The Bending Arc of History

It is said that the arc of history, though long, bends surely towards justice. (Theodore Parker)

This line is often attributed to MLK Jr. but it was Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and prominent American Transcendentalist born in 1810, who used the above phrase in an 1853 collection of “Ten Sermons of Religion”. The third sermon titled “Of Justice and the Conscience” included figurative language about the arc of the moral universe: 1

In the sermon he says, 

"Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right [thing]*. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble." **

* Parker used the word ‘right’ to denote the right thing not the right wing, just to be clear. 

**All emphases mine.

As insightful as the arc of history metaphor is, there are some ideas in there that are open to misinterpretation.

First, Parker's language suggests that history's arc bends naturally. The phrasing seems to center the bending of the arc away from human actors. The sentence gives the – dangerously erroneous - impression that the arc bends, not that we who wish to see it bent, must act to make that happen. That's really misleading. Passivity bends nothing. Staying away from the polls wins no elections. Apathy achieves nothing. Disengagement wins no war.

The bending of history's arc does not occur without significant effort. We ought to know this by now. Shoulders - many, many, many of them - must be applied to the work, and there must be blood, sweat and tears shed along the way. The bending of history necessarily involves both victories and defeats, and at times it may even feel like more of the latter than the former. Yet overall, the arc may indeed bend, but only if we have the will and do the work to bend it. For history bends toward justice only if we fight tooth and nail against the will of those who would have it not bend at all.  And then when there are victories, we must fight harder still to hold the newly gained territory, because change is a threat to those comforted by the status quo, and they will fight with everything they have in them to reassert what they believe to be the natural order.

Parker also offers the idea that "[things] refuse to be mismanaged long". This idea has very little bearing on the truth. Perhaps where he stood in history this was the case, but it ain't the case today. I could write you a list, as long as my arm, of things that have happily been mismanaged for quite long, but I'll offer just one: racial justice in America. We've mismanaged that to hell and back. We still don't have it managed, and if the election campaign of 2016 is anything to go by, we probably shouldn't hold our breath that it's going to be managed any better, any time soon.

Not least of all, I must disagree vehemently with Parker's suggestion that "all America did tremble." When did this happen?  Parker, speaking in 1853, suggests that America had some collective epiphany that clearly has not occurred.  It had not occurred when Parker spoke, just two years after Chief Justice Taney asserted that "the Negro has no rights which the White man is bound to honor" with respect to the Dred Scott legal matter. It certainly had not occurred when the Confederate States seceded to preserve African enslavement and defended that course of action with a Civil War.  Surely it had not occurred when in the wake of Reconstruction White supremacists implemented Jim Crow laws and rained Domestic Terror (lynching) on African people.  It was evident that it had not occurred when millions of Americans expressed their hatred of the slogan and the notion that Black Lives Matter.  And it most certainly has not occurred, as evidenced by this year's awful incidents around the election.

So on this election day + a few, while the arc of history may seem (to liberals and progressives) to have returned to its original place, and while we seem to be careening back to an earlier, uglier time for people like me, I am working to remain optimistic about the overall direction of history's arc. I am choosing (or trying to) to believe that we can bend history. At the same time, I am also staying coldly realistic about what that bending will take. I accept that sometimes, even as the arc is bending, it will bend through dark and dangerous places and times (such as these may now be) and we won't all come through to the other side. MLK Jr, himself said as much and was then killed for his efforts to bend the arc. 

This last point is critical: we will not all see justice. Not every family survived the Trail of Tears; not everyone survived the Middle Passage; not every unarmed man, woman or child survives their supposedly  uncomplicated encounter with the police. We do not all come out the other side of these horrors, which is why these "My grandpappy survived Jim Crow, I can survive Trump" memes are ridiculous as hell. Your grandpappy survived so that you wouldn't have to! But let me not go down that rabbit hole. Some of us won't make it out of these next four years. Some with chronic or life-threatening conditions will lose their health care and it will shorten their life spans. Some will be diagnosed and unable to get care. Some will be harassed or brutalized by an increasingly out of control police force and there will be no justice. Some will lose homes, jobs, everything and will succumb to grief and despair, and give up. 

Whether the election of Donald J. Trump is whitelash or not I'm not sure, but here's the truth: the arc of history will bend if we set to bending. There will be setbacks and there will be victories but we must never stop applying the pressure that is required to bend history's steely arc. Right about now though, I'm taking a little break. I'll get right back to doing my part just as soon as I get up off the floor cuz this election done laid me flat.

The sweet comfort of four words: I Have A Dream

This is an open letter to the goodly gentleman (GG) who invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's name and his famed 'Dream' as GG sought to police Black voices raised in protest. This is also an open letter to those who joyfully claim the benefits of Dr. King's work but have never comprehended its true nature nor participated in the work involved in securing its benefits.

Dear Sir, 

You seem to be contending that every protester must be above reproach for the protest movement to be valid. This is an excellent way to invalidate the core premise of a movement without ever considering what it is that pushed people to action in the first place. It's also a little disingenuous don't you think? Is it your contention that the movement is without basis in fact? The 1,000+ persons shot dead by police in 2015 alone, without benefit of warrant, arrest, charge, trial or verdict might give the lie to any such notion.

You mentioned the story of Mike Brown as you denigrated the Black Lives Matter movement. Whether Mike Brown had his hands up is not really material is it? The point is that (1) Brown was shot dead in the street, without benefit of arrest, warrant, charge, trial or verdict; and (2) that's not how the law is supposed to work! What about Tamir Rice, shot dead a mere two seconds after the police rolled up to him? What about John Crawford III, shot dead while carrying an air rifle in the store where it was being sold, in an open carry state? When will it be the right time to demand different behavior from our police forces across the land? 

You also invoked the memory and work of Dr. King. Sigh. May I point out that the work of the Civil Rights era was to demand rights to which POC were entitled as citizens, but which were being casually withheld from them by the White, many of them professing Christian, majority? And yet you raise your Dr. King flag as if he were a point of pride for you. Don't tell anyone I said so, but he isn’t! He was, and remains, the proof of your endless shame. And every time people of color have to fight for something that should be theirs under natural law, the shame is refreshed. 

The Civil Rights movement, and the King whom we all revere, was not about gaining new rights for people of color, but rather about forcing the White majority to honor the natural rights of America's Black citizens. The Civil Rights movement forced the majority - of which you and your forebears are a part - to give people of color access to equal education; access to fair housing; access to labor unions' protections; access to the vote; freedom from domestic terror (aka Sunday after church lynching); access to the right to a fair trial; access to a jury of their peers - to include people of color (an idea only recently (May 2016) upheld by the SCOTUS). All of these rights were natural to the White majority but had to be fought for by people of color. King should not be a source of pride for White America but a source of everlasting humiliation and a challenge to do better next time. That a man had to spend his life fighting for the rights into which he was born? That such a man would be shot dead fighting for those rights? What exactly is it that you celebrate?  

White America gleefully waves its "Dr. King preached peaceful protest" flag, never mind it was toxic White supremacy that assassinated him. White America uses that flag to police today's protesters' behavior and demand their silence, but never seems to realize that Dr. King exposes rather than covers their perfidy. How do you not see the shame? King got nothing by asking for it nicely. Remember the shutting down of the Edmund Pettus Bridge? Remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Remember the sit-ins at lunch counters? Remember the billy clubs and the police dogs? You talk about Rev. King with great pride as if you sent him; as if it were not people like you against whom he was preaching and protesting.  You talk about his protests as if all he had to do was show up and all was right with the world. You talk about him as though people just like you did not meet him with demands for silence, just as you are demanding ours now.  King spent the last years of his life fighting tooth and nail with White supremacy and its commitment to deny him and his kin. He spent the last years of his life trying to embarrass politicians into living up to their much vaunted Bill of Rights. Rather than recognize how he chastened people just like you for their greater interest in peace than in justice, you talk about his 'I Have A Dream' speech and wallow in the sweet comfort of those four words. And even there, you get it wrong.

What was King's dream? Was it that his children would see all men as equals, or that yours would? Was it his dream that his children would learn to judge others by the content of their character or was it that yours would? As with the entirety of the Civil Rights era, this ain't about us, it's about you and once again, you have entirely missed the point. 

As Stokely Carmichael said, and as I quoted at length in White Privilege: a 5 point primer, “I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people" (emphasis mine). Likewise, the 'I Have A Dream' speech was written and delivered for White America not Black. We know ourselves to be equal. Do the police? The banks? The realtors? Yelp? Do you?

White America really ought to be ashamed to say MLK's name because in the face of the twenty-first century's new fight for Civil Rights - the right not to be executed on the street because the police are afraid of your skin - you are doing exactly as the majority did in the sixties: standing in your shoes and wondering; policing our tone and behavior as we demand the right to live. All the while, you're doing precisely nothing to help secure our lives. That being the case, your platitudinous invocations of Dr. King's legacy have no currency here, so just stop. 

I am about five minutes from saying y'all can't invoke Dr. King's name no mo' cuz you just don't get it.

You know what? Forget the five minutes. Consider the ban in full effect until White America is ready, willing and able to act in concert with people of color, and ensure the preservation of their lives and rights.