In his 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait, written after the infamous Birmingham campaign where fire hoses and police dogs were turned on Black children and adults, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”
Three years later, on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while there to support striking garbage workers in the context of the multi-racial Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. King spoke out forcefully against the Vietnam War. During his remarks, however, he argued that it was necessary to go beyond Vietnam, beyond opposing that unjust, immoral, and violent war. He understood, tragically, that the United States had been at war ever since its inception and thus more far-ranging action was necessary. “A radical revolution in values,” he declared, targeting the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” was the only solution that might save the United States from its “tragic death.”
Just last month, the Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) board held its first in-person meeting in two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on racial incidents targeting Black students, one speaker took the opportunity to criticize Just Communities, a community-based social justice organization dedicated to eliminating all forms of injustice and inequality, blaming it and its previous ties with SBUSD for these events.