162. Revisiting Dr. Martin Luther King's Radical Money Beliefs

Too often, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy has been simplified to a few memorable phrases from his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. But did you know that Dr. King held some pretty radical money beliefs?

Dr. King advocated for social justice and economic equality for all Americans and his ideas still resonate today.

This is one of the most popular episodes of Progressive Pockets, so please enjoy it as we kick of Black History Month!

 Links from today’s episode: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/21/economic-equality-martin-luther-king-jrs-other-dream/

https://www.debt.com/news/what-martin-luther-king-jr-taught-us-money/

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/18/958120759/martin-luther-king-jr-s-vision-for-economic-justice 

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:

Episode#123 Poor People's Campaign

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Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja and I’m your host as we explore the topic of how we can align our values, our beliefs, our desires for the world around us and what we do with our money on a daily basis.

In light of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the civil right icon’s money philosophy. If you’re like me, you were taught a pretty simple story about Dr. King. He was a charismatic preacher, he was able to lead a movement including boycotts and other forms of nonviolent resistance until finally the Civil Rights Act was passed which banned segregation in restaurants and schools and made employment discrimination illegal. The end.

But when I started doing my own reading I started to learn other things, like the fact that Dr. King had criticized our country’s role in the Vietnam War. And I have to say that really surprised me. I just had never heard anything other than this one note message of the dream that his kids would be judged on the contents of their characters.

But the reality is that Dr. King was a wide thinking philosopher on issues relating to the well being of people. And it wasn’t until the past 10 years or so that I started to learn a little bit about Dr. King’s teachings on our economy.

So what did he say about our money?
Well we can start with the Vietnam War. One of his criticisms was that the war was using up money that could have been spent on social welfare programs here in the United States. You may have heard his quote that “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

So we’re starting to get a picture that perhaps Dr. King was more radical than he is usually portrayed in popular media. 

But Dr. King was murdered- and if you haven’t read about the circumstances of his murder, I want to encourage you to do so today- while he was launching his Poor People’s Campaign. He was in Memphis working with Black sanitation workers who were fighting for better rights. There were issues with pay and working conditions. Ultimately, the workers were on strike fighting for fair treatment, for example, there was a bad weather day and all workers were sent home but the Black workers were only paid 2 hours of wages whereas the white workers were paid the entire day’s wages.

Dr. King was working on a very concrete level, on the ground with poor people, but he also was an activist at the highest of policy levels. My favorite Dr. King quote goes like this:

This quote is from Feb 23, 1968 about a month before he was murdered: 

"Whenever the government provides opportunities and privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact is that everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem."

I really appreciate this quote because it speaks to the double standard that exists in our country. There’s another quote from another speech that he gave right around that same time where he says 
“When there is massive unemployment in the black community, its called a social problem. But when there is massive unemployment in the white community, it’s called a depression.”

There’s something about that that reminds me of the way this opioid epidemic is being discussed compared to the crack epidemic in our country. 

Dr. King believed in redistributing wealth in the US. He wasn’t a communist, he had his criticism against that philosophy. He wasn’t a capitalist either. He was arguing for a new, better system. And I wish we’d gotten to know what it was, but this is the work he was launching when his life was cut short at 39 years of age.

Dr. King talked about what our reaction should be to the person who is asking for a dollar to get something to eat. He says that it isn’t enough to give them a dollar, if we are truly compassionate we will see that the system that created this situation in the first place needs to be reimagined and recreated. 

There’s another money belief of Dr. King’s that I’ve only started reading about in the last 5ish years and that is his support of a guaranteed income. I’m going to include a lot of links in the show notes today if you want to do a deeper dive. Dr. King made the point that economic progress happens as a result of giving people things. That’s how the middle class was created in America. People, and I’m talking about white people, were given land, they were helped to buy houses, they were given decent schools. We saw what happened with those tiny covid relief checks during the quarantine. Giving people money works. And apparently that was another money belief from Dr. King.

So interesting right?
I’ll recap the money beliefs from Dr. King that we covered today:
Military spending needs to be scrutinized. Especially when our social programs at home are not funded.
We need to be honest about the amount of financial support that the rich receive.
We should offer a guaranteed income.

These are some radical ideas! So Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day! I hope that today you’ll reflect on some of his work, beyond the I Have a Dream Speech.

Let’s end this week with a quote from Coretta Scott King
“It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem.”

Y’all let’s make sure she isn’t talking about us. Let’s do something! If you found this episode interesting please share it with someone. That’s how podcasts grow, by word of mouth, not by me going out and telling people that the show is worthwhile.

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Have a great day today and let’s talk again soon!