Dr. Bernice A. King on the Quest for Racial Justice

From Harper's BAZAAR

This is a staggering moment in history, a moment when the people of America and across the globe are facing the harrowing consequences of more than 400 years of trauma inflicted on Black people. All over the world, passion and power are rising, and anguish and anger are pouring out. It is a fiery indictment on America and on every nation that has profited from Black lives suffering racism and white supremacy. The world is shaking, even in the midst of a global pandemic, in a quest for justice. “What is needed is the realization that power without Love is reckless and abusive, and that Love without power is sentimental and anemic,” my father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said. “Power at its best is Love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is Love correcting everything that stands against Love.”

When people ask me, as they often do, “Are you hopeful?,” I consider justice. Hope and justice are connected in my con­sciousness. Hope is not naïveté, but an understanding of where we are and a vision of what we can be. Hope is realistic in that it sees what can be accomplished when we organize our strength into compelling power. And when we, together, assert that power to correct every system, ideology, and condition that stands against Love, we are doing justice.

The quest for justice is the pulse of my hope. As long as there’s movement toward justice, there’s hope. Sometimes we can’t see the movement. It would appear as though the issues of injustice and inhumanity that we have grappled with for hundreds of years will be with us and against us for hundreds of years to come. It can seem as though the collective heart for building a more just, humane, peaceful world has grown cold, and few are willing to build. It often looks like those with a zeal for violence are more vigilant than those with a desire for peace. At times, the pulse may be faint, but it’s still there.

And right now, the pulse of my hope is strong. A critical mass of people is galvanized around rid­ding America of racism. More and more people are realizing that justice is beyond arrests and convictions: We must also commit to changing the systems, institutions, and policies that are steeped in white supremacist ideology. As the number of people focused on that substantive change increases, so does my hope.

In his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, my father wrote that “Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that the government cannot elude our demands.” As my father told us, “We still have a choice today: nonviolent co­existence or violent co­annihilation.” We can organize our strength into compelling power. It is a nettlesome task, but we are being beckoned now to an assignment higher than ensuring prison sentencing. We have before us a choice. We can choose chaos or community. Choosing community means that we join together, to align America and our world with Love. Choosing community means that we choose nonviolence, which has Love as its foundation. We can do that. We must do that.

I’m not naive. I understand that America’s soul is sick. I understand that Black people have been and continue to be oppressed throughout the world. I know that myriad other forms of violence bring harm to humanity. Still, I have a vision of what we can be. We can make justice a reality. Believing this strengthens the pulse of my hope.

The people are moving for justice. I’m hopeful.

This article originally appears in the Summer 2020 issue of Harper's BAZAAR, available on newsstands July 7.

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