This day is ostensibly set aside to mark the birth and life of a great man, a leader who labored and fought for freedom and was for his efforts sent from this life too soon.
The actual day of his birth was three days ago, of course. But celebrating the reality of it is inconvenient to the manner in which society operates, and so that date has been moved, arbitrarily, to the third Monday in January, whatever the actual date that day may be. Yes, we understand the reasons, both the ones that are justifiable and the ones that are not. Facilitating commemoration and elevating it to the status of national holiday are both important, but as always with the devil, he hides in the details, and in cases such as this, he works under cover of those twin aims to erase the man himself, his history, and the true importance of recognizing his life and work.
It brought to mind this image, one called, simply, The Witness. Wings captured it a decade or so ago, in the aftermath of one of our great winter storms (a phenomenon now increasingly rare overall, although this year is shaping up to be an exception to our apparently new rule). It was a small stone cairn, one that still exists in slightly different composition, that stood along the drive to the southwest. It looked like a vaguely human figure: a spirit being, one of the Little People; in my own way, also the Rock People. Such structures have spiritual significance for our peoples, besides fulfilling what seems to be a fundamental and universal human impulse: to create markers and memorials, signs and portents, legacies and guides.
On the day that Wings took the photo, it stood out in a sea of white, this strong and silent mass of dark basaltic spirit around which swirled snow deep and as yet untouched by humanity, its drifting pattern formed entirely by elemental forces. It seemed to bear a message of some sort, not precisely as an emissary, but more perhaps in the nature of a reminder that these stones have seen far more than we can ever imagine, and will continue to bear witness to the Earth and her turnings long after we are gone.
Which brings to mind the nature of what it means to be a witness, especially in times of peril, and especially when that peril belongs to others.
The dominant culture has warped the meaning of the word in more than one way. Thanks to the forceful imposition of a colonial religion, the verb “to witness” has taken on a whole other meaning, one that conforms perfectly t the evangelical nature of that culture . . . and is entirely oppositional to our own ways. Our cultures have no need to “witness” to outsiders; indeed, generally speaking, proselytizing and evangelizing are not merely antithetical to our ways, but rob them of their power and that which is sacred. And yet we are also both the most witnessed-to population in this society’s history, and similarly the most stolen-from from when it comes to that which is not for outsiders (with a new and especially egregious example thus victimizing Acoma Pueblo in the news this very week).
But it is not merely the verb form of the word that has been corrupted, but the noun, as well. This is a more modern phenomenon, one that has, in some ways, grown out of the civil rights movement that the Rev. Dr. King helped to found and lead. It is not a dynamic created by the Black activists and leaders, those who bore the brutal weight of the battle on their own too-oft battered and broken bodies, but by their putative white “allies.” It is, in act, a perfect metaphor for this day, a day that already, at this early hour, has been hijacked, derailed, diverted by those who seek to appropriate and co-opt Dr. King’s legacy to center themselves and their own parochial interests, who seek to strip his legacy of its laser-like focus on race and instead use it to brand the related but ancillary demons that beset this country, to erase this country’s twinned original sins and whitewash the entire discourse into something that centers their own wants. It also provides a way for them to center themselves as both victims and heroes, on a supposed par with the likes of Dr. King and his comrades in arms and blood, in which having simply “borne witness” to something, anything, suddenly transmutes them into that magical being termed “Ally,” with a capital “A,” and shifts the entire dynamic (and eventually, the historical record) to their own personal “role.”
It is offensive in the extreme.
My hope for this day is that people revisit what it truly means to be a “witness,” what it truly means to engage in the act of “bearing witness.” The latter is not a consumptive or commodifying practice; the former is not a formal title nor a bullet point on a résumé. To be a true witness, to bear witness, is a largely silent and solitary practice, one that requires that one watch, actively, and understand, actively, and then work diligently to prevent such evils from recurring. That work is not showy, it does not seek to erase the people whom it truly concerns, it is not done for honors or accolades. It is done because it is the right thing to do, because it is a moral imperative.
On this day, there is a concerted effort on social media among members of Black communities to #ReclaimMLK. It is the right thing to do. I hope the rest of our world, white folks and non-Black people of color alike who regard themselves as allies in this ongoing fight, will take their efforts to heart. I hope all of us will likewise use this day to reclaim the word “witness,” to return it to its true and abundantly necessary meaning.
To do the work.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did the work. He paid with his life. In the face of such sacrifice, an in the ongoing and emergent nature of the crisis in our communities, the least the rest of us can do is to be a witness . . . and then to put our heads down, our shoulders to the stone, and do the work required.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
