Many are dismayed at the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr Day on the same day as Donald Trump’s inauguration. Others see it as a stamp of approval with the concurrence of King’s quest to save America’s soul with Trump’s intention to make America great again.
These concurrent events can be seen as mere coincidence. Or symbolic. If they share the same day, perhaps they also have shared values. Let’s consider two important issues where we might find shared values: immigration and education.
We should let ourselves be surprised, challenging each other. Perhaps, we can also narrow the partisan divide.
Immigration
Martin Luther King Jr. did not directly address immigration, particularly undocumented immigration. His values pulled in two directions. He would have agreed with Cesar Chavez’s concern over the wage depression effects of alien farmworkers. He would have also wanted everyone treated with dignity and respect, possibly seeing border walls as symbols of division rather and hate.
However, one of his close friends and speech writer, Clarence B. Jones, described what he imagined King would have said:
“If you are in this country illegally, have you come here in order to protest what you consider an unjust law? If you haven’t, then for whatever other reason (even if it’s to make money for your sick child), you are violating the immigration laws of this country and deserve no more consideration from the authorities than does a thief.”
Immigration is one of those fraught issues with competing values. Perhaps former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan’s testimony, serving as chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (1994) is prescient in how King would have addressed this issue:
“We decry hostility and discrimination towards immigrants as antithetical to the traditions and interests of the country. At the same time, we disagree with those who would label efforts to control immigration as being inherently anti-immigrant. Rather, it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.
“As far as immigration policy is concerned, credibility can be measured by a simple yardstick: people who should get in, get in; people who should not enter are kept out; and people who are deportable should be required to leave.”
It is likely that both King and Jordan would be opposed to current sanctuary cities and states, not to mention objecting to local efforts to thwart the deportation of criminal aliens.
In this respect, King would likely find agreement with Trump to deport those undocumented migrants convicted of crime. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has emphasized this as a deportation strategy: “The priorities will focus on public safety threats, national security threats and fugitives,” those who “got due process at great taxpayer expense and the federal judge ordered them removed, but they didn’t leave, and they became a fugitive.”
However, a much larger deportation enterprise — including families and unaccompanied children — would likely be where King and Trump part.
Education
Can we meaningfully transpose Martin Luther King Jr.’s comments on education into today’s context? Consider the forty years of affirmative action in university admissions to create an equitable measure to remedy past discrimination. Now consider how the Supreme Court upended that remedy. It had become counterproductive and visited injustices on other racial groups.
Education is indeed a battlefield. But the battlefield has changed, requiring us to interpret how to find the essence of King’s thinking today.
Just month’s before his assassination, King was inspiring high school students to achieve excellence: “Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance. . . If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera.”
Since that time in 1967, social advocates built an educational edifice on a “critical consciousness” that often imposed a victim-oriented perspective of oppressed and oppressor, and of marginalized racial groups locked into an inferior social space by systemic racism. This perspective looked back in time and ignored the many civil rights victories that were occurring.
One might ask whether King today would give up his rhetoric of inspiring students. When he gave that speech it was at a time when there was actual systemic racism. Or whether King today would see the divisive and ineffective outcomes of a misguided equity agenda.
Deeply invested in education, the Discovery Institute’s Walt Myers III provides a perspective that is likely more aligned with what King would be advocating in today’s historical context:
“In K-12 education, equity is leading to a dumbing down of academic standards for black students. For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District has implemented new equity-based grading policies, rewarding A, B, and C grades not based on subject mastery, but good behavior in the classroom. Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools has done similarly, resulting in a decrease in D and F grades for black students that led to a 4 percent graduation rate increase.”
“To ensure a brighter future for black students and the professional black community, high-quality education and high expectations are the keys to success, not an equity agenda.”
Many would ask about Trump’s intent to abolish the Department of Education? Does the objective of returning educational dollars and mandates to individual states advance or retard a high-quality education?
At one of Trump’s campaign stops, his hyperbolic method of characterizing his policies makes clear how he sees education: “We will have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is [ask schools], are you teaching English? . . . Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing and arithmetic, and are you not teaching woke? Not teaching woke is a very big factor, but we’ll have a very small staff.”
That’s a bureaucratic remedy that avoids the deeper problem of instilling inspiration in students. King might agree to excising an ideology that devalues merit and achievement and has a curriculum based on racial equity. This is a place where King and Trump would find shared values. Beyond that, there is an open-ended conversation about motivation and how success is measured in personal and cultural terms.
Reflection
Admittedly, my selection of quotes and references symbolize an uncomfortable twinning of Martin Luther King Jr. and Donald Trump. But isn’t that how we get to progress? We can benefit from unsticking ourselves from those tropes that lock us into divisive boxes.
We should thank the stars in the sky, whether by design or the happenstance of human history, to be enveloped in the celebration of a presidential inauguration concurrent with a holiday for a civil rights leader. Think about it.
Joe Nalven is an adviser to the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and a former associate director of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University.
