Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
On Monday we celebrate the life of the Reverend Martin Luther King and honor him for his work with the Civil Rights movement. One of his most famous speeches was the 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech that he gave in Washington, D.C. to a crowd of thousands. In that speech he laid out his vision and hopes for the Civil Rights movement. I would like to review some of his words and discuss if his dream came true for African-Americans and minorities throughout our country. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” ‘ Huffington Post
Those words seem clear enough, but at the time Rev. King gave this speech, it had been 100 years since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the African-American was not free and equal to the white man in this country. Jim Crow laws throughout the South kept African-Americans isolated and humiliated. Lynchings and beatings were still far too common. So how has the South progressed since Dr. King expressed his dream?
It seems clear that life in the South has improved for African-Americans. African-Americans have become professionals and teachers and even Mayors of cities and towns throughout the South. Black Congressmen and women have been elected from the South and Jim Crow is but a remnant of the history books. In the North, Blacks have also progressed in all walks of life. One African-American of mixed heritage grew up to be elected to the Illinois State House and the United States Senate and made it all the way to the White House. The ability of Barack Obama to become President was made possible by Dr. King and his comrades who brought the Civil Rights movement to all of our doorsteps.
Do these successes mean that Dr. King’s ‘Dream” did come true? I submit that at least one aspect of his dream is partly unfulfilled. While African-Americans have made significant progress, they still lag financially behind their white counterparts. “The gap between Black and white household [accumulated] wealth quadrupled from 1984 to 2007, totally discrediting the conventional wisdom that the U.S. is slowly and fitfully moving towards racial equality, or some rough economic parity between the races. Like most American myths, it’s the direct opposite of the truth. When measured over decades, Blacks are being propelled economically downward relative to whites at quickening speed, according to a new study by Brandeis University.” Alternet Without equal opportunity in the financial arena, can it truly be said that Dr. King’s dream has come true?
“A huge wealth gap has opened up between black and white people in the US over the past quarter of a century – a difference sufficient to put two children through university – because of racial discrimination and economic policies that favour the affluent. A typical white family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class, according to a report released today by Brandeis University in Massachusetts. White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (£69,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families’ assets stand at just $5,000, up from around $2,000. A quarter of black families have no assets at all. The study monitored more than 2,000 families since 1984. “We walk that through essentially a generation and what we see is that the racial wealth gap has galloped, it’s escalated to $95,000,” said Tom Shapiro, one of the authors of the report by the university’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy.” Guardian
While significant progress has been made in many areas, the African-American is still trailing far behind his white brothers and sisters financially. If that huge disparity in income and assets can’t be shrunk, will the Black man ever be truly free? Dr. King initiated a huge improvement in the freedom for many, but his work is not completely done. When we celebrate the day set aside to honor his legacy, maybe we should think of ways that the financial gap between blacks and whites can be narrowed. Without all people being equal in all areas, how can any of us really be free? What ideas do you have?
Additional reference: US Constitution.net
roger: according to real scientists, you are a descendent of those ‘black’ people you denigrate. They are your own ancestors. We all come out of Africa.
oh, and what pete said: “There is a reason the blacks and whites don’t get along”.
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assholes like you
Maybe you have a drop too much Neanderthal blood.
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/opinion/sunday/young-black-and-frisked-by-the-nypd.html?pagewanted=all
Why Is the N.Y.P.D. After Me?
By Nicholas K. Peart
Published: December 17, 2011
(“Nicholas K. Peart, 23, has been stopped and frisked by New York City police officers at least five times.”)
WHEN I was 14, my mother told me not to panic if a police officer stopped me. And she cautioned me to carry ID and never run away from the police or I could be shot. In the nine years since my mother gave me this advice, I have had numerous occasions to consider her wisdom.
One evening in August of 2006, I was celebrating my 18th birthday with my cousin and a friend. We were staying at my sister’s house on 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan and decided to walk to a nearby place and get some burgers. It was closed so we sat on benches in the median strip that runs down the middle of Broadway. We were talking, watching the night go by, enjoying the evening when suddenly, and out of nowhere, squad cars surrounded us. A policeman yelled from the window, “Get on the ground!”
I was stunned. And I was scared. Then I was on the ground — with a gun pointed at me. I couldn’t see what was happening but I could feel a policeman’s hand reach into my pocket and remove my wallet. Apparently he looked through and found the ID I kept there. “Happy Birthday,” he said sarcastically. The officers questioned my cousin and friend, asked what they were doing in town, and then said goodnight and left us on the sidewalk.
Less than two years later, in the spring of 2008, N.Y.P.D. officers stopped and frisked me, again. And for no apparent reason. This time I was leaving my grandmother’s home in Flatbush, Brooklyn; a squad car passed me as I walked down East 49th Street to the bus stop. The car backed up. Three officers jumped out. Not again. The officers ordered me to stand, hands against a garage door, fished my wallet out of my pocket and looked at my ID. Then they let me go.
I was stopped again in September of 2010. This time I was just walking home from the gym. It was the same routine: I was stopped, frisked, searched, ID’d and let go.
These experiences changed the way I felt about the police. After the third incident I worried when police cars drove by; I was afraid I would be stopped and searched or that something worse would happen. I dress better if I go downtown. I don’t hang out with friends outside my neighborhood in Harlem as much as I used to. Essentially, I incorporated into my daily life the sense that I might find myself up against a wall or on the ground with an officer’s gun at my head. For a black man in his 20s like me, it’s just a fact of life in New York.
Here are a few other facts: last year, the N.Y.P.D. recorded more than 600,000 stops; 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or Latinos. Police are far more likely to use force when stopping blacks or Latinos than whites. In half the stops police cite the vague “furtive movements” as the reason for the stop. Maybe black and brown people just look more furtive, whatever that means. These stops are part of a larger, more widespread problem — a racially discriminatory system of stop-and-frisk in the N.Y.P.D. The police use the excuse that they’re fighting crime to continue the practice, but no one has ever actually proved that it reduces crime or makes the city safer. Those of us who live in the neighborhoods where stop-and-frisks are a basic fact of daily life don’t feel safer as a result.
We need change. When I was young I thought cops were cool. They had a respectable and honorable job to keep people safe and fight crime. Now, I think their tactics are unfair and they abuse their authority. The police should consider the consequences of a generation of young people who want nothing to do with them — distrust, alienation and more crime.
Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.
One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.
Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell. After the other officer returned from inside my apartment building, they opened the door to the police car, told me to get out, removed the handcuffs and simply drove off. I was deeply shaken.
For young people in my neighborhood, getting stopped and frisked is a rite of passage. We expect the police to jump us at any moment. We know the rules: don’t run and don’t try to explain, because speaking up for yourself might get you arrested or worse. And we all feel the same way — degraded, harassed, violated and criminalized because we’re black or Latino. Have I been stopped more than the average young black person? I don’t know, but I look like a zillion other people on the street. And we’re all just trying to live our lives.
As a teenager, I was quiet and kept to myself. I’m about to graduate from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and I have a stronger sense of myself after getting involved with the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, a neighborhood organization in Harlem. We educate young people about their rights when they’re stopped by the police and how to stay safe in those interactions. I have talked to dozens of young people who have had experiences like mine. And I know firsthand how much it messes with you. Because of them, I’m doing what I can to help change things and am acting as a witness in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights to stop the police from racially profiling and harassing black and brown people in New York.
It feels like an important thing to be part of a community of hundreds of thousands of people who are wrongfully stopped on their way to work, school, church or shopping, and are patted down or worse by the police though they carry no weapon; and searched for no reason other than the color of their skin. I hope police practices will change and that when I have children I won’t need to pass along my mother’s advice.
Nicholas K. Peart is a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
(As you might guess, Nicholas K. Peart isn’t white.)
No. the ‘War on Drugs’ killed most of the dreams of MLK.
Gene,
Not all Mothers arei Muthers…But some are Muthers regardless of inbreeding….
“They couldn’t build boats or invent the wheel.”
While the location of the invention of the wheel is a debatable topic, the fact that Africans migrated to Australia some 40,000 years ago completely belies the assertion they couldn’t build boats. That or they were able to breathe salt water. Either way, an impressive feat. Boats being the more impressive feat when you consider it’s not enough to build a boat and put it in the ocean, you have to know where you are going as well or you can’t get back to where you started. This indicates both a knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. In fact, one of the oldest henges in the world is found in the Nabta Playa basin of central Africa. It was built by the neolithic culture of sub-Saharan Africa almost 2000 years before Stonehenge was built on the Salisbury plain of England. Africans also invented the practices of agriculture and were the first people to raise coffee, grains, cotton, yams, beans, rice and flax. Much of the differences in technological developments have nothing to do with race or intrinsic intelligence and everything to do with environmental pressures. Tropical cultures tend to be less technologically advanced than temperate cultures because it’s easier to live off of the land in tropical climates. Necessity is the mother of invention.
As to Roger, he’s proof that ignorance is the mother of stupidity.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/12/michelle-obama-angry-black-woman Portraying Michele as an angry black woman is another election theme. They did it to some degree in the last election, but I think it will be worse this year.
And on the other side for the conspiratorial version…..Was James Earl Ray hypnotized to shoot King or this:
“A second boost to the legitimacy of the King conspiracy theories came the following year when Attorney General Janet Reno reopened a limited investigation into the assassination in August 1998. And finally, in Dec. 1999, a Memphis jury awarded the King family a symbolic $100 in a wrongful death suit. The jury professed that the murder was indeed a conspiracy involving bar owner Lloyd Jowers…..
Read more: Martin Luther King, Jr.: Assassination Conspiracy Theories — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/mlk1.html#ixzz1jZV3gDUM… to …
For those that do not remember history are deemed to repeat it…..I suppose that is why Mississippi has a dual designation:
WHEREAS, the Legislature has designated the third Monday in January as the day for the observance of the birthdays of ROBERT E. LEE and DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., and under the provisions of Section 3-3-7, Mississippi Code of 1972, is a legal holiday in the State of Mississippi;
http://www.sos.state.ms.us/ed_pubs/Proclamations/King.asp
I saw that article pete. It was pretty disgusting.
people like this don’t help much either
http://www.sj-r.com/community/blogs/applesauce/x406233188/GOP-speaker-of-Kansas-House-prays-for-Obama-s-death-calls-First-Lady-Mrs-YoMama
Although Roger is most likely just a troll, it is shameful to know that such hateful and bitter people exist.
What people like that are to stupid to realize is that no race is pure, as several of our ancestors have had interracial relationships over the past several hundred years. So none of us are really just black, white, or brown.
roger gunderson
1, January 15, 2012 at 4:35 pm
There is a reason the blacks and whites don’t get along.
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assholes like you
Roger,
I know many blacks who have not only a higher I.Q. than those who insecurely cling to falsehoods like you set forth, but who are also socially advanced over your ideology.
Roger,
Your attitude is disgusting and an example of why blacks are still so far behind economically.
There is a reason the blacks and whites don’t get along. The black people are infurior to whites otherwise they wouldn’t have been slaves. There wouldn’t have been laws barring blacks to marry whites.The black people of africa were centries behind the whites. They couldn’t build boats or invent the wheel. They want to mix with the whites to improve their IQ. Mixing with blacks or Mexicans will lower the whites IQ.
“Mixing with blacks or Mexicans will lower the whites IQ.”
Roger,
Writing with an obvious IQ of about 75, you’re not exactly a great catch.
I agree with Raff’s premise and congratulate him for posting it. The media would have us think that ati-Black racism is a thing of the past.Despite superficial gains, MLK’s Dream has not come to pass. The evidence of economics proves it, but then so does Puzzling’s reference to Black imprisonment. What has been gained since MLK is superficial in that it has only driven overt racism underground and purportedly ended “Jim Crow”. We are, however, still a mostly a racist, segregated society, “papered” over by a little observed national holiday and commercials showing Blacks and Whites as friends.
Did any of you hear about the black Fort Wayne, Indiana mom who made her 14 yr old son stand on a busy street corner, holding a sign that said ” I lie, I steal, I sell drugs. I don’t obey the law”. She and her children live 30 minutes south of my family, in what is known to be the “scary” side of Ft.Wayne.
I admire her for doing this for her son. She wants help for him. She turned down money for interviews on tv networks, as money won’t save this boy. There is talk of her going on the Dr Drew show to create a plan of action for her son.
Several members of the community have also reached out, offering help, if needed.
Story can be found on WANE.com
The “financial gap” called out in this post is the hardly the most meaningful measure of equality, but regardless is a direct result of government policy: the War on Drugs.
More here, and from Democracy Now:
There can be no liberty without equality nor can there be justice. As Mary Wollstonecraft said, “Virtue can only flourish among equals.”
It is an ongoing battle but one worth every effort and every sacrifice.