Justice Will Always Prevail
by Donald Whitehead, Jr.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
On this Martin Luther King Day, 2021, many of us in social justice movements remain shaken or even terrified by the events of January 6th.
We witnessed one of the worst examples of insurrection in our nation’s entire history—right in front of our eyes.
Our fear and disappointment are exacerbated by the knowledge that marches by Black Live Matter activists were met with tremendous force and unprovoked violence, while white supremacists, far-right radicals, and conspiracy theorists overtook the Capitol as the entire Congress, the sitting vice president, and the newly elected vice-president were in the building. These domestic terrorists met little resistance. They took selfies with police officers. They wore shirts supporting the holocaust. They paraded the confederate flag in the United States Capitol for the first time in history.
It is impossible not to see the contradiction as a massive demonstration of white privilege.
It is easy to believe that Martin Luther King's dream has been deferred indefinitely. It easy to see Charlottesville, the murders at Mother Emanuel, and the murders of Ahmaud Arbury, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd as evidence that our country has made no progress toward the realization of Dr. King's dream.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that the attack on the Capitol was premised on a lie that was encouraged, supported, and continually repeated by a President who has been silent about the growing aggression of the white supremacist movement. After the American people legally and decisively defeated Donald Trump, he tried to play on people’s fear and anger to reverse the inevitable change that confronts America.
We have seen this story before: people desperately holding on to a flawed past only to encounter the arc of justice. And while the historical arc of justice can seem excruciatingly slow, but it will arrive.
For those of us that work to center racial equity, we see progress all around us. We have seen young black girls and young black boys marching with young white girls and young white boys from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Chants of “Black Lives Matter” have rang out from the mighty mountains of New York, from the Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado, from the curvaceous slopes of California. “Black Lives Matter” rang out from the Stone Mountain of Georgia from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, and all over the world, people are shouting, "Black Lives Matter."
We stood witness as the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners in the red hills of Georgia flip the state and elect a Black preacher to the United States Senate. The day after tomorrow, we will stand witness as the first Black woman is sworn in as Vice President of the United States. Every day, we see people of color making strides in business, in politics, in the movement for social justice.
Black lives are starting to matter. Latinx people and Native Americans are breaking new ground daily.
I am not saying we should be satisfied. We can never be satisfied until there are no more names added to endless stream of names of the victims of police brutality. As Dr. King said. “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The failed coup is an example of the hate-filled resistance. Its failure sent the message that resistance to history is destined to fail. We must continue to push the envelope. We cannot cower in fear. Our fight is aligned with the arc of history, and history shaped by justice will always prevail.