Genuine Equality 'Has Not Been Manifest Yet' In America, The Revs Say

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1963 file photo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The annual celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in his hometown in Atlanta is calling for renewed dedication to nonviolence following a turbulent year. The slain civil rights leader's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, said in an online church service Monday, Jan. 18, 2021, that physical violence and hateful speech are “out of control” in the aftermath of a divisive election followed by a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol in Washington by supporters of President Donald Trump.

Zoe Mathews is a producer for Boston Public Radio and the producer of The Scrum podcast.

January 18, 2021

Updated August 07, 2023

In 2020, eight minutes and forty six seconds of footage — the record of George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis, Minn., police officer who knelt on his neck — parked a renewed racial justice movement in America.

In the first six days of 2021, incessant false refrains of a stolen election rose to a crescendo with an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, where throngs of Trump supporters disrupted the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's election victory — some adorned in white supremacist icons and flying Confederate flags.

The Revs. Irene Monroe and Emmett Price joined Boston Public Radio on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, to reflect on King's words from his "The Other America" speech, urging us to own the truth that there are two Americas: one of prosperity and one of despair.

Price said King speaks of genuine equality, which had not yet been obtained in 1968 and has still not yet been obtained today.

"It's been an aspiration of something phenomenal that has not been manifest yet," he said. "I believe the aspiration of America should manifest that genuine equality. Anything other than that is unacceptable."

Monroe and Price discussed how, in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, some turned to platitudes that the event does not reflect "who we are" — just as many have done in the past after horrific events where racism was an undeniable factor.

Monroe said for many Black Americans, the truth is the exact opposite — that this is exactly what America has stood for, time and again, and that it is white Americans who keep choosing to forget the nation's ugly history.

"As Black people, we continue to perservere in the face of America's original sin," Monroe said.

"To remember is a radical act in and of itself," she added. "The question is, who forgets? We're still fighting that battle ... Whether it's in the classroom or the board room or the courtroom."

The Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Emmett Price is executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Together, they host GBH’s All Rev’d Up podcast.