King's 'symphony of brotherhood' more elusive than ever

Though it is probably his most well-known speech, “I Have A Dream” is not my favorite of what Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. left us mulling over five decades after his assassination. But in that 1963 address, he did mention “the jangling discords of our nation” — and nothing could be more descriptive of what we are experiencing in 2019.

Discordant notes form the soundtrack of our lives: The government shutdown that’s disrupting much more than the lives of 800,000 furloughed federal employees. The Women’s March that failed to live up to media expectations. The Super Bowl Game, where any entertainer who performs in the halftime show will be seen as taking the side of either team owners or the players who protest societal ills during the playing of the national anthem. And on and on.

King, whose birth was commemorated in Monday’s holiday and in many activities over the weekend, envisioned a time when “we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” In many ways, that goal seems more elusive than during his lifetime.

In hindsight, it was easier for people of goodwill of different races, classes and religious traditions to join with blacks who sought the right to use public accommodations like restaurants and movie theaters from which they were excluded or even the right to vote that had existed in the Constitution and in statutes for years but in practice was denied to millions of Southern blacks. From all over the country people converged on Washington in August 1963 and Selma, Ala., in March 1965 and took up local causes that nudged us toward that “symphony of brotherhood.”

But that alliance frayed when King expanded his moral gaze to oppose the war in Vietnam and his demands to include not just access to lunch counters and front seats on Greyhound buses, but also economic equity. Proposed remedies like affirmative action severed some ties. Expanding the meaning of “brotherhood” to include women as equals and later LGBTQ or “gender nonconforming” people — well, is there any surprise that the notion of a big-tent movement is itself a discordant one?

It was one thing for women — and their male allies — to march by the millions in 2017 to express profound dislike and distrust of President Donald Trump on the day of his inauguration. Alarm alone was common ground. But it has been shaky ground. Despising and vowing to resist the Trump administration has not been enough to bind people who champion Palestinian rights and those who support Israel; people who support the right of women to make decisions about reproduction and those who want government to have the final word; those who support small businesses and those who support the living wage crusade; those who purport to know God’s will and those who deny the existence of God. Those are just some of the ways in which differences have risen to the fore to keep women from providing the kumbaya moment of the 21^st century.

As I grow older, I’ve come to accept that in the quest for justice — however one defines that — discord does not have to result in paralysis. We just have to be smart enough that we will not be manipulated by those obsessed with conflict. We have to be dispassionate enough to keep our eyes on the justice prize. We have to be grownups.

You might totally disagree with the governmental priorities of either Gov. Larry Hogan or Mayor Catherine Pugh. But if you can agree that children need all we can give them to be whole, healthy human beings, then do what you can do to make that happen. While waiting for solutions to mass incarceration, do what you can do to assist families caught up in the system and the men and women who face crushing obstacles once they’ve done their time.

The “jangling discords” of King’s day extended to whether there should even be a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and what its objectives should be. But that was behind-the-scenes stuff. People who made their way to Washington that steamy August day in 1963 had individually heeded a call much greater than that of march organizers.

Maybe we should do the same. We can figure out later whether we like each other enough to share a meal. First things first.

E.R. Shipp, a Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, is the journalist in residence at Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication. Her column runs every other Wednesday. Email: ershipp2017@gmail.com.