In American discourse, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has often been portrayed as a nearly mythical figure who ended institutional racism and whose legacy can be boiled down to his famous quote: “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.” However, if you spend time examining what MLK said, did, and wrote during his life, you will find that he was much more extreme and disliked than we are led to believe. In fact, during his final year King held a 75% disapproval rating in America, which is higher than the disapproval rating of Donald Trump at any point during his presidency. So how has our perspective on Dr. King changed so drastically and what did he believe that caused him to be so widely disliked?
This specific quote on skin and character from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has been frequently called upon to denounce current racial justice movements. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin stated "In the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we're called to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. And that's why there's no place for critical race theory in our school system, and why, on day one, I'm going to ban it." When asked how he felt about giving minorities preferential access to Covid vaccines, Dr. Ben Carson stated “If Dr. Martin Luther King were here today, he would be absolutely offended. He wanted people to be judged by their character and not by the color of their skin.”
This singular quote is constantly used to sum up MLK’s legacy as advocating for colorblindness; then it is transferred to arguing against affirmative action action or reparations or a variety of other race-based remedies to historical injustice. This ignores the fact that the purpose of King’s dream speech was to promote the right for Black people to vote amidst Jim Crow segregation laws that made it legal to discriminate based solely on the color of someone’s skin. MLK wanted to end the era of explicit discrimination in America, and one of the major obstacles to this goal was that many White Americans at the time judged people based solely on their skin and not their character. They therefore did not support ending legal discrimination against Black people. Today, the notion that everyone should be judged by their character and not their skin is something everyone should agree with, and the vast majority of people do. Therefore, telling everyone to judge someone based on the content of their character is a much lower bar, as that is the status quo. We need to evolve past using this one line from one speech that Dr. King gave as a benchmark for equality.
So what should be the benchmark for equality? Fortunately, Dr. King himself explicitly addressed this in the fourth and final book that he wrote before he was assassinated. King stated, “The white liberal must affirm that absolute justice for the Negro simply means, in the Aristotelian sense, that the Negro must have ‘his due.’ There is nothing abstract about this. It is as concrete as having a good job, a good education, a decent house and a share of power. It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment. I am aware of the fact that this has been a troublesome concept for many liberals, since it conflicts with their traditional ideal of equal opportunity and equal treatment of people according to their individual merits. But this is a day which demands new thinking and the reevaluation of old concepts. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.” MLK is asserting that true justice and equality cannot be achieved by ignoring race and the history and disparities that led to the state of things today. In other words, it would be unjust to ask a bootless man to lift himself up by his bootstraps.
King knew that the fight for equality would prove much more difficult in this new arena. He stated, “Many of the people who supported us in Selma and Birmingham were really outraged about the extremist behavior towards negros. But they were not at that moment and they are not now committed to genuine equality for negros. It’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income to get rid of poverty for negroes and all poor people. It’s much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make genuine integration a reality and quality education a reality in our schools. We are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle where we have moved from a struggle for decency, which characterized our struggle for 10-12 years, to a struggle for genuine equality, and this is where we’re getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this far.” The most challenging part of the civil rights movement was not passing the Civil Rights Act, as this cost the country comparatively little. The most challenging part has been and will be finding economic justice.
In fact, MLK held many beliefs that were not and are not politically popular. He sought to confront economic injustice and the Vietnam War, which angered liberal and White allies like President Lyndon Johnson, while young Black activists grew impatient and skeptical of his non-violent methods.
One of the less well-known aspects of MLK's legacy is that by the end of his life, he had become a champion against poverty, not just among Black people, but all Americans. Regarding economic injustice, King stated “We must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’…When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy” and later said “It didn’t cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters, but now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.” King more explicitly stated his position by saying, “I am convinced that capitalism has seen its best days in America, and not only in America, but in the entire world. It is a well known fact that no social institute can survive when it has outlived its usefulness. This, capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.” I am not here to debate the merits of capitalism, but I do want to note that despite what some may think, MLK advocated for a much more radical form of justice and equality than what he achieved before he was assassinated. Over the course of his career, MLK endorsed several economic policies that are not currently supported by many politicians from either party, including a federal jobs guarantee, guaranteed income, reparations, and a complete elimination of poverty.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy has been diminished, and as a result we believe he simply stood for peaceful protests and racial justice that is colorblind. However, this depiction hides the truth of what he believed. I hope that with knowledge of his beliefs we can better understand his legacy, what his legacy should be, and whether we are living up to it today.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.