2020 VISION: Princeton University Professor of African American Studies Ruha Benjamin urged a standing-room-only crowd of 150 to “look beyond the symptoms to the root causes of what ails us as a society” at the Arts Council of Princeton’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration on Monday morning.

By Donald Gilpin

An overflow crowd of about 150 packed into the Arts Council of Princeton’s (ACP) Solley Theater Monday morning to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to hear speeches by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman and Princeton University Professor of African American Studies Ruha Benjamin.

“This is a day when we ask ‘What have I done to make the world a better place?’” said ACP Interim Executive Director Jim Levine in welcoming the visitors and introducing the speakers. “We are gathered here to celebrate the life of a man who gave his life to make the world a better place.”

Watson Coleman and Benjamin had some ideas on making the world a better place. “Love trumps hate all the time,” said Watson Coleman in emphasizing the country’s need for King’s message. “He spoke up against evil when he saw it. He tried to motivate us to understand that we were all in this together.”

Watson Coleman went on to imagine King’s response to the world of 2020. “If he saw what was happening today, he would be so sad and so angry,” she said, “and he’d wonder what was the purpose of the work that he did, because we seem to be moving backward instead of forward.”

She emphasized the challenges ahead for the country — “We’ve got to work hard” — but noted that Princeton was on the right track, “We don’t have communities like Princeton all over the country that believe in giving opportunity, that stand up for the education of all our children, that are willing to bring in affordable housing so that it can have the rich tapestry of what this country is. We don’t have Princeton everywhere.”

Calling on the government and society “to respond to our needs, to provide us with the opportunity to move forward on our own,” she stated, “We’re asking for the opportunity to pursue the dream of peace and prosperity based on our ability to be educated and to do our work.”

She discussed issues of racism in health care, housing, education, criminal justice, and voter suppression, stating, “What we have is not what we have to have. We can stand up together as a community, stand up when we see injustice and say ‘Not here, not now. We’ve had enough.’”

In concluding her remarks, Watson Coleman looked ahead to next fall’s election. “And when it comes to 2020 November, we can do what we need to do to ensure that those who have the least among us will have the greatest opportunities to achieve their dreams,” she said. “We will seek peace and justice for everyone. We will not be deterred. We will not be held back. We will not be depressed.”

Benjamin, a sociologist, founder of the JUST DATA Lab, author of People’s Science and Race After Technology, and editor of CaptivatingTechnology, spoke about what it means to be a visionary like Martin Luther King Jr. and the need to have “2020 vision.”

“All of us can be visionaries,” she said, asking the audience to think about what it means to have X-ray vision, to see beneath the surface. “All of us should be visionaries, to diagnose our social reality, to look beyond the symptoms to the root causes of what ails us as a society.”

Benjamin told the gathering that she had both bad news and good news to impart. The bad news, she said, is that “we continue to pass on racist ways of seeing and racist traditions,” but the good news is that “we are beginning to wake up, with growing awareness and action. People are starting to become accountable to transform the society we live in.”

She added, “I want us to consider the role of technology in this good and bad news.” Benjamin told a story to illustrate the problematic attitudes towards power in today’s society. She described overhearing two men talking in Newark Airport, with one saying to the other “I just want someone I can push around.”

“There’s a new-found license that people have to express a particular theory of power, the power to dominate over other people,” Benjamin said. “But that is only one theory of power. There is also horizontal power, in which we empower each other, in which my power doesn’t rely on me disempowering you.”

Benjamin urged the audience to “cultivate, resuscitate, and grow this alternative form of power” to counter the “I just want someone I can push around” theory of power that “is the dominant form of power right now from the highest office in the country to the airport terminal to around the corner.”

Benjamin went on to discuss how technology, which should be an instrument of progress and equality, often perpetuates racism and injustice in the workplace, schools, and the medical profession.

“Inequity is everywhere, all around us, but that is not the end of the story,” she said. Technology can be a positive force for change, she noted, but it must be watched closely and held accountable. “It’s about embedding our highest values in these systems. We can engender change in new patterns, practices, and politics. We have to own our power. We are pattern-makers,” she concluded. “We have to be able to see clearly beyond the surface in order to change this society.”

Co-sponsored by the ACP, Princeton University, the Paul Robeson House, jaZams, the Princeton Family YMCA, the Historical Society of Princeton, and the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice, the celebration also featured art, music, and literary events including button making, collage making, a study of the works of Romare Bearden, story reading, and a performance by the First Baptist Church of Princeton Choir.