Annette Hoffman-Walker
Promised Land:
America The Beloved Community

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? is as relevant today as it was when it was written years ago. While the book situates the reader in the lens of the Negro in the 1960s, the questions, issues and dilemmas King highlights are still relevant today. The overt bigotry of the civil rights era with its Jim Crow Laws including segregated lunch counters, schools, and nearly all public accommodations have since been replaced with the more subtle, yet equally effective, tools of institutionalized and cultural racism. Then, as now, Black Americans and their white allies struggle painfully to identify strategies to break down barriers to full participation in a just society. Then, as now, we constantly wonder about the commitment of whites, about their resolve to make America the beloved community it could be, an America inclusive of Black Americans.

Where Do We Go From Here? powerfully outlines a blueprint for nonviolence but it also provides the reader with a clear understanding and appreciation of the ideological dilemmas and frustrations caused by attempting to chart a course through the turbulent waters of the civil rights struggle. Is it really a choice between violence and non-violence that must be selected or are they/we really grappling with issues of fear, uncertainty, hate self doubt and despair?

King understood power better than most, but yet he questioned its usage. His was a powerful reminder that for those in the struggle that power is to be sought as a legitimate tool to make the world a better place, to create a just society, a beloved community. Power should not be abused, used for personal gain or to bring pain, embarrassment or degradation to others. In King’s mind, power, properly understood, is essential in achieving the just society. Again, there are those who profess to be leaders in today’s Black community who could well benefit from understanding King’s beliefs about the use of power.

King prophesized, “we are faced with the fact that tomorrow is today.” Now, forty years since the passing of the 1965 voting rights law, the gap between the existing realities and the goals of equality still remain. While the goals of the civil rights movement, including equal opportunity employment, genuine school integration and affordable housing are still relevant, the means for acquiring these ends are more questionable than ever. We are right back to the dilemma raised by King in Where Do We Go From Here? What strategies should we employ to gain social justice and the beloved community? While some may still contemplate violence over nonviolence, others wonder about the value of voter registration campaigns, jumping to the Republican Party or forming alliances with other ethnic groups. To a great extent the problem is the same, Black people remain relegated to the margins of society and continue to struggle with discovering appropriate strategies that will deliver us to the Promised Land.

In my estimation, if we don’t continue to invest in the goals of the civil rights movement (the best of American values), then the momentum worsens with each generation in terms of issues impacting all Americans. One of the most salient issues in re-connecting King’s beliefs about the use of power and transitioning despair into hope is the issue of participation itself. Hence, we must make full and constructive use of the freedom and opportunities available to us. The challenge in this generation’s ordeals requires us to mobilize and unite around common goals and injustices prevalent in the lives of ordinary people.

The best of American values stands in the spirit of deep commitment versus a shallow existence. King’s optimistic assumption holds that the hope of America is still in dedicated and committed minorities. The reality, however, is that minorities and white America remain separate and unequal. With more than one in four black Americans living below the poverty line versus approximately one in nine whites, this is a warranted bias, even though many Americans would now like to proceed as if the slate is clean and the scale is balanced. The progress of black Americans visible today in all segments of society has been attributed to the civil rights movement, but we must be careful not to assume that these gains will automatically carry over from one generation to the next. It takes more creative ingenuity, however, to sustain upward strides of blacks into already established community, employment, education, income, and wealth.

We find today African American teachers, social workers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors and nurses as buffers that give voice to the majority of poor blacks. King’s teachings of the dilemma of the Negro emphasizes that we must contend with the crime, strangulation of employment, dilapidated housing, and social disorder in the deteriorating neighborhoods that continue to grow in their direction. This inside/out position of poor blacks sets up crossroads and puts many in limbo. The right and wrong paths are not in easy reach of them. Substantial downward mobility signals that there are systemic obstacles still to overcome. These transitions circumscribed by economic contingencies, the community context, and political alliances draw attention to the particularities of being black in America. At the same time, though, these disconnections and the relative easiness for a few individuals to break out, while the vast majority of blacks remain prisoners illuminate the sheer reality that we are all connected.