“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.1 Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”— Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
MLK Day Reflections
This MLK day, we find ourselves in the midst of national protests over Renee Good’s death at the hands of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE).
For a while now, my sense has been that for as much progress as we have gained since Dr. King’s untimely death—for instance, my bi-racial marriage is legal and my family can all sit together at a restaurant or go to an amusement park—in many ways we have lost ground. Perhaps it is more accurate still to say that in some ways we failed to move forward at all. For, nearly fifty-eight years after Dr. King’s assassination it is my belief Renee Good died for the same root cause.
When I hear the anti-migrant rhetoric popular today, I think of crowds that jeered and spat at a young Black girl as she walked into school. I think, too, of police officers who attacked peaceful protesters with dogs and sprayed them with fire hoses.
Pulp Fiction
According to a local communications professor, what makes humans unique from other animals is our ability to adopt flexible communication across a large cross-section of our species. Flexible communication includes the ability to communicate fictions. So, to use this person’s example, a gazelle doesn’t know the moment it crosses the border from Mexico to the U.S.—the boundary is a legal fiction of our own making. Race and citizenry are no different.
An Incomplete History of Migration
Migration, on the other hand, is a natural occurrence that is necessary for survival. Abraham and Sarah (then Abram and Sara) are forced to migrate following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; Joseph’s brothers migrate to Egypt due to famine; following the death of her husband, Ruth travels to a foreign land with her mother-in-law; and, of course, following Jesus’ birth, his family migrates to Egypt to evade persecution and then to Galilee, a Gentile district.
In more modern times, Americans moved west to claim territory already occupied by indigenous tribes; Irish men, women, and children migrated to a number of countries, including the U.S., due to famine, and a variety of Europeans sought refuge en masse in the U.S. during the early 20th century.
Most recently, I heard of a number of mid-level technology executives relocating to the mid-west following massive job cuts in the wake of AI.
In short, migration isn’t going away—this is what we do.
A Story
I received a call from my daughter’s school. One of their graduates is not a U.S. citizen. This student’s mother worked hard and used the limited means she had to put her daughter through school. I would imagine this woman dreamed of giving her daughter opportunities she didn’t have—just as I do for my daughters—and that some of these dreams were realized when her daughter was accepted to college.
Because of this student’s immigration status, she is no longer eligible for the financial aid she needs to continue to attend school. I happened to hear about this because my daughter’s school is desperately searching for anyone that can help.
Stories like this—and so many others that are far worse—break my heart because I know what it’s like to be the person that needed a chance.
Dare to Dream
Once upon a time, the world listened as Dr. King enounced his dreams for our nation.
I think we need new dreams, not because I don’t admire his. It is because we must dare to dream in the present tense— praising the absence of burning crosses while ignoring the figurative ones simply isn’t enough. So, here are some dreams of my own.
I dream of a nation that is willing to take on the challenges of migration; that is—in truth—a meritocracy, rather than a playground for the privileged few; that is full of thriving heterogeneous communities; that promotes open, honest, thoughtful, robust, democratic debate.
The reality is, if all is fiction, we have the power to pen a new story, today.
- On at least one other occasion, Dr. King used a variation of this phrase. I believe that is why he is often quoted as saying, “the time is always right to do what is right.” ↩︎
