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Bernice King - Christianity, The Law, Racial Justice, and Martin Luther's King Jr.'s Legacy- Part 2
149 Plays7 months ago
In this season of Interactions, Terri Montague, and Brandon Paradise, engage with contemporary leaders and social change agents regarding the influence and convergence of Christianity, the law, and racial justice. Today’s guest is Reverend Bernice King, the daughter of Corretta Scott and Martin Luther King Jr, a social activist in her own right and regularly speaks truth to power. Additionally, as the CEO of the King Center, Dr. King teaches the principles of nonviolent resistance, honors and shares her father’s legacy, and protects against its misuse. This podcast is produced by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in collaboration with Canopy Forum.
Bernice King: The King Center
Center for the Study of Law and Religion: Center for the Study of Law and Religion | Emory University School of Law | Atlanta, GA
Canopy Forum: Canopy Forum
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Transcript
Exploring Law and Religion: Christianity's Influence
00:00:03
Speaker
If I left anything with the audience is how do we help people really understand that we are all creating an image and a likeness after the likeness of God and how we must value that and how do we structure a society around that whole notion
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to Interactions, a podcast exploring how law and religion interact in today's world and throughout history. In this season of Interactions, Terry Montague and I, Brandon Paradise, engage with contemporary leaders and social change agents regarding the influence and convergence of Christianity, the law, and racial justice in their work. This podcast is produced by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in collaboration with CanopyForum.org.
00:00:58
Speaker
You are listening to the second of two episodes in which we engage with the Reverend Dr. Bernice King. Dr. King is a social activist who regularly speaks truth to power and is the CEO of the King Center, where she teaches the principles of nonviolent resistance, honors and shares her father's legacy, and protects against its misuse. If you have not already,
00:01:20
Speaker
We encourage you to listen to part one, where Dr. King discusses her parents and the foundation they have laid for today's community of activists. In this episode, we talk
Dr. Bernice King's Love-Centered Nonviolence
00:01:30
Speaker
with Dr. King about what it means to be committed to the principle of nonviolence in today's world. So one of the items I know that you're most focused on at the King Center is nonviolence as a way of life, which your father was deeply committed to.
00:01:48
Speaker
Can you please just share with us what you mean by nonviolence, how it relates to your father's work, and what you're doing to advance it? My father was really an embodiment of love and action. For him, when he made that first speech before the Black citizens in Montgomery that night, the first night of the protest, he said,
00:02:18
Speaker
I want them to know that we are Christian people. And he essentially talked about love and action. He wasn't calling it nonviolence at the time. And so we fast forward at the King Center just studying him, decided, okay, what is a real definition of nonviolence as you think about Dr. King? And for us, we've captured it
00:02:47
Speaker
In these words, nonviolence is a love centered way of thinking, speaking, acting, and engaging that leads to personal, cultural, and societal transformation. We define it that way because we want to make sure people know that it's beyond just social justice. It is about interpersonal interactions and engagement as well, whether it be in your home, whether it be
00:03:17
Speaker
within civic organizations you work in, whether it be in the workplace setting, whether it be in some of our policy circles and political circles. It's a love center way of thinking, speaking, acting and engaging. What are you doing today to advance?
Practicing Nonviolence in Personal and Public Life
00:03:42
Speaker
the philosophy of nonviolence, if you could share what trainings are available to help people come to live out nonviolence. Yeah. So the first thing I'm doing is I'm trying to practice it myself. I'm just going to be honest. I mean, we need models. That's one of the problems. We talk about things a lot in this nation and world. But, you know, there's a gap between what we say and what we do and how we live.
00:04:10
Speaker
So the first place is, you know, I am trying to become an example of what that means. And the best way that I can do it to the world, obviously, is through a lot of my social media channels and how I communicate, because that's an area that we often don't associate with nonviolence, nonviolent communication. And why that's so important, because you want to make sure that people here
00:04:38
Speaker
you know, and that it doesn't become about the argument, but it becomes about the truths that are being laid out, whether it be on both sides, that you can hear, you know, what those truths might be, because my father believed in nonviolence as he pulled it together, that they're threads of truth, you know. When he studied all of those philosophers and soci- and theologians and even sociologists, what he found is
00:05:06
Speaker
I can agree with about 3% of this, 5% of this. I reject the rest of it, but I'm going to extract this piece. So he was a great synthesizer of all these different thoughts and ideas and bringing them into a hole for him by saying threads of truth to lead to what, for him, was an ultimate truth. So that's the first thing for me.
00:05:34
Speaker
trying to be that example. Secondly, institutionally, trying to create an internal team that focuses on nonviolence as a way of life and creating a beloved community culture. It's very hard to get by in because one of the things I find in any teaching is that we have a tendency when people don't perfect it,
00:06:03
Speaker
it's like it's automatically discredited. And so what I mean by that is if I slip as a leader, all of a sudden people become dismissive of, well, this is not a beloved community culture. So you're fighting through all of the way in which we've been raised to believe that once a person slips and falls, whatever that teaching was is invalid. And I'm going to believe that regardless of the leader, the truth is what it is.
00:06:33
Speaker
The question is, is this teaching valid? Is it the way we should conduct ourselves? Those trainings are available at www.kingcenter.org.
Balancing Character and Social Justice
00:06:45
Speaker
For those of you who are listening and want these resources, I encourage people not just do it once. Use it as a constant resource. It only works when you take it. You have to practice nonviolence every day, and it's not about them.
00:07:02
Speaker
It's about you. And that's the other hard part. Because people feel like, well, they're violent. It's not for the purpose of making them non-violent. Tied to the idea of doing inner work and outer work together. Yes.
00:07:18
Speaker
clearly connects to your father's identity as a minister of the gospel who took seriously the need to reform the inner character so that it goes out into the world and reliably practices non-violence as a way of life. So after we do that inner work, and as we do that inner work,
00:07:45
Speaker
What is your sense of what is the unfinished business of the civil rights movement? Where do we direct the outer work? Your father talked about a revolution of values, a reordering of national priorities.
Economic Equity as Unfinished Civil Rights Work
00:08:00
Speaker
Where do you see that needing to lead us? I mean, you said some of the key things, because I think most people would talk about the work of social justice.
00:08:14
Speaker
you know, the work of equity. And I think all of those things are important. But to me, the first work is that that real inner work at the same time as you're doing the outer work, you know, that we really do assess, you know, our values, you know, what are we putting first, whether people
00:08:44
Speaker
are important and whether people are being treated, you know, with dignity and respect and fairness, you know, in all of our processes and procedures and practices. Because we come up with these wonderful, you know, ideas and even on the social justice front, when we're trying to bring about change, the means and ends still have to cohere.
00:09:13
Speaker
You can't get to a just outcome if you are practicing unjust means yourself. You don't want to become like those that you're saying are unjust. So I think it's that revolution of values. I think it is continuing the work of creating genuine, as Daddy called it, genuine,
00:09:43
Speaker
equality. And I heard somebody say something the other day that I thought was pretty powerful when they were talking about equity. You really can't have equality without equity. That's the first thing. And the work of equity is really the process of getting to equality. It's the process. And so I think we're talking about
00:10:10
Speaker
economic equity in particular. When you say, where's this unfinished work? Well, in 1965, after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, he turned his attention to the whole economic front, the economic inequalities. The fact that people did not have jobs, certain kinds of jobs,
00:10:37
Speaker
they didn't have certain kinds of access to funding, denied opportunities to develop wealth, and the fact that we were relegated to certain neighborhoods and certain types of jobs.
00:11:08
Speaker
economic justice is, I think, where the focus needs to be. But I say that carefully because we can correct everything. Like Daddy said, justice at asbestos is love corrected, everything that stands against love. But as we correct, even if we put these things in place, if we haven't done the inner work, we will undo it. You know, I always think about how we have elected officials and we get all excited, you know,
00:11:38
Speaker
either president signing the executive order or even a certain body of legislators pass laws, forgetting that those legislators one day, you know, will, uh, in their terms, other people will come in. And the very thing that was ushered in could be shifted and changed and the whole new body of people.
00:12:02
Speaker
You know, because we haven't yet shifted our value system and who we are holistically as a people and a humanity that at the core of any decision we make when we usher in laws that it's going to be people centered. It's going to make sure it respects the dignity value of the person so that we are not seeing this kind of, you know,
Racial Inequity and Civil Rights
00:12:30
Speaker
fits and starts, you know, you start down and then something gets undone and you start undone. And then you have to go back again. It's, it's just crazy to me. So I think the work is both in and out, but it's heavily on the, uh, well, I would say heavily on the internal work, but externally, you know, the economic, uh, piece because in every category,
00:12:57
Speaker
And I'm going to say this as delicately as I can in every category. And I'm going to focus now on the United States of America. In every category, Blacks are still last. And as my father said, we still have half of the good and twice the bad in every category. So for me, dealing with racial inequity
00:13:28
Speaker
is very critical in trying to, you know, I won't say finish because we're still not going to be finished, but in terms of continuing this work, in terms of the journey that my father was on. It's quite interesting that your father's
00:13:49
Speaker
primarily associated in the public imagination with his struggle against white supremacy in the fight for racial equality. But we know that from his earliest years, he was concerned about economic inequality. And in his later years, it appears the primary focus of his work was on ending the triple evils of racism, poverty, and militarism.
00:14:14
Speaker
Folks don't know as well as they should that he was a fierce opponent of economic exploitation, economic exclusion, and that the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, as you described it, is precisely what your father was focused on.
00:14:29
Speaker
In the latter years of his work, he advocated the need to rethink and restructure community life. He advocated for the then, at the time, radical idea of a universal guaranteed income program, including a bill of rights for the socially disadvantaged. Cities today across the nation are piloting guaranteed income programs.
00:14:53
Speaker
What programs or approaches do you think today would best advance your father's vision of economic inclusion? Well, let me just say something about the universal basic income first. He also talked about it being paid to the median income and not the bottom parts of the median income. And that if there was inflation, it would increase.
00:15:21
Speaker
So I wanted to say that so that people are clear that it was kind of dynamic in that way. And that's the problem. If you think about today, society, all of us are victims really of inflation. How often when inflation happens do people's incomes adjust?
00:15:50
Speaker
I guess people say you don't want to adjust it down and you never do that. But when do we make sure that the income of people is on par with the growth and development of the nation? We don't, we don't focus on it. It's never about what do we do about making sure that individuals have equity as we look at this, this global economy. When we factor everything in,
00:16:18
Speaker
We're taking care of everything, debt ceiling, all that. We're addressing this, this, that, and the other. But we never think about, we still have a whole citizenry that this person doesn't even have a livable wage. This person is still sitting at the same salary. You know what I'm trying to say? This is what's problematic to me today and how we are not thoughtful. And I'll give you an example personally as I get to this part of my father.
00:16:50
Speaker
I lead a nonprofit institution. It's very hard for nonprofits to compete with some of the corporate arena, the for-profit organizations in terms of salaries and any other area benefits. But because of my commitment and my heart
00:17:19
Speaker
and whose child I am, I'm thinking constantly about what can I do in reason to help change some of that in our environment. So we recently adjusted how much we cover for health benefits with the intention of figuring out at some point, how do we ensure that anybody who works at our institution that they don't have to worry about
00:17:47
Speaker
that particular area of their life. So whether we're talking about covering up to 90, 95% of their premiums, whether we're talking about setting aside something, a health type of fund that they may need to be compensated for, their bill may need to be paid, because we don't want people to carry that burden. When I came in, people in our bookstore were making less than $10.
00:18:16
Speaker
And I said, no, we have to shift that. We're not able to do 2025. But I said, OK, nobody will come in under $15. So there are things intentionally that you have to begin to do with inside your institutions.
00:18:33
Speaker
It is amazing that you have been intentional about providing that level of security for people working at the King Center.
Strategies for Economic Equity
00:18:40
Speaker
We understand how important a livable wage is to fighting injustice. How can we hold other businesses accountable for this? Well, if you're going to respect my dollar, you must respect me. And so if I invest in your company, then I want to make sure that I'm reflected in your company. One,
00:19:00
Speaker
that not only are people that look like men, in this case it was about black Americans at the time, that you've employed blacks and that you pay them on par with their white counterparts, that you are promoting blacks, that you are investing in black banks if they're within the community where you sit. And I imagine
00:19:30
Speaker
as it evolved, they would be speaking of the board level. So you fast forward to today, because this was about creating equity for the Black community, because remember, we were relegated to certain jobs, so we would never make more than a certain amount. So you fast forward today after George Floyd, all these corporations made all these commitments, but where is the accountability?
00:19:54
Speaker
You know, Operation Breadbasket was an accountability for these corporations. They called on these corporations, gives me, you know, how many you have employed here? You know, at that time they could say, you know, without giving names, what is the payment? You know, promotion. I mean, they asked all these critical questions. Then they made certain demands on those corporations and said, if these things don't change, then we are going to boycott.
00:20:24
Speaker
Nowadays, some have, we just, one person will just, someone happened to one person and we just say, let's boycott. You don't do it haphazardly. It has to be around a plan. It has to be around a strategy. And so I think today if we're gonna be effective on the economic front, we have to create apparatuses that can begin to hold these corporations more accountable economically, because we're not.
00:20:54
Speaker
doing that. They're trying to do it themselves. They're trying to self right away. You can't do that. Wow, that's powerful. And, you know, I think there are some moves in the ESG movement, environment, social governance, but even that still involves a lot of self policing. And so I think there's still work to be done on that front. Wanted to see whether you have any kind of
00:21:22
Speaker
parting comments that you'd like to leave with us. As we think about this theme, law, Christianity, racial justice shaping the future. And where do we go from here, chaos or community? Clearly the answer is towards beloved community. What do, are there barriers we need to overcome as a community in order to really fully realize beloved community?
00:21:52
Speaker
You know, the one biggest thing that's been puzzling me lately that I think is a big barrier is the, and I've alluded to this earlier, is the lack of regard for dignity, you know, human dignity. We've, I don't even know if we've ever fully had it in the,
00:22:21
Speaker
and humanity, but it's disturbing to me. I'm looking at a lot of things that are happening. And to me, it's about human dignity and how we give people that in this world, in our society, what strips us of that and what provides us with that. Like my father, we have a book that we pulled together with my father's speeches to a lot of unions.
00:22:52
Speaker
organizations and it's entitled all labor has dignity. So people having wages that are, you know, respectful of the, the value of the person. When I think about, and I don't want to go into the detail of this, but when I think about what's happened here in Atlanta with the public safety training facility and how there was no dignity in the process.
00:23:22
Speaker
And then we wonder why people are so furious because when people lack dignity, you know, it creates angst, it creates anger, it causes people to just go outside of themselves because the human soul and the spirit is crying out for dignity. You are crushing, you know, you're damaging, you're harming the Mago Deian people.
00:23:53
Speaker
And because you're totally oblivious to it, you know? And so if I left anything with the audience is how do we help people really understand that we are all creating an image and a likeness after the likeness of God? And how we must value that? And how do we structure a society around that whole notion?
00:24:22
Speaker
seeing God in people, you know, and what does that really mean? You know, when things are valuable, you treat them a certain way. You know, you don't neglect, you care for them. You secure them a certain way. We're talking about public safety. We're talking about security. There's a certain way you secure, you know, and you're very thoughtful about that. It's not a careless action. You're very intentional about it.
00:24:53
Speaker
And so for me, that's what I would share because that's, I don't like it when I see people stripped of their dignity.
00:25:06
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for sharing this time with us. I think we could probably talk all afternoon if you let us, but we won't. But we are certainly appreciative of all of the insights that you've shared, of the challenge that you have in your responses left with us as we face a future that so often seems fraught with
00:25:31
Speaker
conflict and uncertainty and economic instability there is still hope but it's going to require discipline of us and make demands on us the demands of love and so you've given us much food for thought
00:25:52
Speaker
Much to think about in strong marching orders, so we appreciate that we appreciate you And we look forward to continuing to remain in dialogue with you as you move forward in this important work racial justice economic justice Thank you. Thank you