to read one of his speeches.
Happy Martin Luther King Day! May G-d bless America, may G-d bless us all.