Dr Martin Luther King: A dream deferred?

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King’s 1963 world famous ‘I have a dream speech’ and mass march on Washington, there is a temptation to simply remember the dream speech and forget the radical politics of King himself. Since 1963 and more so since Kings assassination in 1968 there has been a concerned Disneyesque attempt to portray King as above politics.

He has overtime become canonised as meaning all things to all people in the kind of historical revisionism that sprays vanilla all over radical black history.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in the history of the United States. Organised by a consortium of civil rights, trade union and religious organisations and leaders, the march helped push through the US 1968 Civil Rights Act.

Let us not forget that King posed the most acute threat to the global white supremacy and American imperialism. Many tend to forget just how radical King was, as we snuggle up in our ‘post racial world’ wallowing in the neoliberal romantic delusion that King’s dream of a non-racist world is now fulfilled because we now have a black man in the Whitehouse.

King believed in confronting America’s Jim Crow racism with radical non-violent action - with the emphasis here on action. As a Baptist minister King was not content with the theological torpor that saw black Christian’s response to crushing racism focused on prayer and inaction. King took what he saw as his living gospel onto the streets and spoke truth to power. For King Christ was a revolutionary.

I remember talking with the Rev Jessie Jackson about King. He told me that when King initially wanted to go to the epicentre of Southern racism, Birmingham Alabama he faced fierce opposition from a number of high profile African American Pastors who wrote a public letter castigating King as a rabble rouser and opposing his intended visit. He was viewed as a dangerous radical even by his own.

King knew that utilising the moral force of non violent protest alongside building a unified consortium of progressive organisations around a set of specific goals that the movement could move mountains. He also knew that by focusing on Jim Crow racism, economics and poverty he was confronting the very essence of injustice faced by African Americans. He sought to reach out and form alliance with striking trade unionists and became a passionate advocate speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Britain is one of the world oldest and some might say advanced democratic nations in the world. Britain espouses the universal principles equality before the law for all its citizens regardless of race or faith. The political tradition in Britain is one of hypocrisy, the rhetorical political articulation of lofty human rights principles that obscures the reality of a culture of racism that infects both the delivery and implementation of domestic and foreign policy service.

There is still no black in the Union Jack

In Britain, black citizens are equals only in terms of legal theory law but remain third class citizens in everyday life. Yes there are British laws that are supposed to protect us from discrimination but this legislation is cumbersome, unnecessarily complex, unaffordable and inaccessible to the vast majority of Black people seeking legal redress from discrimination.

The powerful reality of engrained cultural racism in Britain eats Government and corporate policy for breakfast, subverting polices with no obvious overt racial bias into Jim Crow like discrimination. Criminal justice and stop and search are powerful examples where black youth in particular face constant criminalisation through the exercise of laws powers and procedures that are ostensibly race neutral, but become at the point of implementation ruthlessly discriminatory services that deliberately target black people for differential and unfair treatment.

The huge increase in Islamophobia and racist attacks particularly on religious building and Muslim communities across the UK in the wake of the tragic killing Lee Rigby poses a danger for us all. The erosion of civil liberties, the extent to which Muslim communities are routinely demonised in the eyes of the press and the growing climate of hostility point to an urgent need to bring together black and Muslim organisation in common cause in opposing racism.

We are routinely denied justice

Seeking real justice from race or faith discrimination in Britain is largely unobtainable to the many and affordable only to the wealthy few. This results in the genuine grievances of Black citizens being dismissed by a Coalition Government who have ensured that race equality and anti-racism are seen as political projects of the left, often pursued at the expense of white working class Britons a classic move of divide and rule.

The Government not only virulently attacks the concept of multiculturalism and anti-racism but has chosen to further inflame community relations by demonising immigrants and asylum seekers in a brazen attempt to defer public attention away from the austerity driven economic crisis caused primarily by reckless bankers. This deception is pushed hard by Tory PM David Cameron, Lib Dem Clegg and Chancellor Osborne supported by some sections of the press and media. The consequence of this are that the mood music in Britain has changed and had become distinctly hostile particularly for Blacks and Muslim communities who form the bulk of discriminated masses in Britain today.

The Home Office anti-immigrant ‘Go Home’ advertising vans show both the depth of culture ignorance and political cynicism within the Home Office that employs a strategy that pays lip service to equality whilst failing to acknowledge the reality and mass scale of British institutional racism and discrimination.

If the terrible effects of what the Tories call ‘colour blind’ Government, intent on promoting division were not in themselves bad enough, austerity is now the new powerful magnifying lens that has amplified all levels racism and injustice.

Racism, economics and mass voter registration

As Dr King knew well that the three social evils of racism, poverty and lack democratic engagement represented a formidable social apocalypse for Black communities seeking to escape disadvantage. Here in Britain austerity is pushing communities who prior to the economic crisis of 2008 were already suffering criminally high levels of poverty and unemployment and are now seeing those rates skyrocket impacting particularly upon black women and young people.

Britain’s poorest black communities are being massively overrepresented in public sector redundancies and cuts to frontline services leave deprived communities descending into the twilight zone of the entombed underclass, permanently imprisoned in the inner city slums they are forced to live in. What we are seeing is in our communities is the corrosive absence of both hope and opportunity consigning yet another generation of Black British young people to a lifetime of discrimination and injustice.

The riots of August 2011 were the canary in the coalmine giving due warning of the terrible social dislocations to come; increased rates of institutional racism and discrimination in criminal justice, the labour market, housing, health and politics are all portents of communities that are bursting with energy and talent with no pathways to success available to them. Dr King spoke of the frustrations that those denied the fundamental principles of equal citizenship and justice for all when he said ‘Those that make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable’

In 21st century Britain the most advanced and oldest democracy in Western world 50 years after Dr King’s speech British Black people remain third class citizens in a supposed first class democracy.

For Britain to become a nation that lives up to it ideals of equal citizenship and equality before the law, requires not just the absence of overtly discriminatory policies, that does not itself result in an absence of discrimination, what is that required is the presence of strong anti-racist policies and of easily accessible and affordable legal protection against race discrimination.

The implications are profound in terms of where we go from here in the UK. Do we allow this Government to bequeath another generation of black young people first class injustice and third class citizenship?

The reality is we are all being pushed back racism is increasing whilst disadvantage in on the rise. Nationally those that we could and should be in the forefront of the debate have failed us. The work of Operation Black Vote inspired by King is critical to providing the leverage necessary to get legislative and policy changes. There work represents a core strand of activity that must be central to any effective strategy for change.

Black Voluntary Sector

The British Black voluntary sector has left the field of battle having been kowtowed beaten and dismissed by this Government. In 2010 Minister Eric Pickles slashed funding to a range of national black organisations and kicked them out and then closed down all of its race equality consultation forums. Academic in nature and having ditched the politics of campaigning for a managerial approach to tackling racism they had retreated into the world of policy speak and sought to depoliticise the fight against race discrimination focusing on policy rather than politics. In doing so some have become largely removed from community they purport to serve.

Like British World War one generals, these professional black leaders love grand titles and big grants that inevitably focus on adding yet more volumes of academic research set to gather dust on library shelves or they announcing yet more new organisations ‘consortiums’ that are created to access funds rather than solve real problems.

These top down approaches fails to enjoy community legitimacy or mass support and get us nowhere. The frantic and desperate competitive scramble within the black voluntary sector organisations is in stark contrast to the work done at regional and local level where the fight against racism and disadvantage remains overtly political. It is said that national black organisations have thrown the local black voluntary sector under a bus to save their own skins and salaries. Where was the huge campaign against the discriminatory nature of these cuts? Where were the legal challenges or press campaigns to highlight these issues? Fact is the local regional black voluntary sectors were left abandoned as some national Black organisations saw an opportunity to expand their imagined empires.

Black MP’s or MP’s who happen to be black?

In addition to understanding that racism is a deeply political issue that requires ultimately a political response. That the message of Dr King his was a uniquely political self-financed project he understood the importance direct action focussing on racism, economics and voter registration. He knew that ultimately his struggle would cost his life. He utilised radical grassroots politics and a radical Christian theology. In the UK we have a Black politicians that have are trapped into the suffocating confines of neo liberal social democrat party politics that leaves most as representing nothing more than tokenistic black face in a high place . Our black representatives in Parliament or the House of Lords have never ever had a collective discussion much less agree on a cross party strategy for race equality. Theological conservatism and the fragmentation of the black church means that too many simply refuses to get involved in politics despite the towering example set by Dr King.

We need to create a team of committed activist prepared to work free in an inclusive radical campaigning Race Equality A Team that takes the fight to Government, institutions and the private sector. We need no more than 10 committed experts in their respective fields to commit to work with us to ensure a step change in the fight against racism in Britain.

Where do we go from here? What’s to be done?

That’s why Black Activist Rising Against the Cuts (BARAC) will be launching two new initiatives designed to fill existing and obvious gaps in our struggle for equality and designed to cut through the current political inertia and ineffectiveness in the fight against racism. In terms of strategy Dr King and the Civil Rights movement employed legal, economic and voter registration empowerment strategies. Given the problems we face here in the UK we need to adopt the same basis for our struggle today.

First we need to focus on educating our own community about the nature, scale and impact of racism and how power operates. Little is known about the full effects of racism on our communities and we must be fully informed about the challenges we face.

Secondly we need to back Operation Black Vote’s national voter registration campaign that could, with the right backing, be capable of registering unprecedented numbers of voter ahead of the 2014/15 UK elections.

Thirdly we will be consulting communities about a strategy of civil disobedience allied to legal challenges to highlight and confront racism and injustice focusing on access to human rights, combating economic exclusion through the direct challenge of consumer action.

Fourthly we will be holding an annual national black political conference entitled The State of Black Britain that will examine and set the priorities for action

Finally to deliver this and to counter the poisonous narrative of the Government of race, we need a new national anti-racist movement made up of broadest possible alliances across society to drive forward the fight to achieve a society where British black citizens can at last emerge as equal citizens in a free and equal society.

By Lee Jasper

Join us:

Twitter: @LeeJasper and @BARACUK Email Lee-jasper@live.com.

Blog: www.leejasperblogspot.com http://blackactivistsrisingagainstcuts.blogspot.co.uk

FB: https://www.facebook.com/EqualRightsUK