WOKE UP THIS MORNING WITH THE INEQUALITY BLUES

As we once again honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday with stories and posts and Elon Musk-approved tweets and video excerpts, it may be helpful to consider how the man’s message and legacy comport with the reality of American life in the year 2023, nearly 55 years after his murder.

On one hand, much of what MLK preached about equality and injustice is now a “mainstream” perspective, and since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement (in response to yet more racist murders) many institutions, including major music companies, have decided to take real action to level the playing field. Representation is a regular topic of discussion. The concept of white privilege is under the microscope. The extent to which the founding documents of our nation have failed to protect everyone equally is subject to exploration.

On the other hand, the backlash against all this introspection is profound. The Trumpified Supreme Court continues to chisel away at a century’s worth of progressive change. Red-state legislatures ban books that dare to acknowledge slavery and other historical horrors. The American right, stung by the defeat of its ochre-hued dictator-prince in 2020 and the GOP’s anemic performance in the recent midterms, is swinging its saber wildly in search of a viable foe.

With the weakest of majorities in the House, the political concubines of the white-nationalist fringe are launching all manner of investigations and subcommittees to get to the ostensible bottom of things that Tucker Carlson has been fulminating about. The latest of these is what they derisively call “wokeism,” painting it as a scourge of indoctrination in which children are brutalized by pronouns and rainbows and such sacred American values as not ever talking about inequality and the total freedom of white guys to do whatever to whomever are trampled.

Many of these same anti-woke warriors offer annual pro forma salutes to Dr. King, as though he weren’t the most vibrant manifestation of “wokeness” in American history. It was his passionate oratory that awakened so many people, particularly white Americans, to the moral urgency of change. It was his relentless focus on enfranchising Black voters that extended American democracy.

Now those who are desperate to turn back the clock still further on racial justice—and to suppress the Black vote—dare to praise him. Perhaps they don’t think of this as particularly Orwellian. Maybe they honestly harbor some anodyne notion of Dr. King’s philosophy that can be boiled down to just being nice to each other and having a dream of some sort. But we will not be gaslighted. The words and actions of MLK remain a dire threat to white supremacy. May they always be so.