MLK, the Organizer & Radical Thinker  ## Metadata - Author: [[Fresh Air]] - Full Title: MLK, the Organizer & Radical Thinker - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/30705341-9dbd-41f2-8976-c8c3ff3dead0 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Contradictory Truths** - America has seen both positive change and persistent white animosity. - Holding these two truths is crucial for understanding King's legacy and the current political climate. Transcript: Tressie McMillan Cottom I'm reflecting on a lot of things this year, which actually surprises me. I have not found Donald Trump's re-election to be a moment that requires a lot of deep personal reflection. Trump and Trumpism is exactly what it looks like. But on Martin Luther King Day, I am thinking a lot about what has changed because I do think it matters a great deal for us to be clear eyed about such things. I think we can slide into hyperbole and say, you know, this country is racist, has always been racist, and will always be racist. And there's a certain level of what like people in my field will call abstraction or a certain bird's eye view where that is true. But I think it's really important for us to also observe the ways in which that is not true. And I think there are a lot of ways in which that isn't true. But it also then becomes all the more urgent to me to consider what I think Martin Luther King's legacy would have us consider, which is how is it possible for there to have been so much Change, some of it positive, some of it what we might call progressive, And yet for there to still be this baseline of white animosity, the urge to do the sort of political reclamation That we see happening with Donald Trump's re-election, and how can we finally, hopefully develop the capacity to hold both of those truths contradictory yet complementary ideas, Like the ones I think Martin Luther King absolutely understood and really tried to develop a language around for everyday people, which I think is one of our upcoming challenges, by The way. ([Time 0:01:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0a996678-be10-4391-8863-271c5d2e6278)) - **America's Continuous Loop** - America oscillates between freedom and its commitment to white supremacy. - The inauguration of Donald Trump on MLK Day embodies this historical conflict. Transcript: Eddie Glaude Jr. Know, I think, you know, human beings are complex, you know. We are capable of extraordinary things. And terrible things all at once. And the same, I think, holds true for nations. And that's all we need to do is tell the truth about the histories of countries. And we see that complexity in full view. I think what's going to be really fascinating, what's fascinating to me is the kind of collision of two versions of America, two views of America. You know, Donald Trump is what he is. MAGA republicanism is what it is. It's an echo of a longstanding view that ours must remain a white nation in the vein of old Europe. And this idea of really reading the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution, right, to understand who we the people actually is, to really think about, right, what does It mean that all men and women are created equal and to read that into a certain understanding of the country and to bring the full weight of the history of race, the history of slavery More particularly or more specifically into that conversation is important. Ironic, startling in some ways, juxtaposition to have the inauguration of Donald Trump on the day that we celebrate MLK, Dr. ([Time 0:03:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/47cc05bd-299b-4911-9891-75285ad6797b)) - **Remembering King** - Many have forgotten how Dr. King was vilified during the Civil Rights Movement. - Trump and the GOP co-opted King the Martyr, but would have hated King the Organizer. Transcript: Tonya Mosley Know, one of the things that I've been thinking about in the context of this moment is how we've been struggling with MLK's legacy, really. I'd actually say for all of my lifetime, we seem to have like this collective amnesia about how vicious and brutal that time period before his assassination was and how he was vilified. And Tressie, you've been thinking about how bluntly President Trump and the GOP have over the years kind of co-opted King the Martyr when you say that they would have hated King the Organizer. ([Time 0:05:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06b5047e-0d0d-487c-9537-7e7f028d04e5)) - **King the Radical** - The state's memorialization of MLK is about an idealized version, not who he was. - Remembering King as a radical organizer and philosopher is a people's project. Transcript: Tonya Mosley Can you say more about that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Tressie McMillan Cottom I think there's something to the American story that we even find ourselves here in this moment, that a man whose campaign draws from the worst racial repertoire of American history In modern complex times, as the head of state is by default, in charge of, at least in this moment, this year, the enshrinement of King's public memory, right? The public memory project that the state does for Martin Luther King. I think it points out something that is important for us to relearn if we have forgotten it, to learn for the first time if we're new here, and certainly to keep in mind as we move forward In the next four years, which is that the state project memorializing Martin Luther King was never about who Martin Luther King actually was. It was about an idealized version of the king the state was willing to accept after he had been murdered. This is as much a memory project of reminding us, by the way, of the high cost of working against the American investment in oppression and inequality as it has ever been about memorializing Martin Luther King, the actual, who I would call an organizer, a mobilizer. I would maybe even go so far as to call him what they called him during his time, because I don't think it's an insult, which is to call him radical. Certainly, I think a radical philosopher and a radical thinker. And the fact that that is not the king that we remember, instead he has been frozen in time as the Martin Luther King of the... Quotables and of the excerpts from a speech that seems to memorialize United States of America as an always perfecting project, when Martin Luther King, in actuality, believed no Such thing. He believed in the power of people to shape this nation, certainly. But that's not the memory project we've undertaken. And perhaps the juxtaposition of seeing Donald Trump preside over the official state memorialization of Martin Luther King will remind us of our responsibility to remembering King As he actually was, which frankly should be a people's project as he was a philosopher and organizer of the people. ([Time 0:05:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e3fc149e-6028-4f30-afb8-142674582ab6)) - **King's Despair** - King faced despair after witnessing attacks on black children integrating schools. - Joan Baez's singing helped him rise from his depression, according to Andrew Young. Transcript: Eddie Glaude Jr. Tracey, I think that's a very important point. We have to think about this moment as a kind of reflection of the continuous loop that is American history, right? This moment where the country seems to give voice to a notion of freedom, an idea of liberty, this commitment to democracy, but it's always shadowed by the ugliness of its commitment To white supremacy, this commitment to the idea that white people matter more than others. And so you always get over the course of the country, this sense that, you know, we're making progress and then we double down on the ugliness. And then, you know, we have to deal with this kind, we call it a backlash, a betrayal, or however, King lived through that. And so to think about King post-March on Washington, to think about Dr. King in 1966 and 1967 and 68, he's dealing with the country that is turning its back on the very movement that he's risked everything for. He sees Ronald Reagan and what Reagan is doing in California. He understands, right, what the state has deployed in terms of the repressive state and the way it's repressing black organizers around the country, the way in which Nixonianism is Beginning to take shape, right? So what does it mean to really deal with Dr. King, right? In 1966, he's in Grenada, Mississippi, organizing to get some elementary students to integrate a school and some school students. John Rundle High School, I believe. And you know what happened? These black kids come out of that school, and white adults with baseball bats and tree limbs attack those babies. And King retreats to his bed. Andrew Young said he had never seen this level of depression in Dr. King. He refused to get up. And it wasn't until Joan Baez sang a chorus of pilgrim sorrow that he began to stir. So the depth of his despair, of his depression, in the face of the country's betrayal. ([Time 0:08:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/db702792-5440-4691-b25a-6e7706cdf468)) - **Uneven Successes** - Many Black Americans feel despondent over the uneven successes of movements like BLM. - They are grieving what could have been if not for the backlash against the movement. Transcript: Tonya Mosley Now we are several years away from 2020, what folks were calling a racial reckoning. And Tressie, you told me that you get the sense that a big issue for many Black people in despair at this moment is that they cannot process the uneven successes of social movements like Tressie McMillan Cottom BLM. Can you say more about that? Yeah. You know, I'm a sociologist and we have this concept called anime, which is, you know, the sense that something about social norms have started to break down. Right. And that to me feels like the sort of bigger response that I'm feeling from a lot of black Americans in this moment. I think that when you look across the landscape of corporate America's retreat from even cosmetic displays of diversity with the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, The all-out attack on access and fairness and I think really our most successful system of social mobility that this country has ever built, I don't think that that is an accident and People feel despondent watching universities, their legitimacy is just sort of being dismantled in front of our eyes. Not that they've ever been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they seem to have, I think, a level of friction that feels dangerous and makes a lot of black people in this moment Feel vulnerable. ([Time 0:12:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/71ab6e4d-7672-4daa-b6d9-6660c6a98716)) - **Delayed Grieving** - The attack on diversity programs and access to social mobility is disheartening. - This evokes a similar feeling to when the Civil Rights movement saw its gains met with resistance. Transcript: Tressie McMillan Cottom And I think that what we are seeing here is more severe than just a temporary emotional state of apathy and anger. I think this is also us doing some delayed grieving for what could have been had the state and so many corporate interests not turned so viciously against Black Lives Matter. Eddie Glaude Jr. The answer is, of course, more complicated than just simply because they're racist. But there's a substantive moral judgment here. And it's a similar kind of logic that those students who risked everything and engaged in nonviolent discipline in the bowels of the South, in Alabama, in Mississippi, in Georgia, And the like, in confronting these brutal sheriffs, get the legislation passed and the material conditions of their lives haven't really changed. And white America is telling them, what else does the, you know, as James Baldwin hated this question, what else does the Negro want? He hated that question because he said the question reveals that they didn't think of him as a human being just like they think of themselves. They think of us instead as a charitable enterprise, you see. So I think the anger, the grief is rooted in the deeply skeptical view of the moral capacity of the nation in this moment. ([Time 0:14:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a5c8d0f7-65e0-4db4-9e8f-5b03f9afea1f)) - **King's Enduring Legacy** - Sixty years after his assassination, we still look to King for guidance. - His ability to articulate complex issues into cohesive stories inspires action and hope. Transcript: Tonya Mosley And that just got me thinking, we're basically 60 years since he was assassinated. We're still looking to him for a path forward. Do either of you ever think about that? Tressie McMillan Cottom You know, I have often said, you know, with a little bit of hyperbole, but I think there is also a serious grain of truth in there that the only thing that has ever made meaningful change Anywhere in the world is a powerful story. I think there is something to Dr. King's ability to articulate these complex, structural, interwoven, at times contradictory yet complementary forces in a cohesive story that does not foreclose on thought or action. And this part is key to me, because there's a certain type of storytelling about what is affecting us, right? You know, think peace culture. But there's a certain way that we can do these explainers about why things are the way they are, that, you know, you get to the end of them, you've read them, or you go to see someone speak, And they do their thing. And at the end, you have no idea what you were supposed to do with that information, right? You may even have an emotional response if they're very good at what they do. But there is another level of storytelling that is both gift and skill. I think we can focus too much on King's remarkable gifts, of which they were many, but downplay, as we often do when we are talking about black people, the extreme amount of preparation And skill that had to meet those gifts to do that. Millennia, I'm not sure, type of meeting of person to the moment that I think we look back to, particularly in times like these, when we are trying to do exactly that, tell a story about All of these things that are happening that I think we understand intuitively are interwoven. ([Time 0:23:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/86745533-a908-49af-aed8-6a1b27980b1b)) - **Be Your Own Leader** - Avoid outsourcing your responsibility for change to past leaders like King. - Recognize that great leaders inspire us to find the greatness within ourselves. Transcript: Tonya Mosley That to the detriment of us, though? You know, I know that you probably have a lot of elders, at least I do, who talk about how there is no leader, there is no person, no guiding force in this moment. Eddie Glaude Jr. I'm King obsessed. You know, my last three books, each consists in a chapter or has a chapter on Dr. King, trying to figure it out. And, you know, in the last book, We Are the Leaders We've Been Looking For, I'm trying to grapple with this figure in my own imagination. And as a country boy from Mississippi who goes to Morehouse, I'm baptized in King's Waters, right? Socialized in his career, his activism, his witness. And oftentimes what happens is that we outsource our own responsibility to the folk who came before us. Oh, if we only had a Dr. King today. Or we find ourselves being complicit or consenting to, rather, a style of leadership that allows us in some ways to abdicate our responsibility to change the moment right in front of Us. King is so large that we become really small. You know, great people come to us, not for us to be supplicants, but they come to us so that we can understand the greatness that's in us. They come as models for us, exemplars. And so oftentimes, Dr. King is invoked, right, to discipline. Oh, let me say something that might be a little bit controversial here. Tonya Mosley No, say it, please. Eddie Glaude Jr. Dr. King is often invoked to justify certain people being in front of the march. There you go. I was with him. I'm in his tradition. He's also invoked to discipline what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent. That's not what Dr. King would say. Remember what the former mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, said? Dr. King wouldn't take over a highway. The idea is to kind of contain and constrain what constitutes legitimate forms of political dissent. We can only engage in mimicry, imitation in some ways, according to certain invocations of Dr. King. He's used to beat us over our heads so that we can't find the energy, the courage, the imagination, the creative will to speak to our moment with his legacy as the wind beneath our wings. ([Time 0:26:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5b06c78c-25d9-461a-8d42-24f140410a44)) - **The Triple Evils** - King's "triple evils" of racism, militarism, and poverty are interconnected. - Current economic inequality reflects a broken capitalist system prioritizing growth over human needs. Transcript: Tonya Mosley Know, I want to talk a little bit about some of what Dr. King was working on in his last days that come back to this economic angst that we were talking about. So as you all both know, he was working on the Poor People's Campaign, which was focused on economic justice for everyone. And I was thinking about this in the context of today because King desired to address what he called the triple evils, which was racism and militarism and poverty. Eddie, how are you thinking about those three in the context of today? Oh, absolutely. Eddie Glaude Jr. I mean, capitalism is broken, right? It presupposes scarcity. It presupposes the disposability of people. It orients us to the world that we just simply consume where growth is the only value to whether or not we're succeeding as a society or not. King understood that, right? And what we've seen, I mean, we're in a second gilded age where oligarchs are just getting richer and richer. They're using their means to influence government, the reins of power and the like. And you see folk who are vulnerable, right? They're vulnerable and they're becoming even more, their situation is becoming even more precarious. And oftentimes they're on the front lines of the catastrophes of climate change, not only in places like New Orleans, but in unexpected places like Central North Carolina, right? That part of North Carolina. So I think it's important for us to understand that there are folk who are appealing to hatred and grievance while they're robbing the nation blind, while they're destroying the planet. Work, you know, they want us to believe that this, you know, that this is a zero-sum game, that there's only so much pie to go around because ([Time 0:30:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6a0203c4-4139-40c1-8c40-de532ce652c0)) - **Nationalist Economics** - "Make America Great Again" promotes nationalist economics and isolationism. - This retrenchment appeals to those experiencing economic insecurity and a crisis of identity. Transcript: Tonya Mosley They're stealing all of it. Tressie, you say that we've retrenched into nationalist economics. I thought that was just like an interesting term. Tressie McMillan Cottom Well, that's at the heart of what Make America Great, America First isolationism is, which is this idea that you can imbue our current economic order, which Eddie so beautifully lays Out there as one, not just about morals, but about the sort of material landscape of extreme extraction and wealth on one end, and this growing, yawning, indecent level of inequality, Instability, and insecurity, not just on the other end, but on the other end and encroaching to the middle, which I would argue is the crisis that we find ourselves in, which is that people Who have for a very long time seen themselves as middle class are realizing that they are working class at best, And that crisis of identity and position opens people up to a lot of demagoguery. So that's like the sort of like economic material landscape that we find ourselves in. And so there's a reason that a politics of nationalism nation first would look like a reasonable solution to a lot of people. You know, I like this term, it's called like folk economics. And that's this idea that, you know, really economics, you're running a state apparatus, especially one as powerful as the United States, is a really complicated, complex endeavor. And yet every two or four years, politicians come out and they turn to the American public and they talk about the U.S. Budget like it is balancing a checkbook. How many times have we heard that, well, you pay your bills when you sit at your kitchen table. America needs to worry about her bills first, right? We reduce all of this complexity. Militarism, by the way, you know, the vast cost and expense of running a vast network of military operations across the world can't actually be reduced to a family's checkbook, right? But that sort of folk economics gets people to think about the nation as their kitchen table. And so the thing about the kitchen table is everybody can't sit at your kitchen table. These are some of the first decisions you actually make about who is welcome and who is not. And so it invites us to think about what is effectively a moral relationship to wealth and resources that the state is responsible for as really just being about our preferences and How much money we have at the end of the day when we balance the checkbook. That's been the neoliberal promise that if you think about this country like you think about your personal checking account, at the end of the day, you will be better off than where you Started, or certainly that your children will be better off than where they started. And that is not at all how that works, right? We actually have to make these big decisions about what our national values are relative to the rest of the world and our responsibilities to each other. And that means you sometimes spend a lot of money on something like education or health care that won't actually balance in a checkbook at the end of the day, but will mean fewer sick and Dying children. ([Time 0:33:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/be8879c6-cda6-4cd1-b2c7-1ac1cd543d70)) - **Morality and Law** - Laws can regulate behavior and restrain the heartless, even if they cannot change hearts. - Morality and law must work together to achieve social justice. Transcript: Tonya Mosley You actually chose a clip from Dr. King's 1966 speech at Wesleyan University that speaks to the morality issue. Let's listen. Speaker 4 It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change a heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me. Religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain the morality issue. Let's listen. Him from lynching me. And I think that's pretty important also. Tonya Mosley That was Dr. King at Wesleyan University in 1966. You chuckle, Eddie. Eddie Glaude Jr. I think it's absolutely right. You know, I think it's right on. You know, I mean, this is not an either or. We don't have to buy into the binary. We want to constrain evil as we fight evil. And we need to understand the workings of the law in helping us constrain evil as we try to become better people. Tressie McMillan Cottom Tressie, why did you choose that clip? I chose this one because I think it goes to the issue that I raised at the beginning, the idea that we are going to have to hold contradictory and yet complementary ideas at the same time, And that Martin Luther King, the status memory project, has worked very hard to flatten out those contradictions. Whereas Martin Luther King, the actual person, the strategist, the organizer, the philosopher, the scholar, understood quite clearly the pragmatic nature of moral claims, that This focus on content of character, as beautiful a line as that is, by the way, it is not the sum total of our responsibility to ourselves, to each other, or to Martin Luther King's memory. That Martin Luther King's memory is best served when we deal with the contradictions and the nuances that he understood so well, which is that there is nothing dirty about participating In politics. None of us have the privilege of being moral purists in that sense, but also that changing law without a moral claim will just lead to more laws that double down on the existing cumulative Effects of racism and classism and sexism and all of the others, right? That you do have to do both and that none of us can afford to think that we live above the fray. The fray is where the people are. The fray is where we work out what our morality is. And we do that in part by concerning ourselves, not just with people's hearts, or I might say one's racist bones, which I suspect live next to one's heart, that that is not just a product Of heart and bones, right? That is a product of hard work, of not just electoral politics, but yes, also electoral politics. And if the mess did not scare off Martin Luther King, it probably should not scare us off either. ([Time 0:40:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2dd92df3-da5f-4a57-b133-03e545810e16)) - **Hope in the Face of Adversity** - Recognize that many prioritize privilege over democratic principles. - Find hope and strength in the few who remain committed to justice. Transcript: Tonya Mosley Know, I initially wanted to end our conversation with an excerpt from Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech, but I think a speech you selected, Eddie, might be more fitting. This is King in March of 1968, one month before he was assassinated. Speaker 4 Let's listen. And I must honestly confess that I get or go through those moments of disappointment when I have to recognize the fact that there aren't enough white persons in our country who are willing To cherish democratic principles over privilege. But I'm grateful to God that some are left. Tonya Mosley Eddie, tell us why you chose this clip. Eddie Glaude Jr. It's King confronting the reality of the challenge before him, that there are large numbers of people, of white people in the country, who are more committed to their selfish pursuits Than they are to justice, that they're willing to throw away a fundamental affirmation of the dignity and standing of everyday ordinary folk in pursuit of their own aims and ends. But he thanks God that there are few who aren't like that. And you know, it's that few, right? Those of us who are committed to a better world, that together we can fight for democracy itself. So I chose it because I'm grappling with how does King muster the resources to keep fighting in the face of the country's unwillingness to change, fundamentally? And so here we see the realism, and we see the hope. And that's what we need in this moment, I think. Tressie McMillan Cottom Tressie, last word. Could not agree more. You know, we have made the case here, as I think is often made, that history is cyclical. History repeats itself. I like to think of history as a spinning top, that even as it moves forward, it wobbles and the interior of it is going round and round. So sometimes progress does feel like turning in circles. And that our commitment to a transactional hope that when we do the hard work, when we go out to vote, when we sign a petition, when we march, that there has to be an immediate return to those Actions to justify taking yet another action, is one of the ways that the neoliberal order that Eddie has spoken about so eloquently here that so many of us are suffering through convinces Us to divest from the things that matter to us. You do the thing that matters, whether it feels like you are moving forward or not, because the thing about history is that you really don't know where you're standing until it has passed. That's why in the moment, we are supposed to be guided by something more, something bigger, morality, accountability, responsibility to ourselves, to our values, to one another. And that this is not the first time we've been called to do that. I take a lot of comfort in that. Eddie says that's the reason why he chose that speech, because it so mirrors our current moment. I actually take a lot of comfort in the fact that we have been here before, and we've not only survived it, we have figured it out. And so I think that we will continue to figure it out, but we probably need to give up the transactional nature of our hope and do the thing that needs to be done because it needs to be done. That's our responsibility to history. Tressie McMillan Cottom and Eddie Glaude, thank you so much for this conversation. Eddie Glaude Jr. Thank you. Tressie McMillan Cottom Thank you. Cannot thank you enough, actually. This has been really edifying in a moment when I'm finding few things that do that for me. So thank you. ([Time 0:43:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8b710500-9d44-407c-a574-bbda9595c3ba))