The Crisis of Empathy: Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Jan. 20, 2020, I delivered the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. keynote at Oregon State University. My speech discussed the life and legacy of Dr. King, how his beliefs have been diluted over the decades, and how we can carry his most radical work and words as fuel for today’s social justice fights. Today, I am sharing the video link and transcript.

Good morning OREGON STATE! I SAID GOOD MORNING, OREGON STATE! What a beautiful day! It’s an honor to be here in Corvallis with all of you, Beavers. I want to thank Dr. Alexander, Dr. Driskell, and all those involved with making today possible. I also want to thank you all for showing up in all of your glory and authenticity to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life, legacy, and pursuit of liberation.

Observances like this are vital because they give us the chance to reflect on our past wins and those figures who made great strides in gaining the liberties that we all get to enjoy today. Though our journey to end all forms of marginalization remains long, Dr. King undoubtedly played an essential role in speeding up our collective sprint.

Born in Atlanta, Ga, Dr. King, like many of his time (including my grandparents born within years of him), experienced racial injustice in a way that many of us can only mildly understand, whether it’s through the stories they allowed to leave their lips or photographs that give us a glimpse of yesteryear. And though it seems like so long ago since his birth, if he were still alive — as he should be — Dr. King would be 91 years old. So, you see, it wasn’t that long ago that he laid bare his vantage point of the Civil Rights Movement. And just as many generations as Millennials and Gen Zers are from him, he was from those ancestors that were kidnapped from the Mother Continent of Africa - and those who amorally journeyed across the Atlantic and commenced the Great Enslavement. Think about that for just a second. For all of those who believe that we should forget that great sin, it happened as recently as the lives of our grandparent’s grandparents. How dare anyone suggest that our society isn’t still tainted with such the stench of that sin?

In what seemed like a lost cause of vindication to many, Dr. King - arm in arm with numerous comrades for justice - took up the mantle to right how Black folks and others who are marginalized had been treated oh so wrong. Influenced by a long history of spiritual and religious leadership from his father and other family members, he found a passion for the teachings of the Christian faith. At just 26 years old, he would find himself engulfed in his calling, becoming a leader in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, then constructing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, then emblazing the nation and the world with powerful and radical rhetoric and action that would forever change how we think of Blackness, and justice, writ-large.

And now, we reflect annually on his formidable presence. How he served, without holding political office, as one of the most powerful Founding Fathers that the United States has had. Now, I think of how beautiful this day is, one that has been observed nationally for decades, and what an honor it is. But I must also hold up how often he is dishonored. How often his actions, his stories, his words, and his beliefs are misrepresented. Dr. King was a radical, and that must never be forgotten. And we must resist any urge to sanitize or dilute the evolution of his vision.

There is a comfort in focusing on his brilliance in a piecemeal manner, focusing on the warmth of dreams and images of children of different races and backgrounds holding hands. It’s beautiful and important, but he never said those things were possible without strenuous labor and immense struggle.

When I think of Dr. King, I think of those visions, AND I think of masterful critique of the systems that threatened the possibility of that vision. In one of his later speeches, “The Three Evils,” he detailed how racism worked for hand in hand with poverty and war to obscure our opportunity for greater understanding of ourselves, each other, and our collective potential. He warned that the Civil Rights fight was nowhere close to being dead or done, that there is a failure of society when the resources we’ve accrued are not wholeheartedly used to alleviate the suffering of those who are disenfranchised, that we become “insensitive to pain, agony, and suffering” and complicit in destruction when we co-sign militarism. That we are in a Crisis of Empathy.

This Dr. King is not the one many of us learned of in grade school. This Dr. King is not the one often quoted by mainstream media platforms. This Dr. King threatens the current status quo, threatens empire, threatens capitalism, threatens the prevailing essence of white supremacy generations removed from his physical presence. This Dr. King, while still publicly nonviolent, understood the necessity of self-defense. This Dr. King understood the necessity of tackling the reparations discussion head-on. And This Dr. King was ultimately a threat to the American Empire and through surveillance and intimidation, his light ultimately extinguished.

We should all be grateful for the complicated, nuanced legacy of Dr. King and committed to unearthing it. But we must do the work of finding our rhetoric, our own values, our own dreams, our own ways to threaten the purveyors of oppression. Today, let’s reflect on how we can all be a threat to xenophobia in all of its forms. Think about it. In your life, how are you threatening white supremacy? Threatening classism? Threatening misogyny? Threatening homophobia? Threatening transphobia? Threatening ableism? How will you simultaneously live in your power and relinquish power as we know it? How will you resist the very human urge to exploit your gifts, the gifts of others, and the gifts of the world? How will you impact the Crisis of Empathy?

I say Crisis of Empathy because we are being tested on how we consider others’ lives and experiences. It can be difficult at this time. In a time when an unabashed white supremacist, xenophobic demagogue has taken up residence of the most important office in this land. How can we be surprised by this manifestation of the sins of America’s past? A past that saw the commandeering of land from our Indigenous family, the enslavement of Black bodies, the continued disenfranchisement of bodies of color, the striking down of tremendous gains realized during Reconstruction, the emergence of an inhumane mass incarceration system, and crimigration system, the various periods of America’s militaristic thumb being clamped down on mostly vulnerable Black and brown populations around the world, the exploitation of the working class. And now we see the rise of white supremacist hate crimes, of more polarized politics than ever before, the calls from the supposed home party of the marginalized, the Democratic Party to consider the less radical approach, a return to form, a status quo of American exceptionalism, imperialism, and exploitation with a maximalist lens.

After all, Dr. King warned us against those whose great endeavor or concern is the semblance of civility and order. He said: “I must confess that over the past few years, I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

So much of this rings true today. In this current Era of Reckoning, we are called to examine how we missed the mark before. How we supplanted the screams for a deeper politick focused on the marginalized with a delusion of progress. Let us remember that accountability is key with any leader in the election year of 2020. A person with a sliver of marginalization (be they a person of color or a woman) is still capable of harm, especially if they take up the empire’s banner. I hope we have learned that Obamaism was not the ultimate of progression, and I hope will anticipate that Trumpism is not the ultimate of regression.

Yes, In this Grand Era of Reckoning, we are called to reflect on all how we are complicit, where we confront how none of us live in a binary of privilege or oppression. No, we are all on a long spectrum of varying degrees of both privilege and oppression. We must uncover the nuanced expanses of our experiences. We must understand that we all carry the capacity to be oppressed in one instance and an oppressor in the next. Or, as Audre Lorde said, there is no hierarchy of oppressions. And we must hold on to the possibility that there is any number of invisible oppressions that we will have to pick up along the way.

For instance, as a Black trans woman in this time, I can’t imagine Dr. King spent much or anytime reflecting on our lot in life. There were few terms to describe our experiences and certainly not the visibility that our community is afforded — for better or worse — today. Still, my fight for liberation, through time and the transformation of movements, is tethered to Dr. King’s. I have been blessed in my life to heed the call of social justice on my terms. Nearly 150 miles from where Dr. King first made his mark, I was born in the sticky humidity of Augusta, Ga. I benefited from growing up in the afterglow of the fights of him and figures like his cherished advisor Bayard Rustin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and LGBTQ+ movement foremothers like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.

I didn’t have the privilege of knowing about trans folks of color as I did the former. So my early journey involved immense isolation from my queerness and my budding transgender identity. While white supremacy served as an invisible puppet master of my fate, so too did heterosexism and cissexism. I know that the marginalization that comes from being gender and/or sexual minority is not often discussed with the same fervor as that which is tied to race. But I am here to tell those who remain dubious that if a knife pierces my body because I’m Black, it feels no different than the knife that pierces my body because I’m a woman or because I’m queer or because I’m trans. They all threaten my livelihood and survival.

I allowed a vision of liberation to take hold of me because I knew I wanted to lessen the suffering of other Black trans people, lessen the isolation I felt as a child in a smaller town in Georgia. This is why my work has called me to various movements at different points in the last decade. I found more of my voice as a student at the University of Georgia that I fought with other students for a nondiscrimination policy based on gender identity. I found more of my voice on the streets of Atlanta that I worked with other trans folks of color to document what was happening to trans women of color and sex workers and how law enforcement plagued them whenever they breathed. I found more of my voice when I began to look at healing justice as a solution to lessen the murders and death plaguing my sisters and siblings each year that the vast majority of the public continues to ignore. And all of that work armed me with a wider aperture to chronicle the LGBTQ+ experience in a new way.

It was through these experiences that I learned to infuse social justice into all that I do. On the surface, I know my transition from community organizer to magazine editor may not be completely legible as a liberatory role. But I know that any role I take on is organizing. As the first Black and trans executive editor of a leading LGBTQ+ culture magazine in the world, Out Magazine, and an openly transgender activist, it means making space for and centering those stories that we haven’t seen on such a major platform. It means clarifying that queerness isn’t just white, or cis, or gay men, or thin and muscled, able bodies. It’s so much more. Queerness is Black and Brown and trans and nonbinary and fat and disabled and religious and spiritual or not. It’s married and single and celibate and sensual. And we must fight until it’s no longer stigmatized, incarcerated, or detained. Or bullied or underestimated. It must be liberated in all of its forms. And I believe that will happen one day if we all do our little part.

But beyond these grand things, Sometimes, the most important work, that internal work of transforming the heart, doesn’t often happen on social media timelines or in front of camera lenses. I found my voice in everyday conversations with family, friends, and strangers who knew nothing of an experience like mine. I found my voice in being as PRESENT as possible and not shrinking away out of fear of judgment. It often happens in those conversations you have with your family or in a split second when you are called to think of a solution that is beyond the self.

If there’s anything I hope you take away today, it’s that those little moments and acts of activism in our daily lives is how we make change. Activism isn’t simply direct action in the streets, though that’s a powerful and beautiful option. It comes in many forms. It’s the pieces of resistance you carve out in your everyday life. 

Whether you’re a student holding professors accountable for not having a system that respects and honors gender-neutral pronouns or chosen names. Or another student fighting to end discrimination on campus. Or a professor who makes sure that your class curriculum reflects a grander view of diversity, of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion, and more. Whatever our lane is, whatever you believe limits you, whatever title you don’t have or class you haven’t taken or award you haven’t received (yet), you have to commit to using our energy for liberation. 

And when all else fails, remind yourself of the power of your story. Our stories are organizing tools. They have the power to shift a person’s belief about a concept or a community.  It was Marsha P. Johnson’s story that infused some much-needed color and flavor into the legend of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. It was Harriett Tubman’s story of resistance to white dominance that will reverberate for ions. Dr. King’s story forever changed how Blackness is considered in the U.S. and around the world. And it’s your story that will set you and possibly others free.

You see, it goes beyond just telling that story, beyond just having a dream, it’s about the action — what you do and build and transform with that story and about this commitment to empowering others to share their own. You’ll have to continuously remind yourself of that power. You’ll have to continually strategize on how to be that change because it shifts, and evolves, and morphs. But if you are committed to organizing within your passion, you’ll find the roadmap you need.

So I urge you to make a commitment today. Commit to being your truest self always. Commit to supporting others in being their truest selves and sharing those stories that continue to be marginalized today. Commit to understanding that you are not alone in this fight, that there are comrades in the wings. Because honestly, each of our individual stories is just a thread in a larger multi-colored, glittery tapestry. Commit to using the power of the story to combat the crisis of Empathy.  And also commit to constant growth and learning. Even when we think we have it all figured out, there’s more for us to incorporate into our journeys. And we can start this today.

Now can y’all do something for me? Look at someone near you and repeat after me.

I am committed to MY story.

I am committed to YOUR story.

I am committed to OUR story.

Again and a little louder.

I am committed to MY story.

I am committed to YOUR story.

I am committed to OUR story.

One last time and louder.

I am committed to MY story.

I am committed to YOUR story.

I am committed to OUR story.

Thank you!