Dr. King Memorial, Washington, D.C.
Photo Thomas Strunk
This is a paper that I am proud of, but it is also flawed in a couple important ways, which I’ll explain in a moment. What attracted me to this topic was the idea of putting in juxtaposition ideas and thinkers that we typically want to keep apart. By my nature, I tend to rebel against that desire to separate rather than seek commonalities. I imagine both approaches are important, but I incline to the latter.
For me, it is inspiring to consider how Dr. King read the classics. For in that reading he provides a template of how we could all read the classics. He teaches us how to read – for liberation, not simply for erudition. It seems that the older a text is the more likely we are to see it merely as a relic of its own time, something to read to understand its society, to simply trace its influences, and worst of all to call ourselves educated. What I wanted to argue in this article is that Dr. King read the classics because he suspected and came to know that they would edify him and fortify him for his own liberation and the liberation of others.
There are two flaws in this work. First, I did not emphasize enough that the classics are but one small strand of influence on Dr. King. A spiritual and political leader of Dr. King’s stature cannot be reduced to one source of wisdom or one complete interpretation. I never state that the classics are the key to understanding Dr. King, but I did not sufficiently express the limit of this influence. Second, I wrote this in the heady days after President Obama’s election. I like many were elated by what had happened. I naively thought a new day had come, and in some ways a new day had come, but we have discovered that we are still tied to many of our old views on race. In being so foolishly optimistic about American race relations, I revealed my own ties to old views on race. I should have known better that racism will not end simply because individuals have achieved a certain place in society. I think we should all continue to take joy in the election and presidency of Barack Obama, but we also need to roll up sleeves and continue the hard work of dismantling white supremacy in the United States.
