KING'S DREAM AND MULTICULTURALISM: A REVIEW ESSAY

Encounter, Spring 2006 by Burrow, Rufus Jr

KING'S DREAM AND MULTICULTURALISM: A REVIEW ESSAY

Among the contributors to a recent volume edited by James Echols, I Have a Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Future of Multicultural America,1 there is not a single recognizable King scholar who has authored or coauthored a book on him. Upon reading the six lectures and the closing sermon, however, this reader was happily surprised and much instructed by the caliber of thinking, reflection, and imagination reflected in each selection. This reviewer considers it an especially strong point that this collection contains selections by two gifted Afrikan American women seminary professors: Linda E. Thomas and Emilie M. Townes of Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and New York City's Union Theological Seminary, respectively. Although a number of theological womanists, such as Katie G. Cannon and Cheryl KirkDugan, have devoted a few pages to King in books, there has yet to appear a major anthology or a single or joint-authored volume on him edited by a womanist or black feminist. Historian Barbara Ransby includes a very informative chapter on King in her Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (2003). I remain convinced that the greatest gap in King scholarship continues to be the sparseness of contributions by Afrikan American women scholars. Indeed, upon reading the selections by Thomas and Townes, I am even more convinced of the contributions that Afrikan American women scholars can make in the area of King studies. I particularly think that Afrikan American women scholars have fresh ideas to share about King's sexism, black against black violence and murder, and his beloved community ethic.

This collection examines the vision that King articulated in his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech and its implications for the longestablished multicultural United States of America. Lest "longestablished" cause some eyebrows to rise, this volume's contributors contend that the United States has been a multicultural nation, however minimally, at least since the Europeans first forced their way onto native peoples and later drove Afrikans into dehumanizing slavery. The United States became even more multicultural, the argument goes, when the American government forced the Mexican government to sell-at gunpoint-approximately half of its country. The book's selections, therefore, examine the meaning of the "I Have a Dream" speech in the context of an already multicultural society. In this review essay, I will briefly discuss and critique each selection as it appears in the book.

Suffering for the Sake of Resistance

Peter J. Paris reflects first on the context of the civil rights march on Washington, D.C., and later on the structural and ethical content and socio-ethical implications of King's speech. Paris, like others in this volume, is adamant that although the "I Have a Dream" speech was based on a culmination of events that led to the march on Washington, it was not an end, but a beginning-a reminder that much remained to be done. Paris thus avoids the error of reflecting on such matters in a way that implies that when the march ended the dream remained in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.

Two issues Paris raises in his chapter warrant comment. First, he rightly observes that to support his opposition to racism King appealed to the two chief human rights documents in the United States (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), as well as the black church's focus on the biblical symbols of love and justice. I wish Paris had proceeded to say that of these the black church focus was much more significant, inasmuch as the framers of the human rights documents did not write them with the rights of blacks in mind. Indeed, they did not even consider blacks to be human beings. We need only remember that in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, writing the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, declared that blacks have no rights that whites are bound to respect. It is true that King, like Frederick Douglass and a host of other Afrikan American leaders, frequently appealed to the human rights clauses of the Declaration and the Constitution, but they were not always as critical as they should have been in so doing. second, Paris does an excellent job of explaining the meaning of King's oft-quoted comment that "unearned suffering is redemptive." He reminds the reader that the suffering to which King referred is that which one encounters when one determinedly struggles against oppression and injustice. For King, in other words, suffering as such is not redemptive but may be made so in the (nonviolent) struggle against it.

King's Expanding Ethical Outlook

Linda Thomas provides a refreshing reflection on King's hope to lead the Poor People's Campaign (which was carried out posthumously, and unsuccessfully). Her aim is to gain insight into King as a person and his prophetic witness. Thomas endeavors to do so by locating King in the prophetic tradition of the church, reflecting on the Poor People's Campaign as an extension of King's dream, and finally by reflecting theologically on what it means to care for the poor locally, nationally, and globally. Thomas does a good job of showing how King moved from a more local ethical outlook to a national and international one.