(Original version of Hoya-column, January 27th, 1998. The Hoya is a campus newspaper at Georgetown University in Washington DC)

"There is no tragedy without triumph, and no triumph without tragedy. The tragedy of Martin Luther King was that he was killed all too soon, the triumph, that he lives on in America's con-sciousness. Yet, the tragedy of that triumph is the continuity of racism and urban poverty in this country."
Nice quotation? I sure hope so... because I want a good start for my very first column here. But that self-quotation above is about as fancy as I can get. I can not promise great rhetoric, the kind you Americans liked in Martin Luther King's speeches. I am a German exchange-student, and I am here to offer you a stranger's viewpoint, pretend I can see the deeper truth about America, and speak prophetically and insightful - like Martin Luther King.
Americans all over the country invoke his dream these days, the one about the little white chil-dren and the little black children joining hands as sisters and brothers. It is the dream of a demo-cratic people, and therefore a very American dream, that we all shall overcome our differences one day and march towards a brighter future of justice and liberty for all of God's children. In-deed. this dream might also have been the final reason I offered this column to The Hoya - I too, wanted to contribute to understanding, in this case, intercultural understanding.
There are two things I would like to offer about Martin Luther King from my perspective - one may be a little cynical, the other one is a little more hopeful.
We Germans were told on the eve of our country’s unification that now would "grow together" what "belonged together". East Germans and West Germans were led to believe that unification was a smooth Mercedes ride - and then it turned out we had to build the roads first. Western and Eastern world views are not the same, and the Eastern minority fears we "Wessis" are out to de-stroy the Eastern culture and everything they believe in. In two parts of the country, we talk in two different languages to each other.
My first point is that Martin Luther King was thought to be too good of a chauffeur for the ride toward that new frontier called ‘racial justice’. White America never had to bother with the de-tails. Let me explain what I mean.
King has told White Americans a tale of brotherhood steeped in the best imagery and language of white Anglosaxon, god-fearing America. Americans would be better Americans if only full citizenship was afforded "to the Negroes", too. King rewrote and enriched the American Dream with a new character, the middle class pastor, when he neatly weaved the story of black Ameri-cans into the narrative of white Americans. They, in turn, happily played the language game along with King when President Johnson adopted the motto that "we shall overcome" in one of his TV addresses. King, for white America, outlined the road these United States should take if they were to dream on of a Mercedes ride.
Not only did white America dream on - it slept on. The truth is, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did cost white America nothing but a few altered prejudices. When King began to address socioeconomic issues and moral issues such as the Vietnam War that disturbed white America in its economic order and complacency, white America tuned out. What it remembers is the tune of King's Dream-speech only. King's vision then hangs like a veil over urban poverty and the American heritage of slavery today.
The truth is, it wasn't as easy to overcome differences as it first sounded like. Indeed, over-coming all differences is not even what minorities want today. It's not the touchy image of Blacks and Whites joining hands together that should pamper America’s consciousness today and guide its agenda, though that image may inspire it. What is more urgent is to figure out how to respect and live with differences, but - and - without injustice. The much ridiculed and stuttering start of Clinton's race-talks, sadly enough, is the more pragmatic and hopeful version of King's dream.
My second note is that I, too, am in love with Martin Luther King. I find him very inspiring. My love affair with him started when the American embassy asked German students in 1993 for essays about MLK's meaning for us today. At the time, I was profoundly disgusted with coward-ish politics in Germany and Europe in the face of German unification and the smoldering "civil war" (how can a war be civil?) on the Balkan. But King enchanted me again. He infused me with a sense of hope and the certainty that social change is possible if only one stays true to one's ide-als in action. He had inspired an old Black lady to walk instead of taking the smooth Montgomery bus-ride, and though her feet hurt, she said she did it for her grandchildren. White America did not follow her example, though it probably found delight in the poetry of her statement.
Her example, and King’s own, touched me deeply. It told me that we all can claim and take a personal stake in a better future. And it also gave me the idea that King should inspire us all today to speak up for those without a voice, to declare ourselves trustees for those without shares. In my essay back in 1993, I said that my own issue, in King's spirit, was going to be the rights of future generations, on whose expanse we often live today. I have since engaged in intergenerational dialogue on the bureaucratic state, failing social security systems, the pollution of the environ-ment, and the accumulation of the state debt, and I have joined the new German "Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations". Issues are out there for all of our interests.
Now, get back to work. The right to dream must be earned must be earned in action.
 

Christopher Gohl, COL 98