MLK's daughter calls for 'dismantling, disrupting' systemic racism

Disrupt. Dismantle. Be the light that snuffs out the darkness of racism.

That was the message Bernice King, daughter of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., conveyed to hundreds gathered Wednesday at Wheaton College for its inaugural Rodney Sisco Symposium.

The event, dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion practices, honored the life and legacy of the late Rodney Sisco, longtime Wheaton College director of the Office of Multicultural Development who died in 2018.

King emphasized the need to dismantle and disrupt structural and systemic racism and living up to her father's legacy.

There is a "fierce urgency to follow Christ," she said. "We are indeed living in a very difficult, challenging and tumultuous times," she said.

King described a global resurgence of white supremacist ideologies and a rise in nationalistic fervor, widening income and wealth gaps, catastrophic environmental threats, a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates poor black and brown people, rising militarization of police and "out of control police officers who have no regard for the value of black lives."

With the impeachment and acquittal of President Donald Trump, democracy itself is at stake, King said.

"In light of an extreme, politically and ideologically polarized climate in our nation, we perhaps are on the brink of some unrest," she said. "In light of continual racial hate, discrimination, systemic racism and resultant disparities in every arena of American life, we're in some very dark times. In light of the increasing, ethnic, racial, religious and cultural diversity and yet the lack of true inclusion and equity, we are living in some very dark times."

Her words and oratory style, evocative of her Southern Baptist upbringing, echoed her legendary father's speeches frequently eliciting affirmations and outbursts of "preach on" from the ecumenical and distinctively diverse audience.

"We need some light in this nation and world," King said. "Darkness is ensuing and threatening to overtake our very humanity."

Christians, King said, are responsible for bringing that light. She urged audience members to not only profess but to literally follow Christ.

A peace advocate, King is the CEO of Atlanta-based Martin Luther King Jr. Center for nonviolent social change founded by her mother, Coretta Scott King, in 1968. It's both her parents' legacies that King honors and carries, she said.

"When my father was assassinated, he was one of the most hated men in America. And now he is one of the most loved men in the world," King said. "And you don't get to that place without an individual, or perhaps individuals, who take on the responsibility to carry forth your work."