To have and to hold

[jlh]

I'm not one for grand gestures of patriotism—those rituals and symbols have been sadly co-opted by people who have a very different vision of this nation than I do, and in that co-option have emptied them of any genuine emotion. But it's an auspicious time, and not just because of the primaries and such last night, but also because it's the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. As part of a tribute to RFK, the radio show Fresh Air reran an interview with his son, where he read aloud RFK's famous speech in Indianapolis, given on the evening of April 4, 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been assassinated in Memphis. For complicated reasons he was without the text of his speech, so much of this was said off-the-cuff. But for all that, it says so much about how I feel about this country and my hopes and fears for it that I'm not just linking you to audio of the speech from NPR but I'm also going to reprint it here:

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

One thing I love most about this speech is that Kennedy, who was speaking before a mostly black audience in the inner city of Indianapolis, was willing to quote the classics not once, but twice. He reached out to others, but he didn't change who he was. There were riots in cities across the country that night, but Indianapolis was quiet.

A possible future for this country—a coalition of the anti-war SDS and the old party bosses in Chicago, the Pendergast Machine and Cesar Chavez, coal miners in Kentucky and black folks in Atlanta—a future that was about coming together, died when RFK died. Instead, we got the divide-and-conquer "southern strategy" that Nixon went on to use with such success and that has been the backbone of Republican national strategy through the 2006 mid-term election, though it finally seems to be breaking down now. This country is at its best when it rides the winds of change, when it finds ways to bring as many people along as possible, when it manages the future rather than resisting it. Needless to say, this country has very much not been at its best during my lifetime.

This speech is why I, as a black American woman, am not threatening to move to Canada. I know that many of you after the election of 2004 felt that this wasn't a country you wanted to claim as your own, and many of you might still feel that way, and I'm sure there is very little I can say to change that. But I choose to say and fight, rather than surrender my country to those who would plunder it. Frankly, they don't deserve it.

Comments

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this speech and the commentary with it. Fuck the Southern Strategy.

[jenniferearlene.livejournal.com]

But I choose to say and fight, rather than surrender my country to those who would plunder it.

Bravo! I couldn't agree more...this country is what we make it and what we allow it to become. Once we start taking responsibility instead of placing blame, positive change will follow.

:-) Jen

[jenniferearlene.livejournal.com]

Sounds an awful lot like a certain senator from Illinois, doesn't it? :-)

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Lovely post. I've wished I could talk to you in person about a lot of stuff I've had on my mind lately because I know you would be so smart about it all. I've been thinking a lot about how to treat race in fiction and I'm scared I'm cocking up the works. Maybe I'll email you about it when my thoughts are cogent.

OK, I'm so far off the topic of your post now. Sheesh. But yes. I prefer to stay and fight and I think there is a lot of hope floating around these days in this country--hopefully we can actualize it and ride the winds of change to a better life for more people. I'm always proud to be a citizen of this country even when I am appalled by the current administration.