Looks like MLK was “woke”

It’s mere coincidence, I suppose, that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech
in June 1965 entitled, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” His
commencement address at Oberlin College outlined many of the themes that
reactionaries now denounce as “woke.”
It’s no mere coincidence that we still struggle to overcome the same challenges of which
he spoke — bigotry, injustice, poverty, violence and war. It was in that speech that he
said, “All mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Much has changed in the decades since King addressed Oberlin’s graduates. The civil
rights movement which he led powered black men and women into unprecedented roles
at the forefront of politics, commerce and education. That movement also inspired other
marginalized groups to push for full equality, so that by the dawn of the 21 st century, the
United States had come much closer to its promise of a “more perfect union.”
But that journey toward full equality for all sparked a bitter backlash from reactionaries.
As the nation grows browner and white Americans are destined to lose their place as a
numerical majority, a significant and loud minority of whites has tried to reverse racial
and social progress. They wish to severely limit immigration, curb voting rights and instill
Christian nationalist edicts in public institutions.
For all our insistence that the United States is a singular nation, exceptional, a “shining
city on a hill,” Americans have not learned to genuinely accept the imperatives of a
pluralistic democracy. We are stuck, instead, with a primal code of fearing and loathing
“the other.” And we are not the only people who struggle to practice tolerance, mutual
respect and equality for all.
King was prescient in his Oberlin address, noting that “modern man’s scientific
ingenuity” had made the world a smaller place. While early Americans struggled to get
across this continent, people can now easily traverse the globe. “We’ve made of this
world a neighborhood,” King said.
But there are far too many people worldwide who want to restrict their neighbors to
people who look like they look, speak as they speak and worship as they worship. As
immigration as increased, so has xenophobia. So have threats against the democratic
principles that have ushered in more just societies.
In India, where King had gone to study the peaceful revolution led by Mahatma Ghandi,
the anti-democratic policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have stressed a civil
society which once practiced religious tolerance. A Hindu, he has turned a blind eye to
attacks on Muslims and used state power to stifle critics. In Israel, a rightwing
government has been explicit in its attempts to throttle democracy with attacks on the
courts and efforts to restrict the rights of Arab citizens. Throughout western and central
Europe, from Great Britain to Hungary, rightwing politicians are on the rise, gaining
followers and votes.
Chillingly, some American ultra-conservatives have developed a deep fondness for
Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has denounced gays and
lesbians, castigated the “mixing” of races and criticized Western military support for
Ukraine. Orbán has also severely limited independent news agencies and changed
election laws to favor his party. Hungary, a nascent democracy at the turn of the
century, is now trending toward autocracy.

As Americans celebrate King’s birth, there will be those given to selectively quoting from
his best-known speeches. Conservatives seem to favor a single pronouncement from
his stirring 1963 speech delivered at the March on Washington: “I have a dream that
my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That phrase retains both its
eloquence and its significance.
But here’s one that should be quoted more often: “We must all