Waiting for MLK
Today is April 4th, the day fifty-four years ago when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In those fifty-four years, it is hard to decide if we have made progress on civil rights and a true state of equality and justice for all in America. In the last few years we have seen more signs of resurgence of movements for white supremacy than I can recall seeing at any other time in my life. Today the nomination of Kitanji Brown Jackson is coming to a vote in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and it is clear that despite several of the Republican senators declaring that she is capable and qualified for being a justice on the Supreme Court, they will vote against her, maintaining strict partisan lines. This is mostly a symbolic move since the full senate can and will vote to advance her nomination to a full confirmation vote, where it appears she will receive the number of votes necessary for confirmation. The arguments being put forth by the Republican senators on the committee that are voting against her despite her qualifications and despite having confirmed her on two separate senatorial confirmations for other judicial appointments in the past are that this is too momentous a decision for a lifetime appointment to allow for a confirmation vote. Naturally this is absurd given that it was Republicans who set up this SCOTUS confirmation simple majority vote process as part of their campaign to fill the courts with conservative-minded judges over the past twenty years. The duplicity of the Republican pronouncements around the candidacy of Kitanji Brown Jackson stand at the pinnacle of partisan nonsense (certainly not limited to Republican Party politics, but lately exemplified over and over by it), but it also stands as the latest symbol of an unwillingness by privileged white males to allow for the full equality for women of color into the power ranks of our governance process.
Governance is such a dastardly hard process under any circumstance. Having a few in power that rule over the lives of many is bound to create problems in every society. Any attempts to level the playing field gets treated like an overreaching version of reverse discrimination. THe bottom line always devolves to the fact that no one likes being governed by anyone who doesn’t think exactly as they think and perhaps look exactly as they look. And yet, there is Clarence Thomas, the only black person currently on the court and someone who may not look like most Republicans, but certainly seems to think like them if not like the very extreme version of them. Clarence Thomas may be a man much reviled for his seemingly anti-racial stands, but at the same time he is the best friend of the level playing field crowd because he is the exception that proves the point that color and race do not predetermine judicial stance. Suffice it to say that Clarence Thomas is no Thurmond Marshall and Kitanji Brown Jackson will be no Clarence Thomas, thank goodness.
Let’s look at the lives of black Americans today versus where they were in 1968, the year of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death. Despite whatever progress has been made socioeconomically, blacks still fall well short of the economic and social status of white Americans. They remain unemployed at twice the rate of white Americans. Even though black Americans are better educated today, with more attending college, even those blacks experience a 50% worse employment rate than white college graduates. The decline in union membership has disproportionately affected blacks. Lately we have what I would call a dead cat bounce in unionization (thank you Amazon Staten Island, in the highest unionized county population in America), but that is scant good news and I bet fewer black employees at Amazon voted for the union than did white workers.
Black Americans occupy a much larger portion (50% worse than whites) of the impoverished population of America. With white American household now earning $70,000 per annum, black households are WAY behind at $41,000 on average. And the best evidence that this is not getting better is that black children are three times as likely to grow up to live in poverty than white children. And that all further belies the historical state of household wealth, where black household wealth at $17,000 is one tenth that of white household wealth at $171,000. THis is heavily dominated by the fact that where 73% of American white families own their own home, a mere 42% of black families enjoy that benefit of home ownership.
On the education front, blacks and whites now graduate from high school at almost the same rate, which is a strong positive. And black college graduates have doubled since 1990 from 11% to 25% of their population, but that is still well below the 35% rate that whites enjoy. This and a natural and inherent bias in the law enforcement and judicial systems of the country have contributed to an incarceration rate for black Americans that is still (despite it falling in the recent past) six times as great as that for white Americans. Some suggest that incarceration is the new, more draconian form of slavery for black Americans.
And the ultimate injustice, for what can be more precious than life itself, is that black Americans live 3.6 years less on overage than white Americans. This is directly correlated to all the contributing factors from levels of wealth and employment as well as levels of incarceration and access to adequate health care that comes most often with proper employment opportunity.
All of this should make each and every one of us heartsick. And anyone who wonders why many black Americans can easily become militant in their views and speech if not their actions over this sort of socioeconomic inequality, should stop and consider the root cause of the dissatisfaction that leads to it. Nothing says it better than the Martin Luther King, Jr. speech on August 23rd, 1963:
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
We are still waiting for MLK in this country and it seems we must wait just a bit longer. Go Kitanji Brown Jackson.