After a year when a record number of people marched for civil rights across the country, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of building a “world house” has a renewed relevance.
“It’s more timely than ever before,” said Dr. Walter Fluker, a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor Emeritus of Ethical Leadership, Boston University School of Theology. “How do we connect as neighbors, through the many jagged edges of difference, as they relate to race, religion and class, and over our incredible competition for resources? King was asking a very difficult question.”
Fluker, the keynote speaker at Jaffrey’s annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, is scheduled to address King’s “world house” concept that suggested all people are interconnected. This year, the presentation on Monday evening is moving online in a virtual ceremony.
While events like the Jan. 6 invasion of the United States Capitol were disheartening for Fluker, he said many moments in the past year have given him hope.
“The Black Lives Matter movement is one of those small glimpses of hope. I’m not romanticizing the movement, but it opens some apertures of hope,” Fluker said.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been sparked in part due to the death of Black people at the hands of police, including George Floyd in Minneapolis. Fluker said part of the reason the movement has resonated with people is because it is indicative of the larger problem – because there can’t be such a disproportionate amount of state sanctioned violence unless the current atmosphere and politics allow it.
“Black Lives Matter is part of the diagnosis. They’ve decided not to look at the problem as spectators, to see it as merely data, but decide, ‘I am a human agent. I can choose at any moment to say, ‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’ ” Fluker said. “I can say ‘Yes, this is how it is,’ and resign myself to a kind of fatalism that King would say is death to the human spirit. Or, I can say no, and create a new destiny. That’s the reason for the hope.”
Black Lives Matter marches were held in most major cities across the nation, and it is estimated that cumulatively, more people participated in the protests than in any other movement in the country’s history. And the movement went global, with protests in countries across multiple continents. Fluker said that is the essence of King’s world house philosophy.
“We’ve got the momentum, and we kind of understand this hideous problem of racial inequality better. This is the starting gun, but I think there has to be more,” Fluker said, about where to go from here.
He said while the conversation has begun, the next step is education. He said the problem is not only one of race, but often coincides with class. He said the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to further exemplify this, with Black and and Hispanic communities among the most impacted.
To help ease that poverty gap, Fluker said, there needs to be better access to education and employment, job training and health care. Specifically, he said, there has to be avenues for the next generation to be raised as what he called “ethical leaders” – creating youth who are “spiritually disciplined, intellectually astute, and morally, physically and psychologically whole,” to become the leaders of tomorrow.
“I’m working not just for me or my children,” Fluker said. “Though that’s important. But I’m working for my grandchildren, and their children. I worry a lot about my grandchildren and where they will be in 2040 or 2050. I think we still have a huge job, and the job King points us to, over and over, is to create that sense of community.”
The virtual event is scheduled to be held today, Jan. 18, from 5 to 6 p.m. To ensure a space, go to keene.edu/call. Space permitting, admission is allowed any time.