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January 19, 2004
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
20002001
2002
2003
Two years the Holiday Season spans, animating the annual divide, and linking our past to our future. Then it leaves us, withdrawing its tinkling and its tinsel. We stand exposed, somewhere between hangover and hope, eye wincing, looking out over a Winter the better part of which still lies ahead of us…
Into this bleary landscape comes the first of our Holidays. First, and perhaps fittingly, the youngest. For though the round is ancient, yet it changes to suit our needs. Maybe that’s why I’ve found this recently created holiday more fecund than some others: it was created out of immediate necessity. Not to say guilt.
Guilt will breed its own necessities, and admission is preferable to denial. It is to be hoped that this Holiday was instituted in good faith. Only those who doubt the efficacy of the symbolic will regard it as a mere sop, offered in lieu of a true change of heart.
For a Holiday without any connection to Nature’s cycle, MLK Day has proved surprisingly receptive to my Park-focused natural history viewpoint, and I haven’t lacked for material. The year-in-review pictorial from 2001 is the only concise, single viewpoint image of the seasons I’ve produced for this page, while folk vs. scientific taxonomy (2000) and mixed flocking (2002) still strike me as fitting subjects. All of which gives me cause to recall that our race relations have often been plagued by unfortunately drawn “natural” metaphors, or, under the guise of “science,” descended into a netherworld of vulgar Darwinism. In defense of my use of such techniques I can only offer the sincerity of my own vision, insofar as I am able to express it. But witnessing the Truth is not the same as speaking it. At least I can fall back on inconsistency, and if in ‘02 I used mixed-species flocking to argue for the benefits of diversity in a community, I felt obliged to point out a segregated group of Coots the next year, though I wasn’t willing to draw conclusions from it.
Was that only a year ago?
But 2003 brought different concerns, and the Holiday showed its versatility, leading me to contemplate matters beyond race. With war brewing, it was Dr. King’s pacifism I turned my attention to, finding there an irony, in that while it was nonviolence (along with his clerical collar) which made King a widely acceptable symbol for a racial Holiday, the same quality now challenged the powers-that-be in another context.
This year I actually checked the language in the US Code, and in all fairness, it does say: “such holiday should serve as a time for Americans to reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr.”
That says it pretty well. Still, I think it would be historically dishonest to pretend that the Holiday wasn’t mostly “about” race, at least at its inception. And race as a matter primarily of black and white, framed by the postwar civil rights movement that was King’s milieu.
Racial issues seem ever more broadly construed these days, and it turns out there are more kinds of inequality than we ever knew. The image of Dr. King will remain that of a black male, but as a symbol he must be flexible enough to allow for his Holiday’s future development. To the extent that it becomes less of a “black” holiday, and more of a “diversity” holiday, one must assume its namesake would be pleased. Following this course, MLK Day may be revealed as the positive end of a polarity with Columbus Day, another holiday with equality issues.
Ostensibly commemorating what we used to call the “discovery” of America, Columbus Day also has its ethnic and religious partisans, but they are in danger of being betrayed by a closer reading of their own text, leading to a focus on the negative side of colonialism. The Europeans’ disregard for the humanity of the Other seems indefensible to us now, but it didn’t give people much pause a hundred years ago, when Columbus Day was first widely celebrated. They couldn’t see anything wrong.
Martin Luther King Day represents not so much our guilt or shame (for you cannot really make a holiday out of those) but rather our learning to see; to recognize that indeed there was something wrong with the attitude that Columbus (no less than the slave traders) brought to these shores. And the Holiday represents our desire to address the matter. It reaches outward, offering a chance for growth, expanding the possibility of America, even as Columbus Day threatens to collapse in upon itself. I’m not saying we should get rid of Columbus, but if Martin Luther King Day were to truly fulfill its promise and potential, that might also be our best hope for retaining a balanced understanding of our past misdeeds, which we might otherwise dismiss, as our ancestors did, blaming an “other” they failed to recognize within themselves. Only then will we learn how to honor our history without whitewashing it, and Columbus Day may yet have a future.
Certainly Martin Luther King Day has a future, perhaps a glorious destiny.
We can hope.
It is a “political” rather than a “natural” holiday, but ultimately grounded in the true Mystery of Identity. As such, it will always provide fertile ground for contemplation, as long as its symbolic focus remains vital. And in that regard, it seems to me that Dr. King was well chosen, and his Day a worthy addition to our roster of Holidays.