Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I slept in until about 11 am. I will finish
this blog piece, and then go to the gym. I’ll stop by the supermarket (a snow
storm is coming) then ill do some laundry. I’ll end my night with a movie of maybe a
fashion magazine.
This isn’t so different that what I did on this day last
year, or the year before. In general, I don’t do “Community Service” on Martin
Luther King Jr. Day. On a micro level community service is good. Even having a
designated day of community service once a year is good, because that’s the
only time some people will do it. However, on the macro level, equating Dr.
King’s legacy with paintbrushes and mop buckets is so problematic for me that I
can’t participate.
The watering down of this man’s legacy is appalling. It
starts with taking his name out of the day; how many Happy “MLK” posts have you
seen so far? We can’t even take 5 more
seconds to type out the man’s full name. We pass around that “Everyone can be great
because everyone can serve,” quote instead of his quotes about American
Imperialism, anti war, anti racism, and improved opportunity for African
Americans (which are in fact far more numerous.) We somehow turned fighting for
equal rights, economic opportunity and an ending of police harassment into
cleaning up a park and painting a school building. I’m sorry, I didn’t know Dr.
King was jailed and assassinated for demanding the right to do community
service!!!
I understand that school buildings are falling apart. I
understand that it is a lovely gesture to provide a newly painted classroom for
our children. It’s nice to show them that we care about them. But this doesn’t
get the crux of the problem. The problem is that many (most even) public
schools that are predominately black are underfunded. They are underfunded
because in our draconian funding system schools are funding primarily through
property tax. The property in these neighborhoods aren’t worth a whole lot, and
the property tax rate is low too…probably because if it were any higher people
couldn’t afford to live there…which is because blacks on average make less
money and have less net worth that whites….because they went to those same
crappy schools there underfunded 20 years ago. This goes for any social problem that calls
for “community service” to serve as a way to elevate it. If you look deep
enough you will find systems of inequality that are The REAL problems. When are we going to stand up to THAT?
I think people in my generation are just too damn
comfortable. Our parents marched with Dr. King. Our parents were the ones who
were shipped out to white neighborhoods on school buses to desegregate the
schools. Our parents were the ones spit on and called niggers and attacked by
police dogs. They went through a lot so that we can have it easier. But things
still aren’t right. Black men and women are still being arrested more
frequently and serving longer sentences for the same crimes whites commit.
Black men are still being stopped by the police at higher rates than whites. Our
black children are LITERALLY being molested and abused by police officers.
There are enough abandoned homes in the U.S. to give one to every homeless
person (blacks are disproportionally homeless too.) Too many of us are still
poor, busted and disgusted! I’d like to see a “Day of Service” where we service
each other by finding ways to fight these issues. Can we have a Martin Luther
King Day of anti police brutality marches? How about a day of boycotting
corporations that lobby to keep the minimum wage low and don’t pay any taxes?
How about a day when we all protest in from out our congressional
representatives houses? Or day where we
show our combined economic power and don’t purchase ANYTHING for 24 hours?
The things I listed above probably won’t happen. It takes
strategy, long suffering and a lot of courage to stand up to our oppressors.
Systemic change can’t be done in a day, and we are a generation that likes
immediate gratitude. Why do that when we can just volunteer at a soup kitchen
for a few hours and then treat ourselves for a “job well done” to some take out
and Netflix afterwards? Things aren’t as bad as they were in the 50s and 60s,
right? The truth is we pass around that
quote about service, and then do community service for a day because it’s the
easiest, least controversial way to “honor” his legacy.
I got an email from a friend about donating clothes to the
homeless on Marin Luther King Day as a form of community service. I honestly
could not help. I just dropped off a large bag of clothing to the Circle of
Hope thrift a couple weeks ago (I drop off things I don’t need to them 4-5
times a year) I was thinking about driving two hours to see Dr. Angela Davis
speak tomorrow night but instead I’m going to community meting about the
incident with the teenager and the police mentioned above. I’m not saying all
this to toot my own horn – but rather to show that I’m constantly doing things
to help others and fight the power. That’s how we all should be. And we don't need to turn a man's legacy into community service to do so.
