Switching Sides

This morning, I got to preach at Beacon Unitarian Universalist Church in the Detroit suburbs. We reflected together on the last time that MLK came to our watershed. It was three weeks before he was murdered in Memphis. Dr. King delivered a speech called “The Two Americas” to a packed out suburban high school gymnasium. King spoke with a sense of urgency. White people yelled and booed, interrupting him several times. 

King challenged these folk to support the findings of a recently released report from the Kerner Commission, a bipartisan group of a dozen leaders commissioned by the President to study the roots of “urban unrest” in places like Detroit. The commission blamed lack of economic opportunity, failed social service programs, police brutality, white racism and the white gaze of the media. The report said, “White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” Pretty clear, eh? 

The Kerner Commission prescribed robust police accountability and billions of federal dollars invested in jobs, education and housing for “the other America.” Unfortunately, after King was killed, politicians did not implement any of it. In fact, for the past fifty years, instead of Kerner, we got crony capitalism. Less taxes and regulations for the corporate class. More police and prisons for low-income people of color. Isn’t it weird how we are taught to believe that after MLK, everything magically got better for people who are not white and not wealthy? 

Dr. King knew what was coming. That’s why he challenged good suburban folk to “repent” from their silence and indifference. Repentance is an old biblical word borrowed from the ancient battlefield. Someone who repented switched sides in the middle of a war. The one who repented was a sell-out, a traitor, a treasonous piece of trash. Today, I think repentance means that those of us who grew up in the sunlight of opportunity need to switch sides. We pledge allegiance to “the other America” instead. We do whatever it takes to make sure that everyone is provided with what they need to thrive. The corporate way didn’t work. It’s time to try Kerner instead.