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
I am reading a book written by an author who is also a professor of history.
He wrote a book on Reagan, and one on Bob Dylan (the one I am reading).
There is an interesting chapter about a blues singer who lived near Dr. King.
A chapter in the book shows, whether the author intended it or not, how the paths of that blues singer intentionally diverted from the path Dr. King took.
Bob Dylan took the path most traveled, as did the blues singer and as did the news media.
Dr. King did not take that path.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153782/on_mlk_day%3A_how_a_racist_criminal_justice_system_rolled_back_the_gains_of_the_civil_rights_era/
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/16/special_dr_martin_luther_king_jr
Swarthmore,
Great song choice! Thanks to you and anon nurse and eniobob for the timely links.
Monday, Jan 16, 2012
Who are the victims of civil liberties assaults and Endless War?
By Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/16/who_are_the_victims_of_civil_liberties_assaults_and_endless_war/singleton/
Excerpt:
The fundamental interconnectedness between war and civil liberties abuses on the one hand, and the targeting of minorities as part of those policies on the other, is, of course, nothing new. It was most eloquently emphasized in the largely forgotten, deliberately whitewashed 1967 speech about the Vietnam War by Martin Luther King, Jr. (who himself was targeted for years with abusive domestic surveillance by the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover). Dr. King devoted that extraordinary speech generally to the way in which the war in Vietnam was savaging not only the people of that country but also America’s national character. He specifically sought to answer his critics who were objecting that his increasingly strident opposition to the Vietnam War was a distraction from his civil rights work; instead, he insisted, his war opposition and advocacy of civil rights are, in fact, causes that are inextricably linked:
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. . . .
It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through [Lyndon Johnson’s] poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such . . . .
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. . . .
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. . . .
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
King notably added another reason why he felt compelled to prioritize issues of war: “another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission.” As he put it: “ This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.” If only that award were similarly understood today. His essential point was that nothing good could possibly happen in America so long as it continued on its path of warfare and bombing and invading foreign countries, and it was therefore necessary to prioritize protests against the war on at least equal footing with every other issue.
Thanks for posting the perfect song this morning, Swarthmore mom…
(Thanks, as well for the Krugman piece and The Juan Willimams/Hill articles, eniobob and Swarthmore mom, respectively.)
“As a nation degenerates these crimes are covered up and hidden, rather than being prosecuted as they are when a nation still has a healthy government.” -Dredd (from his link/site)
Dredd,
“AMERICA”S REAL HEROES?
Where do they go? Congress? Retirement in Samoa?
America’s real heroes go to prison, are put in mental hospitals, they are assassinated, their helicopters are crashed, they die in private planes, they get mysterious illnesses. Sometimes, as with John Wheeler III, they end up in a garbage dump to be quickly forgotten, buried in lies. -Gordon Duff
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/204245-how-race-plays-out-in-the-2012-campaign Dr. King would be marching against the republican assault on minority voting rights.
Good link, eniobob. Romney does not want to talk about income inequality. I wonder why. See the other very wealthy guy endorsed him.
How Fares the Dream?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 15, 2012
“I have a dream,” declared Martin Luther King, in a speech that has lost none of its power to inspire. And some of that dream has come true. When King spoke in the summer of 1963, America was a nation that denied basic rights to millions of its citizens, simply because their skin was the wrong color. Today racism is no longer embedded in law. And while it has by no means been banished from the hearts of men, its grip is far weaker than once it was.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/opinion/krugman-how-fares-the-dream.html?_r=2
Anonymously Yours 1, January 15, 2012 at 6:16 pm
And on the other side for the conspiratorial version …
========================================
It was proven in a court of law that the government was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.
It was a state crime against democracy, a SCAD.
Good response eniobob.
Pawerex Paw:
” Dr. Martin Luther King was a man that Todays WORLD Still needs and we honor Him with our Love, tears of sorrow for his Sudden Death.
God Bless His Great Family and Dreams that LIVE forever and I Pray they have COME TRUE.”
Nice Try,Don’t know how old you are but if you were around when Dr King was alive did you have those same feelings ?
Probably not according to the rest of your post.But I will say one thing,your avatar is a symbol of what Dr Kings heart was a symbol of.
Want to thank all of you, for your Powerfull stand against Oboma & His Corrupted political partners.
DR. Martin Luther King was a man that Todays WORLD Still needs and we honor Him with our Love, tears of sorrow for his Sudden Death.
God Bless His Great Family and Dreams that LIVE forever and I Pray they have COME TRUE.
But there is so much more we can do. Being aggressive and focusing on the facts and truth is only the first step.
We musT follow Up with more details standing by our convictions and dont back down.
Oboma has NOT brought CHANGE, In fact ~! ~ THE ONLY real THING needing CHANGE !….Was Barack Hussein Obama II.
HIMSELF
Barack Hussein Obama II ( Who hates American Values ) who is A ” SELF PROCLAIMED Enemy” ~of ALL responsible, Morally Conscious HARD WORKING Americans.
Black Grey and White.
oBOMAS Irresponsible & DRUG MAFIA and reckless supporters KNOW~ that Barack Hussein Obama II,
WILL FORCE YOU to paY THEM, out of your PockeT .{ FOR all of their UNCHECKED Vices and THRILLS/
{ All on YOU
| / At your COST & Sacrifice.
…This UN~CHANGABLE fraud, has done His VERY BEST to Inspire VIOLENCE.
THESE ARE OBAMAS OWN WORDS.. saying ………To his supporters.Saying “Get ready for hand-to-hand combat with your Fellow Americans”
– Obama has ALSO DECLARED to his Supporters. “I want all Americans to get in each others faces!– Obama demands !
“You bring a knife to a fight pal, we’ll bring a gun”
–
THESE ARE OBAMAS OWN WORDS.. ANGER VIOLENCE and more taxes….. THIS IS OBAMAS Change for America /“Hit Back Twice As Hard”. He commands !
*Shouting THAT Republican victory would mean ~ “hand to hand combat” and HE IS EXPECTING people to be on Edge and BORDERLINE killing MODE, VIOLENT / and STAND up for their immoral CAUSES and THIS IS WHAT HE LIVES FOR ./ ./ ./
THESE ARE OBAMAS OWN WORDS.. !
* Obama Tells democrats: “ I’m itching for a fight.” !
….PLEASE…. go to reXes NEW WebsiTe ~ ! Oboma *( Just like Adolf Hitler~~\oBOMA~~~ Demands ! — [ THE
FINAL SOLUTION – for Un~Wanted Children
Barak Obama is A MURDERER .~Torturing UNWANTED babys on DEATH ROE
CLICK HERE http://obomlnation.webstarts.com/index.html
OBAMA TAKES a little NEW BORN innocent child. BORN. ALIVE sTabS it iN the head and SUCKs ITS BRAINS OUT.
This is just too wrong and horrible. Please stand for Loving Children and the USA.
Respectfully and Thankfully Thank you ALL for your Time.
God Bless the King FAMILY. reX and His family Loves You
Culheath,
I hope you are correct in your optimism.
As a white man I am much freer today because of Dr King and I cannot but thank and laud him for his work and courage. To me, his personal frailties only serve to remind us even more deeply how much he was able to overcome in order to bear witness to a better world for all of us.
All men and woman have flaws, but few manage to transcend them for the greater good.
To have lived your life as an inspiration to millions of others…what more can be asked of any human?
Has the dream being completely realized? – of course not. Are we, because of MLK and so many others, on the path to realizing it? – absolutely.
Eye on the prize.
While it is easy to blame morons like Rodger for falling for that garbage remember, he is only a pawn in their game (thanks Mr. Dylan). We really need to call out trash like “The Bell Curve”, the scum that produced it and the scum (I’m looking at you Andy Sullivan) that continue to push this sad, discredited racist screed.
No problem anon nurse. It was a good link!
(The NY Times piece was than I thought, rafflaw. My apologies.)