Who will you fight and for what will you fight?
By: Vincent Hall
“All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”- The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
If you want to see the Martin Luther King that white folks don’t want you to know, you must do a little research.
The previous quote can be found in the middle of his address on April 16, 1967, to 125,000 protesters who gathered in Central Park in New York City.
They will replay that line about being “judged by the content of your character” to more than 250,000 at the March on Washington, but you will rarely hear any mention of this moment when Dr. King showed character and denounced the Vietnam War.
It is our fault that Dr. King continued to be canonized, sanitized, and reduced to some feel-good preacher who inspired the nation.
No, the truth is that Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down because what he said in his latter days didn’t line up with the military-industrial complex and the president’s decision to take us into an unnecessary war!
Listen to the prophetic words on the b side of that paragraph, which he wrote more than 50 years ago.
“The Greatest irony and tragedy of all is that our nation, which initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world, is an arch antirevolutionary. We are engaged in a war that seeks to turn the clock of history back and perpetuate white colonialism.”
It is wrong that we celebrate a day commemorating Martin King’s life and legacy but reduce its significance to Rodney King’s words: “Can’t we just all get along?”
The answer is no. We can’t just get along until we as a nation exhaust every possibility for peace and justice throughout the world. Black folks in America can not just go along with the new “Trump Doctrine,” which seeks to devalue all non-whites as humans and fellow citizens.
Where are the protests and the political provocateurs of today? Who is responsible for drafting, designing, and deploying the official opposition response to the Trump Doctrine?
Recently, a friend said to me that he wasn’t protesting with “them exicans” because a lot of them voted for Trump and got what they deserved.
That may sound rational, but what about the millions of Latinos who voted with us? Even more significant, what about wrong versus right? All non-white people in Trump’s America are in a “single garment of destiny!
What far too many Black folks miss is that most whites see everyone who is non-white as “N!gg3r$.” Black folks were just the first group designated as less-than and sub-human.
Don’t get it twisted; whenever ICE and Elon finish with the “other ones,” we are next to be singled out!
Let me end with another of King’s statements that you probably never bothered to read. “Peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of Justice.”
In other words, “No Justice, No Peace.”
If we don’t fight for justice for everybody, there will never be peace for anybody!
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
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