The 44 P.c: Martin Luther King Jr. & Miami Gardens

One of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most frequently quoted wishes remains one of the most difficult to achieve.

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Every third Monday of the year, Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is reduced to nonviolence and dreams.

Often missing from the discourse is his antipathy to American militarism, his call for a “radical redistribution” of wealth, and, perhaps most relevant today, his call for white America to fully champion racial justice.

With this in mind, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones decided to use King’s words in her own speech to an unnamed organization on MLK Day. The move came after Hannah-Jones, who described the incident on Twitter Monday, said she learned some members of the organization objected to her even giving the speech.

C. Isaiah Smalls II author’s card

With MLK Day in the rearview mirror and yet as poignant as ever, I wanted to quote some of my favorite kingisms that Hannah-Jones shared. May his words illuminate a new path forward as we seek to navigate our country’s current mysteries.

1. “The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. A nation that spends more dollars on military defense than on upward mobility programs year after year is approaching spiritual death.”

2. “Since the birth of our nation, white America has had a schizophrenic personality on the Race, she’s torn between herself. A self in which she proudly proclaims the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy.”

3. “Whites, it must be said frankly, do not undertake a similar mass effort to re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance…with every modest advance, the White population immediately raises the argument that BLACK AMERICANS have come far enough.”

4. “The regression has a new name today, it’s called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the emergence of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there…”

5. “…for the sake of America it is necessary to refute the notion that even today the dominant ideology in our country is liberty and equality and that racism is but an occasional deviation from the norm on the part of a few fanatic extremists.”

6. “Unless America responds creatively to the challenge of banishing racism, a future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice for all people a reality.”

WITHIN THE 305

State Senator Shevrin D. Jones, D-West Park, speaks during a Legislative session Thursday, April 29, 2021 at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Wilfredo Lee AP

DeSantis ignites inner-party dispute over the fate of minority congressional districts:

The Florida Senate has developed a congressional map keeping Miami Gardens intact.

An original proposal threatened to split Florida’s largest mostly black city, but the Senate approved a late change.

“This change aims to do one thing, which is keep the capital in my county, which is the largest black community in the state of Florida, and keep the whole thing in a congressional district,” said Sen. Shevrin Jones, a West Park Democrat .

The move comes just days after Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled his own plan to reorganize Congress that gave Florida Republicans a clear advantage. DeSantis’ card has been criticized by activists and lawmakers alike, some of whom believe the governor’s plan involves a step backwards that The Herald’s Mary Ellen Klas described as “the reduction in the voting power of a racial or ethnic minority from one redistribution plan to another.” defined. ”

Senator Ileana Garcia, right, with Ana Lazara Rodriguez, 83, at a news conference May 6, 2021 outside Rodriguez’s Miami home to discuss a possible eviction trial of Rodriguez, a former Cuban political prisoner. MATIAS J.OCNER [email protected]

Senator Ileana Garcia says African American experience is not unique because “we had Obama as President”:

Knowing the beliefs of your government officials is crucial.

Case and Point: State Senator Ileana Garcia, who told CBS4 in an interview that aired Sunday, that Black people’s experience is no different from that of Latinos and white Americans because of Obama’s presidency.

“This is the best example in the world,” said Garcia, whose district includes part of Miami-Dade County. “Obama was president, not four years, but eight.”

Garcia went on to say that African Americans discriminated against her as a child and she could move on. She then urged other groups to do the same.

“I look at it as a learning experience and I’ve progressed,” Garcia said, “and I think people should move on from that.”

OUTSIDE THE 305

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 17: (Center left to right) Yolanda Renee King, Arndrea Waters King and Martin Luther King III lead the annual DC Peace Walk: Change Happens with Good Hope and a Dream across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge for Dr Martin Luther King Day on January 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. Democrats are seeking to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act this week, which will counter the various vote-busting laws that were passed in several Republican states after the 2020 election. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Voting Rights Bill dies in Senate:

Democracy suffered a major blow Wednesday night when legislation to combat the country’s new wave of restrictive electoral laws failed to garner Republican support, while two Democratic senators opposed changing the filibuster rules to pass it.

In other words, the voting restrictions enacted by Florida and 18 other states in 2021 are going nowhere anytime soon.

The federal law in question, a combination of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, included measures to “establish statewide standards for ballot access,” “establish new automatic voter registration programs, and make Election Day a national holiday.” and “restore elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act gutted by the Supreme Court in a series of decisions,” according to the New York Times.

In this file photo dated August 28, 2020, people carry George Floyd signs as they march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington. AP

The new episode of This American Life examines how conversations about race differed from 2020 to 2021:

Remember how the killing of George Floyd sparked a nationwide conversation about systemic racism?

That seems like forever, given the subsequent backlash in 2021 as critical race theory became the bogeyman of the right. The latest episode of This American Life examines how the conversation switch from 2020 to 2021 has affected three people: James Whitfield, a now-sacked school principal; Nevaeh, a multiracial teenager; and author Jerry Craft.

One of the podcast’s seminal moments came during Nevaeh’s segment when host Emanuele Berry pondered what essentially boiled down to the 2021 tagline: “We don’t want to talk about racism.”

“It’s the same message that was being repeated everywhere in that moment of backlash,” Berry noted. “And as a kid, if that’s the message you get, bury racism, what do you do with it?”

HIGH CULTURE

Anna Wintour with Vogue Editor-in-Chief Andre Leon Talley at work in a scene from the film The September Issue. Roadside attractions

André Leon Talley dies at 73:

André Leon Talley was many things – fashion icon, author, editor, television personality, creative genius, etc.

Of all the tributes that came after Talley’s death on Tuesday, however, it was Saeed Jones’ substack post that touched me the most:

I think it’s easy to dismiss ways of being as cultural contributions, but I believe people are culture. How they live and move and make myths and endure and drape and pose and want and want and want and observe and comment and explain. This is culture. Andre Leon Talley’s confidence was culture. And I would say it was culture at its finest. One look at him and you wanted more for yourself. One more look and you understand that “more” can look like anything as long as it’s what you want for yourself.

“There is a hunger for beauty.” And now look at us as we try to make something valuable out of the hem of memory. Look at us now wrapped in the knowledge of how good, how rich, how BLACK we had it with him. Continue. There must be more out here somewhere.

Where does the name “The 44 percent” come from? Click here to find out how Miami’s history influenced the newsletter title.

C. Isaiah Smalls II is a race and culture reporter for the Miami Herald. He previously worked for ESPN’s The Undefeated as part of the Rhoden Fellows inaugural class. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Morehouse College.