Martin Luther King Jr Make America Great Again
On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stood before the congregation of Ebenezer Baptist Church building, and preached his concluding sermon at that place—"The Drum Major Instinct." Ominously, King admitted that he occasionally thought about "life'due south last common denominator—that something nosotros phone call death." King, sensing that his days were numbered, went on to soberly dictate how he wished to be memorialized at the fourth dimension of his death. He specifically forbade those who survived him from mentioning his Nobel Peace Prize or other superficial markers of success. Instead, he instructed those in attendance to only highlight the 1 affair he viewed as his singular accomplishment: "I'd like somebody to mention that twenty-four hours that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others…I want you to say that I tried to dear and serve humanity."
As a Christian minister, King summarized his life in this manner, because he firmly believed that, "Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to exist important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. Only recognize that he who is greatest among you lot shall exist your servant." Co-ordinate to King, Jesus taught that the drive to be corking is an admirable instinct when greatness is evaluated past how much one serves others. Armed with Jesus'due south precept, King called upon his parishioners to redefine greatness past becoming drum majors in the quest for justice, peace and righteousness.Today, as the nation celebrates the life of King, it would behoove us to take a moment to fully interrogate our definition of greatness.
How the nation chooses to define greatness will take grave implications. On the one hand, we can choose to "make America great again" by embracing an ethos of xenophobia, misogyny, and racism, as has been advocated by the electric current President of the United states. According to this definition of greatness, nosotros should always put America first, fifty-fifty when others are desperately in need of assist. Thus, when aviary seekers get in at our borders, the President's definition of greatness dictates that nosotros give in to a politics of fear and turn them away on the flimsy premise of their proclivity to violence. In dissimilarity, Rex chosen upon Americans to redefine greatness by embracing an ethos that he called "dangerous altruism."
For Rex, dangerous altruism was epitomized past the protagonist of the Good Samaritan parable. In this biblical story, Jesus tells of a man who is left for dead by a gang of robbers on the side of the very unsafe Jericho Road. Despite being on the precipice of death, a priest and a Levite passed him by pretending non to notice his grave condition. However, the 3rd passerby—a Samaritan—not only showed concern by stopping, but he as well administered assistance and ensured that the homo's condition was significantly improved. King speculated that perhaps the others did not stop out of sheer fright. Co-ordinate to King, the fear acquired those who passed him by to ask, "If I stop to help this homo, what volition happen to me?" The difference between them and the Proficient Samaritan was that the Samaritan reversed the question, and asked, "If I do not cease to help this man, what volition happen to him?" According to King, the Samaritan "was a swell man because he had the mental equipment for a dangerous altruism. He was a swell homo because he could rising above his self-concern to the broader concern of his brother." Similarly, as Americans, we take an opportunity to redefine greatness past setting aside our fears, and asking ourselves what will happen to the aviary seekers at our border if nosotros do non stop to help them. In lodge to make America cracking once more, we must embody a unsafe altruism.
Yet, altruism is non plenty; particularly if it consists of simply engaging in a class of philanthropy that simultaneously preserves unjust structures. In King's terminal volume-length manuscript, Where Practise We Go from Hither, he once again draws upon the Good Samaritan parable, but this time he uses it to telephone call upon Americans to undergo a "revolution of values." King offered. "A truthful revolution of values volition soon crusade us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and nowadays policies. We are chosen to play the Expert Samaritan on life's route side, merely that will only be an initial human action. One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will non be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more flinging a coin to a beggar, information technology understands that an edifice which produces beggars, needs restructuring."
In King's interpretation of the parable, the Jericho Road has become an illustration for contemporary manifestations of structural injustice. As Iris Marion Young explains, "Structural injustice, and then, exists when social processes put large groups of persons under systematic threat of domination or deprivation of the means to develop and practise their capacities," she continues, "at the same time these processes enable others to boss or to have a wide range of opportunities for developing and exercising capacities available to them." Thus, the Jericho Road is meant to represent those social processes that all members of society participate in, which enable some members of gild to flourish while simultaneously making others—by and large non-white and poor—more than vulnerable to domination and deprivation. With this in mind, the endangered man symbolizes those who suffer equally a result of structural inequality. Equally King explained, the wounded human represents "any needy man—on ane of the numerous Jericho roads of life." Unlike those who believe that information technology is enough to fling a coin at the impoverished through various philanthropic measures, while leaving structures of injustice wholly intact, King argued that the entire edifice must exist restructured. Thus, if we want to make America great again, we must do so by transforming those structures that allow some to flourish, while foreclosing opportunities to others.
Finally, it'south important to note that King'southward behavior about responsibleness for transforming structures of injustice spilled beyond America'south borders. For instance, he argued that global commercialism and international commerce have structured the world in such a way that the typical American participates in social processes, which impact people all beyond the world, before they fifty-fifty leave the house each morning:
You get up in the morning and get to the bathroom, and you attain over for a bar of lather, and that'due south handed to you by a Frenchman. You achieve over for a sponge, and that's given to y'all by a Turk. Yous reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. And and so you go on to the kitchen to go your breakfast. You reach on over to get a little java, and that'south poured in your cup by a South American. Or maybe you determine that you want a footling tea this morning, but to notice that that's poured in your cup by a Chinese. Or perchance you want a trivial cocoa, that's poured in your cup by a W African. And then yous want a niggling bread and y'all reach over to get it, and that'south given to you past the easily of an English-speaking farmer, non to mention the baker. Earlier you get through eating breakfast in the morn, you're dependent on more half the world.
King introduced this chestnut as a means to make the claim that: "All life is involved in a single procedure so that whatever furnishings 1 direct affects all indirectly." In another sermon, King reinforced this signal, by recounting his recent trip to Bharat. Reflecting on the poverty he witnessed, King introspectively queried whether Americans had a responsibleness to alleviate the woes of the Indian people. He concluded that they did "considering the destiny of the United States is tied upward with the destiny of India." According to King, America had an imperative to "employ our vast resources of wealth to aid these undeveloped countries that are undeveloped consideringthe people have been dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated, and humiliated across the centuries by foreign powers" (emphasis added). In other words, King is making the claim that India's destiny was, and is, inextricably bound to America's imperialist pursuit of its own destiny.
Applying King'south lesson to our gimmicky moment, information technology is immoral for u.s. to put America commencement, if that means turning a blind center to the suffering of other nations. Instead, nosotros are called to redefine greatness past transforming those global edifices that produce the suffering incurred past atrocities such equally poverty and war. With these lessons in mind, allow's both accolade King and make America keen once more by redefining greatness.
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Source: https://www.aaihs.org/martin-luther-king-jr-on-making-america-great-again/
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