In a speech given just a over a decade ago, President Obama said Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence “only makes sense” if the rich have sufficient empathy for the poor and the “powerless” are able to see a chance to become like those he says are running society.
Speaking on Martin Luther King Day in 2002 at a church in Chicago, then-State Senator Obama charged there was an “empathy deficit” in America resulting in a failure of the rich to correct society’s inequities.
Obama lists several problems – including bad schools, impoverished seniors, and the “prison-industrial complex” – which he says could be ameliorated if the wealthy could only see themselves in the disadvantaged.
“It’s hard to imagine that the powerful in our society would tolerate the burgeoning prison industrial complex if they imagined that the black men and the Latino men that are being imprisoned were something like their son,” Obama said.
The future president, who speaks today at the Lincoln Memorial to mark the 50th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, then suggested that a lack of empathy undermines the notion that those without power should remain nonviolent in their quest for a share of the pie:
The philosophy of non-violence only makes sense if the powerful can be made to recognize themselves in the powerless. It only makes sense if the powerless can be made to recognize themselves in the powerful.
You know, the principle of empathy gives broader meaning, by the way, to Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violence. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for non-violence. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve got what they want. They want to make sure nobody’s going to take their stuff!
The well off, Obama suggests, are in fact practicing their own form of violence against the poor through a kind of economic oppression.
But the principle of empathy recognizes that there are more subtle forms of violence to which we are answerable. The spirit of empathy condemns not only the use of firehoses and attack dogs to keep people down but also accountants and tax loopholes to keep people down.
I’m not saying that what Enron executives did to their employees is the moral equivalent of what Bull Connor did to black folks but, I tell you what, the employees of Enron feel violated. When a company town sees some distant executives made some decisions despite the wage concessions, despite the tax breaks, and they see their entire economy collapses, they feel violence.
Here’s the video of this portion of the remarks:
While demanding a change in attitudes from those at the top of the latter, Obama also goes on to call for the “powerless” to try to improve their own lot, saying, “No one is exempt from finding common ground” and “We must all step up to the plate.”