Today, a whole bunch of people and organizations will be quoting the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., because that’s what we like doing on this day. He was murdered by a white supremacist, and we now cherry pick the quotes that are most inspiring and least likely to cause tension. Few will bring up that he also said these other things, including “Something is wrong with capitalism. Maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
And “We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”
And “I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.”
The last one hits especially hard this week, because critical efforts to protect and advance voting rights are being stymied. Yes, by Republicans, but that’s to be expected; they know they will lose the majority of federal elections if voting were fair. But more frustratingly, by two white moderate democrat senators.
The white moderate is the force Dr. King identified as the biggest barrier on the path to an equitable world: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
While this is applicable to the political world, our sector has also become one giant white moderate sector of well-meaning people who often perpetuate the very injustice we were formed to fight. Last year, I wrote “21 signs you or your organization may be the white moderate Dr. King warned about.” Since then, I have seen more signs of white moderation in nonprofit and philanthropy.
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