Editor,
Nations guilty of the most horrific crimes have also produced the greatest prophets.
This is no coincidence. Prophets speak to the conscience of a people. Their words are deliberately blunt and uncompromising, condemning injustice, addressing the perpetrators directly and calling them by their names.
This country has had many prophets, and its people are well advised to consult them. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded the nation of the historical fact that it is built on the black holocaust and the red genocide, his intention was not to stir up ill feelings. On the contrary, he wanted to bring a whole people to terms with its past so that it may have a flourishing future.
King is one of many heirs of the 19th century prophet Frederick Douglass, the runaway slave who turned himself into a relentless voice against slavery and racism, for equality and democracy and for men and women of all colors. His experience of the unspeakable brutality of white supremacy haunted him to the point of total condemnation on July 4, 1852, when he said, "There is not a nation on the Earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."
To understand the oppressive nature of American racism one hundred years later, Malcolm X heeded the words of Frederick Douglass and started to reproduce them through his own voice and mind. He continually reminded his listeners of the fact that they were ex-slaves, brought here on a slave ship in chains. He revolted against the perpetuation of a system that condones and promotes the violation of basic rights to a people thus stigmatized by the color of their skin.
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In his last years of activism, King took the turn Malcolm X had taken before him. He internationalized the struggle for civil rights into an issue of human rights that forced him to condemn the Vietnam War. He understood that as long as racism, materialism and militarism continued to determine the fate of the nation and her people, his own government would continue to be, as he described it, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
These words are prophetic. They ring true today.
There is a solution to this predicament. In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa called upon the United States to implement a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would allow a whole nation to come to terms with her past and present history.
Doing so would liberate the nation toward the abolition of militarism, which like slavery in Douglass' past has demoralized a people to the point of equating leadership with the readiness to wage wars.
The United States needs to institute national holidays of mourning during which people can remember the plight of their fallen moral heroes and slain prophets, who paid for their visions of peace and justice with their lives. Two of those days stick out immediately - Feb. 21, the day on which Malcolm X was assassinated 41 years ago, and April 4, the day King was killed 39 years ago.
With actions like these, the words of our leaders would no longer ring hollow, but constitute a concrete act of repentance.
Joachim Oberst
UNM staff
