Recommended Reading for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Despite the fact that I live in the midst of the entertainment capital of the world, I am fairly clueless about the industry famous.  Claire frequently points out someone eating right next to us at lunch and not only do I not recognize the person, I don’t even know who she is after Claire explains.  Claire would have laughed if she witnessed how I almost dropped my fork when Cornell West, theologian, intellectual and  author, sat down across the room from me during lunch one day in Princeton. 

Dr. West wrote Race Matters in response to the 1993 Los Angeles riot.  Dr. West states that the riot wasn’t a race riot, but a “multi-racial, trans-class, and largely male display of justified social rage.”  I lived in the midst of the Los Angeles riot.  At one point our grocery store and corner convenience store were looted and each surrounding major street had buildings in full blaze.  When it was over and so many Angelenos were out to help clean up, friends dropped by to say they were on a clean up crew and were “in our neighborhood.”  Then the value of our home plummeted by more than a third.  I love the message of Race Matters because I learned in April, 1992, on a whole new level, that race relations, not just my race in relation to another, but how all races interact with each other, effects everyone.

I appreciated Dr. West’s balanced view of noting the attributes and weakness of the traditional liberal and conservative views of black America.  He criticizes the liberals for relying too much on government programs to help black people because it frames the problems as solely economic issues.  He believes that the conservative approach of blaming the moral behavior of black people as the source of their problems focuses too much on the irresponsible behavior without taking responsibility for the immoral circumstances that pervade our nation.  What convicted me by page 5 was when he said these issues are largely framed as the problems of black people rather than issues of fellow American citizens. 

When this book was published in 1993, Dr. West argued that one of the biggest threats to black America was the feeling of meaninglessness and hopelessness among the population.  While these threats aren’t new, one factor that changed was the abililty of black cultural structures to support black American life andcounter the feelings of worthlessness.  The black community severly suffered from dual deterioration of the black psyche in conjunction with the failure of the cultural systems to combat it. Dr. West believed these structures broke down in response to a culture that uses every opportunity possible to make money, “it is clear that corporate market institutions have greatly contributed to undermining traditional morality in order to stay in business and make a profit.  The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries–television, radio, video, music–in which gestures of sexual foreplay and orgiastic pleasure flood the marketplace.”

I almost stood up and cheered when I read that and other points in the book that discuss how our culture, advertising in particular, sells us a bill of goods that buying an item makes us better people. A belief I have shared with anyone who will listen to me.  The constant bombardment of these messages emphasizes individual satisfaction, as quick as possible.  Doubt it?  Watch the Super Bowl commercials with a critical eye.

The book contains interesting chapters on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings (such as why was the black community silent), black and Jewish relations (in part an issue of higher expectations), black sexuality (it shouldn’t be a taboo subject) and a critique of black conservatism (they have valid points, but while blacks don’t believe white racism is the cause of all of their problems, it certainly is one of them and the conservatives lose credibility by their failure to acknowledge that).On affirmative action, Dr. West stated that it is a political response to the “pervasive refusal of most whites Americans to judge black Americans on the basis [of their skills].”  He notes that there is reliable evidence of this, and that there isn’t any evidence that without affirmative action white Americans will make choices on merit rather than race.

 Dr. West lays out a plan to combat the state of America in the introduction of the book, a series of pages I read out loud to each of my family members:

1. America must realize that our greatest source of help and hope is ourselves.
2. We must focus ourselves on the common square, the public good, which can be seen on how much we care about the quality of our lives together.  For example, our care of our public infrastructure demonstrates our commitment to the public good.
3. We need incredible leaders “who can situate themselves within a larger historical narrative of this country and our world, who can grasp the complex dynamics of our peoplehood and imagine a future grounded in the best of our past, yet who are attuned to the frightening obstacles that now perplex us.  Our ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality must be invoked to invigorate all of us, especially the landless, propertyless, and luckless.”

Sound familar?  Clearly, President-elect Obama read this book long ago.

The Obama team has called for a National Day of Service on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in honor of a man who lived his life as  servant to so many.  The website generates a list of activities in your area in response to your zip code.  We’ll be looking over the list in for Los Angeles to find a way to follow in Dr. King’s example and serve our community.