Melissa Harris-Lacewell: How Barack Obama is like Martin Luther King, Jr.

How Barack Obama is like Martin Luther King, Jr.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's historic "I have a dream" speech. He was inaugurated the day after our national holiday celebrating the life and accomplishments of Dr. King. Many asked if Obama's presidency was the realization of King's dream. Cultural products, from t-shirts to YouTube videos, linked Obama's election to King's legacy.

Some observers have made far less complimentary comparisons between the men. Some self-professed keepers of King's legacy have insisted that Barack Obama is embarrassingly anemic on issues of race. Remembering King as an uncompromising paragon of progressive politics, these "black leaders" judge Obama as a wishy-washy sell-out, unwilling to stand firm for his constituency.
This sentiment was perfectly captured last week in the outrageous comments of African American Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson. Lost in the din surrounding Harry Reid's "Negro dialect" comments and Rush Limbaugh's scandalous tirade about Haiti, was Dyson's assertion that "Barack Obama runs from race like a black man runs from a cop."

Dyson's comment is both offensive -to President Obama and to black men in general- and false- no other American presidential candidate paused in the middle of a campaign to deliver an exquisite commentary on race. Still, Dyson's sentiment is indicative of a small, but vocal group of black public intellectuals who have regularly criticized Obama during his campaign and his presidency.

Often comparing Obama explicitly to Dr. King, they conclude the President lacks the moral courage or Leftist determination of the civil rights icon.
I disagree. Barack Obama is stunningly similar to Martin Luther King, Jr., but to see this similarity we must relinquish the false, reconstructed memories of perfection we currently project onto King.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a political philosopher and dedicated freedom fighter, but he was also a pragmatic political strategist. Seen through the perfecting lens of martyrdom, King appears to be to be an uncompromising progressive leader, undeterred by seemingly insurmountable challenges, willing to risk all to achieve the goals of his movement.

To see King exclusively in these terms requires active, willful revision of history. In his political work, King was surprisingly like President Obama. And I don't mean the oratory.

Consider this. Martin Luther King Jr. turned his back on Bayard Rustin. Rustin was his dear friend and trusted advisor. Rustin was the architect of the March on Washington. A fierce, lifelong pacifist, Rustin shepherded a young King through his first non-violent, direct action protests. Without Rustin there would have been no March on Washington and no national audience for the articulation of King's great dream.

Yet when he was pressed, Martin Luther King Jr. eventually disavowed Rustin and ejected him from the movement. Rustin asked King for his support, but King turned his back on Rustin. King rejected Rustin because Rustin was gay and socialist.
Faced with the political realities of homophobia and America's red scare, King chose to silence Rustin. King decided defending Rustin would distract the movement from its central goal of achieving an end to racial segregation.

Consider this. Martin Luther King, Jr. undercut the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party.

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Deriding King and his legacy is not my goal in retelling these stories. We must remember that Martin Luther King was no earthbound deity, fearlessly pursuing an uncompromising agenda; he was a strategic political leader. He was a realist whose choices were often upsetting and unpalatable to those on his left.

Martin Luther King Jr's charismatic, audacious, courageous leadership dramatically altered the trajectory of American history. His leadership lasted just over a decade. In that decade he helped bring to fruition more than a century of struggle first inaugurated when black persons became free people in the United States. No personal or political shortcoming can erase or even tarnish King's contributions.

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Barack Obama is not the leader of a progressive social movement; he is the president. As president he is both more powerful than Dr. King and more structurally constrained. He has more institutional power at his disposal and more crosscutting constituencies demanding his attention. He has more powerful allies and more powerful opponents.

We remember King as the beloved and revered leader of a nation-changing movement. We forget that King was widely criticized during his life. The American media derided this Nobel Peace Prize recipient for speaking out against the Vietnam War. Many argued King had overreached and had little right to weigh in on international matters. Despite braving vicious attacks, unfair incarceration, and attempts on his life, many young leaders mocked King for being insufficiently radical, overly tied to existing institutions, and inadequately brave in the face of racial attacks. One of the most gifted speakers of any age, in the final months of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. had trouble filling an auditorium for a public address.

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I see King in Obama: a leader who is imperfectly, but wholeheartedly groping toward better and fairer solutions for our nation.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/517878/how_barack_obama_is_like_martin_luther_king_jr

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The present role of PSCs is strictly limited to defensive protection of people, assets and property....

Third, our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn’t see progress when it came. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something. (Applause.) King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn’t end the civil rights movement, because black and white em; they said, we’re going to change government, we’re going to make it better. Imperfect as it was, they continued to believe in the promise of democracy; in America’s constant ability to remake itself, to perfect this uniosoldiers still couldn’t sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces. That was a good first step — even as he called for more. He didn’t suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn’t think that we shouldn’t sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn’t solved every problem. Let’s take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were — which was progress.