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August 30th, 2013

Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, the European Union could still learn a lot from his words.

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Blog Team

August 30th, 2013

Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, the European Union could still learn a lot from his words.

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

This week saw the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, which was marked at an event by US President Barack Obama. Rune Kier writes that while King’s speech still has a great deal of relevance for Americans; Europeans could also learn from it in the context of the Eurozone crisis. He argues that Europe lacks the kind of vision shown by King, with minimal aims of maintaining the status quo tending to trump grand goals for the future. Without a ‘dream’ to aim for, it will be difficult for Europeans to fully embrace the integration project.

On Wednesday, the first African-American President of the United States, Barack Obama, delivered a speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the iconic ‘I have a dream’ speech by legendary civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The speech not only has relevance for race-relations in the United States, but holds important lessons for Europe as it continues to struggle with the consequences of the on-going Eurozone crisis.

King and his dream

Martin Luther King Jr., Credit: Library of Congress (CC-BY-SA-3.0)
Martin Luther King Jr., Credit: Library of Congress (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

There are many similarities between Obama and King, but also a few differences to learn from. Both are black men who talk about racial justice against the backdrop of the economy. Obama did it as a President struggling with an economic crisis, and King did it as a civil rights leader at the end of a March for Jobs and Freedom. Both draw heavily on biblical references and use the US Founding Documents to legitimise their claims. They spring from different times (1968 and 2013), they struggle with different challenges (Jim Crow and inequality) and they talk from different positions (civil society and the White House). Both are gifted orators who talk about change. The last thing is what strikes me most.

When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he did so as a civil society leader, on the backbone of Jim Crow segregation, and against an apparently stagnant establishment. His words illustrated that. The rights to equality in the Constitution was “a bad cheque” marked with “insufficient funds”, he proposed a mesmerising visual dream that we could all see and he demonstrated a strong religiously motivated all-or-nothing approach to equality. On that day, King’s rhetoric was advocating an understanding of social change as God-given salvation. Change was articulated as abrupt and revolutionary. King said it clearly in “the fierce urgency of now” as opposed to “the tranquilising drug of gradualism” or when claiming that no progress had been made for 100 years. His dream was widely considered utopian, all-encompassing and dangerous at the time. So much so that the FBI initiated surveillance and claimed he was a danger to the nation.

Obama’s change

President Barack Obama has another view of racial relations in the United States. Obama has consistently voiced his “insistence on small miracles” and highlights “just how far our struggle has come“. In opening the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in 2006, Obama praised King for inspiring a nation “to begin to live up to its creed”, not to “live out the true meaning of its creed” as were King’s words. In 2008, under fire for his relationship with the controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, Obama gave a speech titled “A more perfect union”. In his speech Obama accused Reverend Wright of “a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic… as if our society was static… and irrevocably bound to a tragic past”. For Rev. Wright that was true until the redemption – just as it was for King.

On Wednesday Obama started by recognising King’s metaphor of ‘a bad cheque’ as a promise made in the US Declaration of Independence. He went on to describe the March on Washington and its time and then stated what was accomplished. But he used gradual words like “more” and concluded that to “dismiss the magnitude of this progress – to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed – that dishonours the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years”. Obama’s ‘change’ is not the coming of Paradise that King dreamt of. It is the slow, hard political process of taking one step at a time. In some ways Obama’s gradual change is what King warned about, yet Obama quotes King on “the fierce urgency of now”.

And here the opposition is clear. Obama means the fierce urgency of beginning and holding on, King meant the fierce urgency of getting there and reaching the goal. As he said, “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream”. Obama’s change is gradual, inherently political and reformist; King’s change is absolute, God-given and revolutionary. For King, justice was a bad cheque, described in the Constitution, and in 1968 he came to cash it. For Obama equality is still “a promise”, but one with the possibility of a down payment on “a more perfect union”.

Europe in need of a King

While the United States has been challenged by polarisation, xenophobia, and distrust of central government, the European Union has also had to deal with these themes, particularly since the beginning of the Eurozone crisis. Many of the notes hit by Obama in his speech, with its focus on unity, step-by-step progress, and diligently keeping to the struggle, were mirrored by Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso when receiving the EU’s Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. Indeed Barroso quoted an “ever closer Union” and claimed that “European unity is not a perfect work of art; it is work in progress that demands constant and diligent tending” – words that could well have been spoken from the mouth of Obama. It was a great speech, but something was missing, something that could only be there by virtue of association. What the speech – and the European Union – lacks is a King and his ‘dream’.

Obama, Van Rompuy and Barroso share a gradual understanding of change. That is the nature of politics and a necessity for voices of the establishment. They cannot talk about visionary utopias without being held to them. They cannot talk about drastic revolutionary change as they are what will be changed. They can only do ‘more’, compromise and ‘progress’. Yet Obama acknowledged that he would not be possible without King. Obama’s ‘more perfect union’ is a movement towards King’s ‘dream’ – indeed, he would not be in the White House without King. The dream legitimises his actions and shows his progress. It is his measuring stick and the detailed and visual image and vision he is striving for.

Obama needs Kings’ visionary dream, but Van Rompuy, Barroso and the European Union have no King and no dream of their own. Therefore it has no goal to strive for. Its goal is a minimum. If paralleled to the metaphor of a bad cheque, the promise of the European Union would be a drain plug, making sure that Europe does not sink all the way to war and chaos. King’s speech would have been entirely different had his dream been about ‘not getting any worse’, and Obama’s speech would have been without teeth had he not had King’s dream to play against.

Nobel and the European dream

In The Nobel Peace Prize speech Van Rompuy talked about “something radically new” and stated that “Europe was a promise, Europe equalled hope”. He spoke about the idea of Europe, but that idea remained distant and abstract. Barroso followed up that Europe was “not an end in itself, but a means to higher ends” and that it “embodies, as a community of values, this vision of freedom and justice”. But like the idea of Europe, the ends and vision seem abstract. Unlike King’s dream, we have no concrete details, no visual imagery and therefore no vision.

Unless we know, appreciate, and are constantly reminded about where the slow progress of change is leading us, we will likely become even more Eurosceptic and less united day by day. Without a ‘bad cheque’ to work towards, we might miss the ‘down payment’ on justice or even loosen the drain plug of peace. The European Union needs a King and it needs a dream. Moreover, it needs to describe this dream in detail for its population to see.

You may be interested to know that on Monday 2 September we will be launching a new sister blog: USAPP – American Politics and Policy.

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the author

Rune Kier – Danish Ministry for Climate, Energy and Building
Rune Kier is the speechwriter at the Danish Ministry for Climate, Energy and Building. He has formerly worked with diversity in Copenhagen, Denmark, and been associated with the Intercultural Cities Programme under World Forum for Democracy. He is a Cultural Anthropologist specialising in civil rights and race, and has written about Obama’s speeches in leading Danish newspapers.

 

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