The above chart graphically depicts the relative standing of the U.S. in terms of childhood poverty. The U.S. simply cannot lay claim to economic greatness nor to being the land of economic opportunity in the face of this reality. With nearly 25 percent of our children living in poverty we are more on par with Bulgaria and Mexico than economically advanced nations such as Denmark, Australia, Luxembourg and Norway.
Thus, Dr. King's commitment to fight against poverty and in favor of economic opportunity is as relevant today as ever, and is both morally and economically compelling. The U.S. cannot be either a moral or economic leader of the world with one in four children impoverished. Perhaps our new claim should be land of childhood poverty.
Professor Steven A. Ramirez
Loyola University Chicago
School of Law
Martin Luther King, Jr., American hero, is also an international icon. An op-ed in the New York Times describes Dr. King's influence both in the United States and in nations around the world. From the NY Times:
"Indeed, it was King’s 'I Have a Dream' speech that sealed his global fame. We’ve all seen photos of the hundreds of thousands marching in 1963 Washington. But thousands also marched that day in London, Tel Aviv and Accra, Ghana. In my home country, Britain, support for the march was overwhelming. Many watched King’s speech live via the newly launched Telstar satellite. In London, demonstrators marched to the American Embassy carrying a banner that read, 'Your fight is our fight.'"
The article continues by chronicling how King's influence has been used by parties the world over to advocate for causes that King would undoubtedly have supported and for those that he no- doubt would have quailed to learn his name was being invoked to support. For example, activists that support affirmative action often invoke King's legacy to support race-based remedies to resolve stubborn and persisting racial discrimination and racial inequality. Simultaneously, King's "dream" is used by those that would end affirmative action and race-based remedial programs by invoking his "color-blind" rhetoric as a signal that the era of race-based remedies should end.
Despite the contradictory messaging, it is clear that toward the end of Dr. King's life, with many civil rights advances secured, including passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, he turned his life and leadership toward economic opportunity and economic justice. Dr. King believed that our country would "reach the promised land" and lived his life trying to secure equal opportunity for all.
The greatest warrior for social justice in the last century in the US was Martin Luther King, Jr. With great respect to dre cummings, I do not think that MLK ever argued in favor of economic equality. Instead he simply argued for equality of opportunity and equality of rights. Thus, in his most famous speech, above, he wanted to free people of color from police brutality, poverty, segregation, and impaired political rights. His dream consisted of universal freedom for all where people were not judged "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." You may scour this speech for any reference to economic equality and come up empty.
Having said that, there is no doubt that King would be alarmed, angered and disappointed by the state of economic inequality present in America today. For example, King would be outraged by the fact that more than one in five American children now live in poverty, including nearly 40 percent of black children, 35 percent of Latino children, and more than 12 percent of white children. How can we live with this sin against our children? How can we tolerate three time more black children than white children living in poverty over four decades after the King assassination? Only the continued sway of race can explain the continuation of such moral degeneracy. Today is a good day to do something about this heinous reality, and I suggest this. If nothing else, King commands that we see to it that no child starves in America, yet up to 33 percent do not get enough to eat. Allowing childhood poverty to fester is not just morally reprehensible, it is economic suicide. Only a nation that empowers all of its human resources to reach their highest productive use can ever be the most productive and prosperous nation. King understood this.
"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that
somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a
single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all
indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be
until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to
be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of
reality. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms.
"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of a
Continent, a part of the main." He goes on toward the end to say "Any
man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for
thee." It seems to me that this is the first challenge. This emerging
new age."
Economically, that which diminishes any human, diminishes the economic prospects of all humans because contracted opportunity for one contracts the demand for what all others offer for sale in terms of goods or services. Poverty anywhere means fewer law students for me to teach, for example. Poverty lessens the demand for innovation. Poverty destroys our ability to produce new ideas. Poverty incites violence and crime. The more poverty, therefore, in any society, the less prosperous that society will be. On this point, King echos Adam Smith who stated in 1776: "No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable."
Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere.
Professor Steven A. Ramirez
Loyola University Chicago
School of Law
sramir3@luc.edu
Known most for his inspired leadership during the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a fierce advocate for economic equality. Prior to his assassination in 1968, Dr. King had focused his leadership efforts on economic justice and equality.
From today's San Jose Mercury News: "Michael Honey, a historian who chronicled King's campaign for economic justice in two books, said the civil rights leader's fateful trip to Memphis was undertaken to improve job security and pension benefits. 'And on that score we haven't moved very far forward,' Honey said. 'The assault now on public employee unions is directly hitting the black middle class.'
Though King's eye was on the prize of civil rights until 1965, he began writing and speaking to union groups about the tyranny of poverty long before that. 'What he says in those labor speeches is that the civil rights movement was the first phase of the freedom movement,' Honey said. 'In fact, he saw that as a down payment. His basic point was that the idea of equality in the Declaration of Independence was not just about civil rights. It was about everybody having an equal chance.'"
Dr. King believed that gaining basic civil rights for African Americans was simply the beginning, a down payment, and that gaining equal economic opportunity was the ultimate goal. Still, forty-four years following his death "economic justice remains elusive for many Americans. While poverty gradually declined in the decades since King's death - 32.4 million Americans lived below the threshold in 1986, the year the King holiday was first celebrated - the numbers have climbed in recent years as the economy soured. Today, as the nation celebrates MLK Day for the 27th time, 46.2 million of its people have slid into the misery that King spent his final years fighting, with blacks experiencing the highest [poverty] rate of any group: 27 percent. . . .
'In some ways, things are worse than when Martin was alive,' said Clayborne Carson, founding director of the King Institute at Stanford University. 'If he was concerned about the distribution of wealth in 1968, the lack of opportunity for poor people and the lack of commitment to eliminating poverty as a social problem at that point, it seems obvious that those issues have become more pressing today.'"
According to the Congressional Research Service, the income gap between the wealthy and the poor has grown even wider between 1996 and 2006. The report released by the Congressional Research Service points to the Bush tax cuts and the performance of the stock market between 1996 and 2006 as the primary reasons that the income gap grew between the rich and the middle and lower classes during that span.
According to CNN Money: "After-tax income for the top 1% of taxpayers soared 74%, on average, between 1996 and 2006. The top 0.1% benefited even more, nearly doubling their income over that decade. By comparison, the bottom 20% of taxpayers saw their income fall by 6%, while the middle quintile experienced a meager 10% gain."
