African-American Peacemakers - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, and the Struggle Against Racism, Inequality and War

by Manning Marable
BlackCommentator.com
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/272/272_acl_peacemakers_struggle_racism_inequality_war.html>

     [This speech was delivered at the University of
     Illinois at Chicago, sponsored by the Great Cities
     Institute on April 4, 2008]

4 April 2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We still
tend to focus our image of Martin delivering his "I Have
A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, at the 1963
March on Washington, D.C. However, civil rights was not
the only issue that divided America in the 1960s. By
1966, U.S. military forces in South Vietnam amounted to
184,000; by January 1969, 536,000 U.S. troops were
stationed in that country. For black Americans, the war
had a direct impact upon every community. African
Americans comprised about one out of every seven U.S.
soldiers stationed in Vietnam, and because African
Americans tended to be placed in "combat units" more
often than middle-class whites. They also bore unfairly
higher risks of being killed and wounded. From January
through November 1966, over one-fifth of all army
casualties were black.

By 1965, however, a small number of black progressives
had begun to speak in opposition to the war. Julian
Bond, elected to the Georgia State House of
Representatives, defended the right of "the Vietnamese
peasants who . have expressed a real desire to govern
themselves." The "gunboat diplomacy of the past" had
little place in contemporary world affairs. Perhaps the
most articulate opponent of the US war effort holding
public office was US Representative Ronald V. Dellums.
From the floor of Congress, Dellums declared:

    "I consider our involvement in Indochina illegal,
    immoral and insane. We are in a war which is the
    greatest human and economic drain on American
    resources in modern times - a war disproportionately
    waged on the backs of blacks and browns and reds and
    yellows and poor and working class whites, a war
    resulting in an untold number of deaths of the
    Vietnamese people, a war that is justified only by
    the notion that we as a  nation, must save face . M
    of people in the country are no longer willing to
    engage in such folly and be cannon fodder, and go
    across the water to spill their blood on foreign
    soil in a cause many of them do not even
    understand."

Black activists and intellectuals, who were part of the
Black Power movement, had serious reservations about
participating in anti-war organizations dominated by
white liberals and leftists. But almost all of them
opposed the Vietnam War; some even drew an analogy
between the suffering of the Vietnamese as a "colonial
people", and the "domestic colonialism" experienced by
African Americans.

During the bitter national debate on Vietnam, nearly all
major all public leaders within black America were
forced to choose sides. As a dedicated pacifist, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. could not look upon the conflict
benignly without taking some kind of public stand
against the war. At the annual Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) executive board meeting
held in Baltimore on 1-2 April 1965, Dr. King expressed
the need to criticize the Johnson Administration's
policies in Southeast Asia. His old colleagues, fearful
that Dr. King's support for the anti-war movement would
hurt the SCLC financially and politically, voted to
allow him to do so only as a private person, without
organizational endorsement. Bayard Rustin, the key
organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, still
maintained close ties with King, and tried to pressure
the SCLC leader into a position of neutrality on
Vietnam. On 10 September 1965, Rustin, Dr. King, and
SCLC aides Andrew Young and Bernard Lee met with the US
Ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg.
Goldberg managed to convince Dr. King, for the moment,
that the Johnson Administration had every intention of
bringing the conflict to a peaceful resolution. For
several months, Dr. King watched anxiously as the number
of US troops stationed in Vietnam increased. Finally in
January 1966, Dr. King published his criticisms about
the Vietnam War.

"Some of my friends of both races, and others who do not
consider themselves my friends, have expressed
disapproval because I have been voicing concern over the
war in Vietnam," Dr. King explained. But as a Christian,
Dr. King believed that he had no choice except to
"declare that war is wrong." Black leaders could not
become blind to the rest of the world's issues, while
engaged solely in problems of domestic race relations.
Martin argued, "The Negro must not allow himself to
become a victim of the self-serving philosophy of those
who manufacture war that the survival of the world is
the white man's business alone." The negative response
to Dr. King's anti-war statement was swift. SCLC leaders
in Chattanooga, Tennessee, severed relations with the
national organization in protest. National Urban League
director Whitney Young replied that blacks were not
interested in the Vietnam issue. Martin vigorously
lobbied among his allies in the SCLC to back his
position on Vietnam, and in the spring of 1966 the
organization's executive board came out officially
against the war.

Increasingly, as Dr. King's attention was drawn to the
Vietnam war, he also began to consider the necessity for
black Americans to devise a more radical strategy for
domestic reforms. Dr. King was beginning to articulate a
radical democratic vision for American society: the
nationalization of basic industries; massive federal
expenditures to revive central cities and to provide
jobs for ghetto residents; programs to address rural
poverty; a job or guaranteed income for every adult
American.

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before his
assassination, Martin delivered his eloquent, yet
controversial address, "Beyond Vietnam," at New York
City's Riverside Church. In his sermon, Dr. King
advanced his strongest denunciation yet of the U.S.
military escalation in Vietnam.

"I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,"
Dr. King began, "because my conscience leaves me no
other choice." Martin noted that the presence of
hundreds of thousands of US troops in southeast Asia had
only led to the deaths of thousands of innocent victims,
and had cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. "A
nation that continues year after year to spend more
money on military defense than on programs of social
uplift is approaching spiritual death," Dr. King
observed. It was impossible for the administration of
then-President Lyndon Johnson to carry out his "Great
Society" social programs, or his "War On Poverty," when
billions of dollars were being reallocated to destroy
Vietnamese villages, towns and homes. King announced
that "it would be very inconsistent for me to teach and
preach nonviolence in this situation and applaud
violence when thousands and thousands of people, both
adults and children, are being maimed and many killed in
this war."

Despite these criticisms, eleven days later, in New York
City's Central Park, Dr. King led a rally of 125,000 in
protest against the Vietnam War. As New York Times
journalist Bob Herbert observed, Dr. King's "Beyond
Vietnam" address "unleashed a hurricane of criticism."
The NAACP and other moderate civil rights leaders, such
as Bayard Rustin, sharply criticized King for "stepping
out of his perceived area of expertise, civil rights, to
raise his voice against the evil of the war." The New
York Times joined these critics, proclaiming in an
editorial headline, "Dr. King's Error."

Four decades later, the US was once again confronted
with a controversial, unwinnable ground war in Asia, and
a domestic debate over our military involvement there.
In the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks after
9/11 back in 2001, African Americans, like other
Americans, were morally and politically outraged by Al
Qaeda's terrorist attacks. Yet they were deeply troubled
by the immediate groundswell of patriotic fervor,
national chauvinism and numerous acts of violence and
harassment targeting individual Muslims and Arab
Americans. They recognized that behind this mass
upsurgence of American patriotism was xenophobia, ethnic
and religious intolerance that could potentially
reinforce traditional white racism against all people of
color, particularly themselves. They questioned the Bush
administration's "Patriot Act of 2001" and other legal
measures that severely restricted Americans' civil
liberties and privacy rights. For these reasons, the
majority of  black leaders sought to uphold Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.'s tradition of civil rights and civic
liberties, and boldly challenged the US rationale for
its military incursions in both Afghanistan, and later
Iraq.

The pastor of New York City's Riverside Church, the
Reverend James A. Forbes, Jr., proposed that African
Americans embrace a critical, "prophetic patriotism. You
will hold America to the values of freedom, justice,
compassion, equality, respect for all, patience and care
for the needy, a world where everyone counts." Norman
Hill, an African-American labor leader, observed in the
New Pittsburgh Courier: "Threatening or attacking people
because of their ethnic or religious background helps
the terrorists by dividing the country. African
Americans should remember this: after 300 years of
oppression and discrimination, we are making progress in
taking our full place in American society, thanks to the
struggles of the Civil Rights Movement. The last thing
we want to see is a revival of hatred and discrimination
based on race, ethnicity, religion or nationality."
Urban League President Hugh Price argued that black
Americans must "vigorously support the federal
government's efforts to root out the terrorists wherever
they hide around the globe . . ." However, Price also
insisted that "black America's mission, as it has always
been, is to fight against the forces of hatred and
injustice, to fight for the right of all human beings to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

As the U.S. Justice Department began to arrest and hold
without trial hundreds of Muslims and Arab Americans,
Islamic groups urgently appealed to the Nation of Islam,
NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus for assistance.
Approximately 40 percent of the U.S.'s Islamic
population is African American, and hundreds of native-
born blacks, because of their religious affiliations,
also found themselves under surveillance or were
arrested, despite having no links to terrorist groups.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson openly condemned the police
practice of ethnic/religious "profiling," by declaring
that the U.S. needed to focus its resources toward the
"building of understanding and building a just peace,"
instead of resorting to warfare to "root out terrorism."

In March, 2003, as the U.S. military invaded Iraq, a Pew
Research Center opinion poll found that only 44 percent
of African Americans favored the war. By contrast, white
Americans endorsed the invasion by 73 percent, with
Latinos favoring military conflict by 66 percent.
African-American clergy, led by Brooklyn activist, the
Reverend Herbert Daughtry, organized daily "vigils for
peace" near the United Nations. The black ministers
created a "Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Now Movement,"
which actively participated in the growing anti-war
mobilization throughout the U.S. Black arts
poet/publisher Haki Madhubti explained to the press why
the majority of African Americans opposed the Iraq War,
stating, "We've lived under terror since our forced
migration to this country. We've been able to build a
life around terror."

By early April 2003 the U.S. had successfully toppled
the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein, and over one
hundred thousand U.S. troops occupied the country. No
"weapons of mass destruction," the justification for the
U.S. invasion, were found. The military invasion of an
Islamic country strengthened the network of
fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, by creating a vivid
example of imperialist aggression aimed against the
entire Islamic world. In a 4 April 2003 Gallup opinion
poll, 78 percent of white Americans supported the
military invasion; African-American support for the war
had plummeted to only 29 percent.

In this presidential campaign year, the candidate
speaking most decisively within the antiwar tradition of
Dr. King's Riverside Church peace address is Illinois
Senator Barack Obama. In a major address on 20 March
2008 at the University of Charleston, Obama urged the
electorate to consider the destructive impact that
Bush's five-year-long war in Iraq has had on the
economy. Obama observed: "The more than $10 billion
we're spending each month in Iraq is money we could be
investing here at home. Just think about what battles we
could be fighting instead of fighting this misguided
war." Obama showed the ability to break down the $10
billion Iraq War bill to illustrate how every U.S.
family was bearing part of the financial burden. "When
Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month,
you're paying a price for this war," Obama declared. "No
matter what the costs, no matter what the consequences,
John McCain seems determined to carry out a third [Bush]
term. That's an outcome America can't afford."

Every day, the nation is currently slipping further into
a serious economic crisis, while President Bush
mindlessly tap dances outside the White House. Between
September, 2007 and January, 2008, the median price for
a U.S. home fell 6 percent compared to one year earlier.
The private sector economy lost 26,000 jobs in January,
2008, and another 101,000 jobs in February.

Obama's immediate challenge, therefore, is to link the
current economic and mortgage crisis being experienced
by millions of Americans, with the political economy of
the Iraq War. The place for Obama to start would be to
remind voters of the distance between Bush's promises
about the projected economic costs of the conflict vs.
the reality. The federal government is incapable of
addressing domestic economic problems, he might argue,
because the Iraq War cost is so expensive.

Five years ago, the Bush administration promised
Americans that the cost for invading and occupying Iraq
militarily would be approximately $50 to $60 billion. By
the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, this March,
the Pentagon admitted that military expenditures now
exceed $600 billion. The Congressional Budget Office, a
nonpartisan center, sets the real cost somewhere between
$1 trillion and $2 trillion.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, my
faculty colleague at Columbia University, estimates that
the long term cost for Bush's war in Iraq could exceed
$4 trillion. The best way to comprehend this enormous
waste of money and human lives that the United States
government has carried out is to measure the unmet needs
and obligations we are failing to address. Several days
ago, for example, Democratic Presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton estimated the cost of the Iraq War at
well over $1 trillion: "That is enough to provide health
care to all 47 million uninsured Americans and quality
pre-kindergarten for every American child, solve the
housing crisis once and for all, make college affordable
for every American student and provide tax relief to
tens of millions of middle-class families."

Even some honest Republicans who supported the Iraq War
now recognize how terribly wrong their estimates were
for how much the conflict would cost. Take the case of
economist Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush's first chief
economic adviser. Lindsey was fired from his post years
ago because he estimated that the war could cost $100
billion to $200 billion. Lindsay's preliminary figures
were right, but he underestimated how long U.S. troops
would be stationed and fighting in Iraq. Now, Republican
Presidential candidate John McCain promises us that
American troops could be stationed and fighting in Iraq
for one hundred years.

The Iraq War fosters a culture of intolerance and
violence that has infected domestic politics. Militarism
and imperialism abroad have produced at home a "National
Security State," a government that now routinely
suppresses civil liberties and civil rights. As poverty
and class inequality grow exponentially, prisons become
the last bastion for preserving the social hierarchy of
class, race and gender privilege and unfairness.

As of 2008, one out of every one hundred American adults
is living behind bars. According to a December 2007
study of the American Civil Liberties Union, "Race and
Ethnicity in America," in the past thirty years there
has been a 500 percent increase in the number of
Americans behind bars, amounting to 2.2 million people,
which represent 25 percent of the world's prison
population. This prison population is disproportionately
black and brown. As of 2006, the U.S. penal population
was 46 percent white, 41 percent African American, and
19 percent Latino. In practical terms, by 2001, about
one out of every six African-American males had
experienced jail or imprisonment. Based on current
trends, over one out of three black men will experience
imprisonment during their lives.

There is overwhelming evidence that the
overrepresentation of blacks in prisons is largely due
to discrimination in every phase of the criminal justice
system. According to the 2007 ACLU study, for example,
African Americans comprised 11 percent of Texas's
population, but 40 percent of the state's prisoners.
Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at roughly five times
the rate of whites. Despite the fact that blacks
statistically represent fewer than 10 percent of drug
abusers, in Texas 50 percent of all prisoners
incarcerated in state prisons and two-thirds of all
those in jails for "drug delivery offenses" are African
Americans.

A similar pattern is found within the juvenile justice
system. African-American youth represent 15 percent of
all American juveniles. However, they represent 26
percent of all juveniles who are arrested by the police
nationwide. They are 58 percent of all youth who are
sentenced to serve time in state prisons. In California,
Latino youth are two times more likely than whites to be
sentenced to prison; for African-American youth in
California, it is six times the incarceration rate.

What are the practical political consequences of the
mass incarceration of black Americans? In New York
State, for example, the prison populations play a
significant role in how some state legislative districts
are drawn up. In New York's 45th senatorial district,
located in the extreme northern corner of upstate New
York, there are thirteen state prisons, with 1,000
prisoners, all of whom are counted as residents.
Prisoners in New York are disenfranchised - they cannot
vote - yet their numbers help to create a Republican
state senatorial district. These "prison districts" now
exist all over the United States.

The most obscene dimension of the national compulsion to
incarcerate has been the deliberate Criminalization of
young black people, with the construction of a "school-
to-prison pipeline." Under the cover of  "zero
tolerance" for all forms of "disobedience," too many
school administrators are aggressively and unfairly
removing black youth from schools. Statistically,
African-American youths are two to three times more
likely than whites to be suspended, and far more likely
to be corporally punished or expelled. According to the
ACLU's 2007 study, "nationally, African American
students comprise 17 percent of the student population,
but account for 36 percent of school suspensions and 31
percent of expulsions. In New Jersey, for example, black
students are nearly 60 times more likely to be expelled
than their white counterparts. In Iowa, blacks make up
just 5 percent of the statewide public school
enrollment, but account for 22 percent of suspensions."
Too many black children are taught at an early age that
their only future resides in a prison or jail. Those who
escape prison might find themselves fighting or even
dying in an unwinnable war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, as our military adventures abroad continue,
states are reducing their investments in education,
while expanding expenditures in their correctional
facilities. Between 1987 and 2007, states spent an
average of a 21 percent increase on higher education,
but expanded their corrections budgets by an average of
127 percent. Today, for the first time in recent
history, there are now five states that spend more state
money on prisons than on public colleges - Connecticut,
Delaware, Michigan, Oregon, and Vermont. The ugly
tradeoff not to educate but to incarcerate continues.
The ever-expanding prison industrial complex lies at the
center of America's National Security State. Now is the
time to return America's government to democratic
processes and the rule of law. Now is the time to break
with the culture of violence - militarism abroad and
mass incarceration at home. Now is the time to "give
peace a chance."

Obama's biggest challenge, therefore, must be to explain
to the American people that both imperialist wars
abroad, the construction of a "National Security State"
mass incarcerations and prisons, and periodic economic
crises at home, all represent a profound structural
failure within America's legal, economic and political
systems. This is the political economy of institutional
violence. This was, of course, the realization of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., just before his assassination.
"For years I labored with the idea of reforming the
existing institutions of society," Dr. King declared in
1966, "a little change here, a little change there. Now
I feel quite differently." Let us summon the courage of
Dr. King, by opposing this immoral war. Let us join the
great tradition of African-American peacemakers by
rejecting and dismantling our prison industrial complex
and mass incarceration. Let us imagine a world without
racism and a nation dedicated to peace and freedom.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Manning
Marable, PhD is one of America's most influential and
widely read scholars. Since 1993, Dr. Marable has been
Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History
and African-American Studies at Columbia University in
New York City. For ten years, Dr. Marable was founding
director of the Institute for Research in African-
American Studies at Columbia University, from 1993 to
2003. Dr. Marable is an author or editor of over 20
books, including Living Black History: How Reimagining
the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial
Future (2006); The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A
Hero's Life And Legacy Revealed Through His Writings,
Letters, And Speeches (2005); Freedom: A Photographic
History of the African American Struggle (2002); Black
Leadership: Four Great American Leaders and the Struggle
for Civil Rights (1998); Beyond Black and White:
Transforming African-American Politics (1995); and How
Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in
Race, Political Economy, and Society (South End Press
Classics Series) (1983). His current project is a major
biography of Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm X: A Life of
Reinvention, to be published by Viking Press in 2009.
Click here to contact Dr. Marable or visit his Website
manningmarable.net.

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