On MLK, Jr. Day

Dissatisfaction with government has a long history in this country. Henry David Thoreau noted this in his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience,” where he claimed that to achieve “at once a better government,” individuals first have to become more just themselves before the government will follow suit. He further suggested that people needed to live their faith, not give lip service to it. Then the State would be just to all and “treat each individual with respect as a neighbor.” However, being just with one another and treating each other with respect and dignity have yet to happen, at any level (individual or governmental) nationwide.

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated that laws which aim to treat all as equals only declare rights, not deliver them. He indicated that Americans face two major, moral challenges: racism and poverty. Both are socially constructed – members of society decide how members are treated. He recognized in 1968 that our society then tolerated such inequities despite our claims to being an exceptional country. Poverty plagued the elderly, the minorities, the disabled, and the working class in his day. Poor wages for so many Americans kept them and their children in servitude to abject poverty and at the mercy of a fickle, indifferent, materialistic culture. And racism, unfortunately, is one of America’s enduring values with devastating consequences for those who are targeted.

Witness the following inequities in light of our claiming American Exceptionalism:

Among 195 nations in the world today, America ranks fourth in child poverty, 15th in child deaths, 16th in freedom of the press, 22nd in freedom from corruption, 49th in life expectancy, 49th in civil liberties, 56th in pay for working mothers, 72nd in girls going to grade school and 85th in boys going to grade school; and among the industrial nations, America is dead last in quality of healthcare.

Witness dysfunctional and fractured politics in 2016:

Congress has been unwilling to deal with most inequities in America since 2008 because the president is Black. The government of the state of Michigan has knowingly poisoned it citizens’ drinking water and tried to keep it quiet since February of 2015. Our legislators in Olympia refuse to obey a court order to fully fund education, and the contempt-of-court fine as of January 11, 2016, stands at $15 million – payable by the taxpayers, of course. Twenty-one states have restricted voting rights since 2010 for the poor, minorities, disabled and/or college students. Enough politicians of all stripes and at all levels seem to believe firmly that some citizens are more deserving than others, thus the inequities in our political and economic systems continue in large part because enough citizens also believe that some people are better than others and that it is okay to discriminate against some people because of their race, religion, gender, politics, income and/or social status.

Nothing much has changed in 167 years since Thoreau’s essay, and nothing much has changed in 47 years since Dr. King’s comments, except we can now add members of the middle class to the growing group of Americans plagued by poverty. Like Henry David Thoreau, Dr. King called for moral courage and the will to make all of society more just. Eliminating poverty is doable, possibly in under five years or sooner. Resolving the issue of racism will take much longer, but it too is doable.

If democracy is to have any real meaning, according to Dr. King, we must adjust our practice of socially enforced inequities. We have a long way to go in 2016, but we can do it.

Dr. Duane Pitts is a retired Odessa High School English teacher. He has contributed opinion pieces commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for the past several years.