Not Worthy

Most definitely not worthy of even being pictured with the civil rights leader.


Our president is also not worthy of invoking the name of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Even so, he did, in another made for public consumption event heralding Colin and Alma Powell's service to the country.

Bush marked the 76th anniversary of King's birth, actually Jan. 15, by remembering how the slain civil rights leader changed the country through his love of its founding ideals and his disappointment that the promise of freedom was not met for all.

"We need our children to know how great the struggle for racial justice in our society has been and how much work remains to be done," Bush said. "And we need the children of American to know that a single life of conscience and purpose can touch and lift up many lives."

Others have written more eloquently than I (see, Bob Herbert in today's Times and below by Attaturk) about so many of the great words spoken by Dr. King more than a generation ago. I don't want to let the day go by without adding my own voice. On this day designated to celebrate Dr. King's immense achievments we have our president invoking Dr. King's name and the pursuit of justice. His words about the struggle for racial justice seem so hollow, the invitation to more work in the struggle, so empty.

It isn't enough to invoke his name. It isn't enough to pay lip service to a struggle not only that you don't know, but refuse to understand. It's no sin to not know the sting of racism, it is only a sin to be willfully blind to it. It isn't a sin to not know the feelings associated with the symptoms of racism: hunger, the lack of employment opportunity, the lack of social opportunity, to name a few. But it is a sin to allow those conditions to continue, to act as if your actions don't make those conditions more likely.

When invoking the name of Dr. King the president should ask himself whether Dr. King would approve of his policies. We know Ronald Reagan would approve but how about Dr. King? Would Dr. King approve of Bush's policies regarding economic and employment justice? How about social justice? The rights of the poor and disenfranchised? We all know the answers and therefore have the duty to speak out about those injustices. We have the duty not to stand by while Bush invokes the name of one of the great leaders in American history acting like he has the right because he appointed a few conservative African-Americans to his cabinet. It isn't enough and he has not earned the right to speak of the cause of civil and racial justice and equality. This is so especially when his policies are so inconsistent with the noble goals advanced by Dr. King, as well as the means used by Dr. King to achieve those goals what seems like so long ago.