Historically, Martin Luther King Jr. Day offered a chance for elected officials to set aside policy differences and pay homage to the late civil rights leader. But in our present moment of disunity and discord, the holiday has become yet another flashpoint in the culture war. To help heal the nation and continue to work for progress, we might consider the source of our racial, cultural and political divisions. On this, King can offer some insight.
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| Martin Luther King helps us understand our disunity and discord over climate change. |
In 1965, he gave a speech on the steps of the Alabama state capitol in which he explored the history of segregation. When poverty and exploitation threatened to unite black and white voters in the South, King said, “the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society,” with the aim of dividing the working class. The result, he explained, was that when the white man’s “wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.”
As King made clear, institutionalized racism was an attack on the working class, a way to keep poor white voters on the side of white elites. His insight applies equally to other ideologies of ignorance: sexism, xenophobia — even climate change denial. Each is deployed to divide the working class.
Read the Nexus Media story by Jeremy Deaton - “What Martin Luther King Jr. Can Teach Us About Climate Denial.”
