Clarence Page: Where do we go from here? Martin Luther King Jr.’s old question endures
Indeed, one gets the same impression from his rhetoric directed to the governors. They’re going to be viewed as “weak” and look like “fools” and “a bunch of jerks,” he said, if they don’t “dominate” the streets, including bringing in the National Guard — an action some of the governors, including Pritzker, already were doing.
That’s OK from Trump’s political standpoint, since he likes to set things up to take credit for successes and leave the blame for failures to somebody else, preferably Democrats.
But meanwhile, the rest of us can just look elsewhere, including to the governors, for the leadership that we desperately need — which brings to mind a question asked under similar circumstances by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” is the title of his 1967 book.
“A riot is the language of the unheard,” said King, as a way of explaining, not justifying, violent unrest in a 1967 speech.
And what is it that America has failed to hear? Among other things, King said, “It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity.
“And as long as America postpones justice,” King said, “we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”
One hopes that Trump’s war talk is nothing more than his usual bluster, if amped for an election year. Of course, we need law and order. But, as King concluded, “Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” We’re still waiting.
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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