Martin Luther King. Jr. and “The Triple Evils That Are Interrelated”
/If you read King’s essential writings and speeches in 1967 and ‘68, you
see him repeatedly making strong connections between racism and poverty
at home and war and empire abroad. He talked and wrote about the fact
that many young black Americans were at the front of the imperial
killing lines in Vietnam because their segregated poverty was so high
and their educational qualifications and job prospects so low that
service in the relatively desegregated military looked like a step up
to them. He noted that America’s criminal decision to pour tens of
millions of dollars into the crucifixion of Southeast Asia was
undercutting its ability to deliver on the promissory note of social
justice that it had started to write with the all-too-limited and
short-lived “War on Poverty.” King observed how economic misery drove
many poor whites as well as blacks into the clutches of the military.
He also talked about how the American government’s role as what he
called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” was
undermining his ability to argue effectively for nonviolent resistance
to inequality and racism in the United States. In a famous 1967
speech he gave to Clergy and Laity Concerned at the Riverside Church in
New York City, King noted the savage absurdity at the heart of
America’s claim to possess the ability to unify, liberate and
democratize other nations. The self-appointed imperial savior Uncle
Sam, King felt, was too deeply scarred by authoritarian inequalities
and brutal class and race apartheid at home, to deliver on that claim. [more]
