Opinion: What MLK Jr. actually said and why it matters for DEI
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Editor’s note: The Deseret News is committed to providing meaningful commentary both for and against HB261, which would reform diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public institutions in the state. This opinion piece argues in opposition to the bill.
These quotes will probably make you feel uncomfortable.
“Pervasive use of the N-word and other racial epithets.”
“Black students being called monkeys or apes and being told their skin was dirty and looked like feces.”
“Black students were on the receiving end of racial comments and jokes, such as ‘go pick cotton’ and ‘you are my slave’ and jokes about slavery and lynching.”
It wouldn’t surprise any of us to read these quotes in a history of the Civil Rights Movement, and knowing that they had been said a long time ago in a place far away might make it easier to read them. Unfortunately, they are much more recent and describe words spoken closer to home.
These are bullet points describing “factual findings” that Davis School District administrators presented to Utah legislators at a public meeting last November. In that meeting, district leaders were updating the legislature on an ongoing Justice Department settlement agreement which found that Davis was “deliberately indifferent” to widespread racial harassment and discrimination — particularly against Black and Asian students.
Lawmakers expressed shock and dismay at the findings, with one legislator pointedly asking district leaders how it could have gotten so bad that the federal government had to intervene to protect the rights of Utah students.
Recently, legislators have also tried (and nearly succeeded) in convincing the State Board of Education to repeal its own equity rule; the governor has said diversity hiring statements were “bordering on evil;” and our state government is (again) trying to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in all of Utah’s public institutions.
So why do we have such a significant disconnect? How does the outrage that Utah’s lawmakers express about racial abuse in our schools coexist alongside a desire to dismantle the very policies that ensure racial equity and inclusion?
Martin Luther King Jr., whose life we are celebrating this month, had something to say about this in a lesser-known TV interview given 11 months before his assassination. The roughly 30-minute exchange is valuable in part because it completely dismantles the imagined King that exists in the minds of many Americans.
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This is not the black-and-white “I Have a Dream” King whose words are regularly twisted to promote context-free colorblindness. Instead, the interview features King speaking (literally and figuratively) in color and giving frank answers about how continuing racism, poverty and militarism had turned his dream into “a nightmare.”
At the heart of his message is what King called a “new phase” of the Civil Rights struggle, whose chief obstacle was the white backlash over civil rights. “The so-called ‘white backlash; is merely a new name for an old phenomenon … a continuation of the same ambivalence and vacillation on the whole question for racial justice that has existed since the founding of our nation,” King said.
“… many of the same people who supported us in Selma and Birmingham were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negros but they were not at the moment and are not now committed to genuine equality for Negros … It is much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make quality education a reality in our schools … I think we are in a new era, a new phase … where we have moved from a struggle for decency, which characterized our struggle for 10-12 years, to a struggle for genuine equality. And this is where we are getting resistance because there was never any intention of going that far.”
For all of the progress we have made over the half-century since King’s interview, the experiences of Black and diverse students in Davis and other Utah districts demonstrate that the struggle for “genuine equality” is not over. Ensuring that students do not suffer racism or other types of abuse, that they experience the “decency” that King references, is not enough.
Like any parent, I want to be able to send my kids into a K-12 and higher education system that recognizes them as fully human and fundamentally whole. Achieving this type of system requires educators who do not see differences as a deficiency, but are fully equipped to build on the unique strengths of all students across social categories like race, class, gender, language and sexual identity.
In short, building this system requires educators who understand the practical and essential role of educational equity and who, to quote the nearly-scrapped state board rule, “acknowledge that all students are capable of learning and distribute resources to provide equal opportunities based on the needs of each individual student.”
Quite simply, concepts like diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in education are how we carry out the “next phase” of the civil rights movement in 2024. Nearly every educator I have known over almost 20 years as a public school teacher and professor has understood this on some level.
What is new is a kind of “Ed Scare” politics that has transformed practical conversations about how to ensure the academic success of all students into something sinister. Classrooms should not be where politicians prove their partisan bona fides or political activists engage in “branding” to manufacture outrage for a never-ending culture war. Rather, they should be places where educators have every tool that they need to be responsive and build on the strengths of students from a wide variety of family and community backgrounds.
This January, as we remember both the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and begin a new legislative session, I have two invitations for my fellow Utahns. First, I invite you to watch King’s interview. I can’t motivate you with extra credit like I do my students, but I promise that it will be worth your time. Second, I invite you to take a hard look at any lawmaker who is trying to convince you that there is something sinister about creating fair learning environments where every student is included.
Aren’t you tired of the partisan outrage and nonsense? We all deserve better.
Dr. Eric Ruiz Bybee is an associate professor and teaches courses in multicultural education and civil rights. He is also part of the steering committee of Utah Rooting Out Racism — a non-partisan coalition of parents, educators, students and community members committed to eliminating racism in Utah schools. The views published here are his alone.
