It's more important to actually read MLK than ever before.

I confess I haven’t always “observed” Martin Luther King Day, at least not in the true sense of the word. Sure, I’ve always enjoyed the day off from work, but my observance pretty much ends there. (The date is often the same as my mom’s birthday too, which only makes it more likely to be overshadowed.) Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always been as pro-MLK as the next guy. It’s just that, until recently, I hadn’t thought about him much.

There are two main reasons for my neglecting him. The first one is that I’m white, and white privilege affords me the choice not to think much about MLK or Civil Rights or anything race-related if I don’t want to.

The second is that years of annual school assemblies celebrating King’s life and legacy have essentially left me numb. In thirteen years as a student (pre-college) and fifteen more as a teacher, I’ve attended a lot of them. They’re always earnest and well-meaning, and bland. They always include something about MLK’s having had a dream and a reference to his famous line about judging people by the content of their character, instead of the color of their skin. They always steer clear of any whiff of controversy, which makes sense since their audience is comprised of students no older than eighteen.

I don’t want to criticize the convention of the MLK assembly, which schoolteachers put together in good faith and with the best of intentions. But all too often, their net effect is to reduce King to a cardboard cutout: a saintly figure preaching banalities about loving one’s fellow man.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot more to him. It wasn’t until relatively recently that I learned King was targeted by the FBI. (A documentary on the subject is now streaming on Amazon Prime.) I haven’t seen it yet, but I have read Why We Can’t Wait, his 1964 book, which amounts to a manifesto about Civil Rights, and shows him as a charismatic leader, and a true intellectual, not to mention a clear and forceful writer. I’ve taught “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to my AP Lang students several times. Addressing the eight clergymen in Birmingham who claimed to be sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement despite praising police response to demonstrations, and criticizing King’s tactics as “unwise and untimely,” he politely but firmly defends both his cause and its timing. It’s the centerpiece of Why We Can’t Wait, and it also happens to be a masterclass in rhetorical writing. I’ve also read Malcolm Gladwell’s chapter on King from his book David and Goliath, which paints him, as well as his compatriot Reverend Wyatt Walker, as a shrewd and cunning trickster who outwitted Birmingham’s racist Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor.

There’s a danger in remembering King as a caricature, rather than a flesh-and-blood human being. When we reduce him to a handful of famous soundbites, his words can be manipulated and taken out of context to support causes he would obviously have opposed. In recent years, and especially in 2020, I’ve seen critics of Black Lives Matter practically weaponize King’s words, especially the line we all learned back in school: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

These critics’ perverse logic goes like this: Because King wanted individuals to be judged on character over skin color, we should stop paying so much attention to race. The more conversations we have on race, the more we exacerbate the problem. The best course of action (I guess?) is to leave the problem alone and it will naturally fix itself. (Just watch this guy in the white t-shirt try this argument in a sit-down between advocates of police and BLM. And then watch the woman in gray succinctly shut him down: “Martin Luther King would be down for Black Lives Matter.”)

This line of thinking is of course ridiculous. And the notion that King would have supported this nonsense is even more ridiculous. The central idea of Why We Can’t Wait is that America’s problems with race will not take care of themselves. Proactivity, not passivity, will lead to change.

Still, this intellectually dishonest misinterpretation of MLK persists. King himself has become a talisman for right wingers: as long as he is on their side, they are protected from charges of racism. Even if the King they invoke is really some bizarre funhouse mirror version of King who never existed.

In this moment of extreme political rancor, teaching MLK is potentially more challenging than ever – and also more important. If we are going to celebrate the man, we ought to study him so we know who we’re celebrating, and so we can clear up once and for all what he would and wouldn’t have stood for.

The Hate U Give - If not now, when?

For those who have never read The Hate U Give, it's a 2017 novel by Angie Thomas about a black teenage girl, Starr Carter, who witnesses the death of her friend Khalil at the hands of the police. The central incident bears of course more than a passing resemblance to the real-life cases of Philando Castile, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and many others. In the novel, Starr must deal with the aftermath of her friend's death while simultaneously navigating between her home community, the black working-class neighborhood of Garden Heights, and her predominantly white private school, located a thirty-minute drive away.

Most of my students agree that it's a good book, and a decent movie. All agree that it's one of the most memorable books we read in ninth grade English.

This will be my third year teaching The Hate U Give, and I think it's more important and timely now than ever before. The novel does what all fiction does best: it allows readers to see the world through the eyes of a character whose experience is different from their own. In doing so, it offers a new perspective, while (I hope) helping to foster empathy. For every student, Starr Carter's story will feel at least somewhat familiar. She attends a predominantly white private high school, and her pop culture frame of reference (Beyonce, LeBron James, Fresh Prince of Bel Air) is similar to that of our students. For many black students in particular , this novel is bound to strike close to the bone, especially in its depictions of the code-switching Starr needs to do in order to get by in both the affluent, mostly white world of her school and her all-black, working class neighborhood, Garden Heights. "This is exactly like my life," one of my ninth graders told me last year. At the risk of generalizing, the novel tends to broaden the perspective of my white students, while validating the experience of my black students.

Of course, tension between police and African-American communities lies at the center of the novel. Many of our students don't think much about political or social issues. To some, Black Lives Matter is only an abstract concept, if it's even on their minds at all. This novel gives the idea a human face. I know that since I've read it, I haven't been able to think about Black Lives Matter, or about any of the all-too-frequent police-related tragedies, without thinking of the Starr Carters of the world. 

To be sure, teaching this book has also presented its challenges. Although from my perspective the book does not vilify law enforcement at large - Starr's beloved Uncle Carlos is a policeman - some students have complained that it has an anti-police agenda. Two years ago, a student voiced that he thought it was propaganda. In discussions, I try to take a neutral tone when appropriate, a challenge in and of itself because I believe so strongly in Thomas's message, while pushing back against comments more insensitive or demeaning than political. I also attempt to stress that neither the author nor I are trying to "brainwash" anyone. Like any author, Thomas has an agenda, which readers are free to accept or disregard as they see fit. In teaching her book, my goal is not to indoctrinate, but to broaden my students' view of the world.

In the past, I have also presented - without comment - a conservative takedown of the novel, which appeared in the New York Post. For the record, I think it's total bullshit but I try not to tip my hand, instead allowing students to react to for themselves. It's fun to read their righteously indignant responses: they're allowed to say everything I wish I could.

At the same time, it's important not to attack students who question or challenge some part of this book's message. A couple years ago, a conflict arose in my class when a student rightly took exception to being called a racist by one of his peers after he asked an innocent question that had been misinterpreted. (The three of us talked about the incident outside of class, and it ended up a good teachable moment.) 

It's always risky to expose students to such sensitive subject matter. There might be hurt feelings, and tense moments in the classroom. To me, it’s all worth it. In the current climate, it’s more important than ever to examine our attitudes, which sometimes means reading texts that make us uncomfortable.