MLK In Remembrance: Do Better.

We talked about how MLK's sanitized and Santa Clausified version has become a part of our collective memory. How, it is the version that is stripped of his more radical thoughts and gives us a man who preached for peace, equality and love. His radical legacy was erased from popular collective memory and we were left with a man whose afterlife was amplified by the nature of his death and the iconic speech, "I Had a Dream". 

We discussed Cornel West briefly in class. I wanted to elaborate on West's idea of romanticism, or more like his critique of romanticism and what he considers, an examined life. What is the reason that MLK became what he is in our collective history? West talks about romanticizing the past or the future after one is struck by a tragedy in life. This romanticizing takes the shape of either nostalgia or disappointment (or both). One thinks of the world as beautiful by glossing over its dark and disgusting pits, and tragedy is dealt with as a disappointment (how can this happen to me?!) or as nostalgia (what a man he was, we will never have anyone like him again!). Time in such a world is completely linear but also uneventful -once the wonderful thing is lost - all one can do is look back in nostalgia and spend the time left being disappointed by things that come along. 

MLK's memory is colored with romanticism. The world he had died in has died with him and does not seep into the memory of him. The romanticized version is one where no one like MLK will ever come along and the kind of work he did was the kind of work only he could do. There is deep nostalgia around his memory and no figure like him can come again. He's, in all seriousness, the Messiah. 

Perhaps the reason for MLK’s afterlife being the way it is, is because an examination of his life by Americans is to look at the catastrophe one has enabled than a catastrophe one went through. So instead of responsibility, one is drawn towards thinking of how he is preaching for justice, equality and love. Because who has not felt wronged and unloved? It personalizes and softens his demands to become their demands. It kind of puts them on the side of the one being wronged. So we can all promise to love each other and always be just and fulfil the legacy of MLK.

West has a bone to pick with that interpretation and sanitization (and by extension, me too). There's no denying that MLK was exceptional, inspiring and a force to be reckoned with. But his romanticized account does not let us truly examine the world he died in and hence the world we live in right now. Allow me to elaborate. It's as if the problems and the reasons that led to MLK's assassination were the kind that did not deserve as much spotlight as his death did. Yes, commemorate the man! but commemoration does not need to be through a romantic recalling, but one that is based in a different philosophy. Let's check that philosophy out. 

West famously says, "learn to see the world in all of its darkness and still love it". One that is a non romantic (abbreviated as NR henceforward) is one that is born in the STENCH of life, in the STINK of a world that refuses to think of her as fully human, that refuses to treat her as anything but a problem. To be an NR is to “fail, fail again, do better”. There’s no room for perpetual disappointment and nostalgia.

In my opinion, this is how we (non-African Americans) must remember great men like MLK. This bizarre obsession with making him American home friendly, of toning down the STINK of the world he passed away in, is to simply overlook the conditions that led to his death, the conditions that continue to haunt African Americans to this day. To see MLK as an NR is to, as West puts it, “ride the dissonance wave high” and realize the role one plays in enabling the conditions that lead to atrocities.