THOUGHTS FOR MLK DAY, 2025

It is a surreal convergence—in the worst conceivable way—that we recognize MLK Day this year at the very moment Donald Trump is sworn in as the president of the United States of America.

There is no way to predict what awaits us in the coming years, but it's fair to assume, given the historical record, that it will be ugly and erratic, with rabid attacks on our institutions (especially those that have tended toward righting past injustice) periodically interrupted by squabbling and factionalism. The hateful rhetoric and gaslighting will amp up relentlessly. As in Yeats' "The Second Coming," we will observe time and again that "the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

How do we honor Dr. King in the context of this latest American mess?

Well, we start by recognizing that he worked in the most repressive environment imaginable, when segregation was enforced by law. He led a peaceful political movement that was in constant physical danger. King himself was pilloried by pundits as a dangerous (likely Communist) rabble-rouser and targeted directly by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The Klan and its acolytes dogged his every step. Ultimately, it cost him his life.

Picking up the baton of the civil rights movement, even in this benighted moment, is markedly less dangerous but equally vital. Coalitions must be restored and new ones built. New media platforms are required that are not owned by influence-grubbing robber barons. Those who are (understandably) disheartened by the outcome of the 2024 elections must be coaxed back into the fray, and electoral territory must be reclaimed inch by inch. And when this is all over, those who bent the knee and kissed the ring must be held to account.

If all that sounds like a big lift, that's because it is. But consider what the project of the civil rights movement sounded like in the late '50s and early '60s. And remember that the gains that extraordinary human effort achieved were the result of relentless hard work, defiance of threats both institutional and paramilitary and a faith in progress that sounded crazy most of the time.

Now, let's take a deep breath and get to it.

The following excerpt is from Dr. King's commencement address at Oberlin College in 1965. The upshot is a corollary to the oft-quoted observation that "the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice," and it underscores that change isn't going to happen on its own. As usual, though, King's unparalleled oratory makes it sing.

Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem. That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I'm absolutely convinced that the people of ill will in our nation—the extreme rightists—the forces committed to negative ends—have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic works and violent actions of the bad people who bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, or shoot down a civil rights worker in Selma, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time." Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.