On August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr made his impassioned "I Have a Dream" speech. I have read this speech many times, but this year I read it from a slightly different point of view, a point I will return to shortly. The speech begins:
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
He continued by describing the failure of America's promise to its Negro citizens:
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
And he tells us what injustice means and why it can no longer be tolerated by men of good will:
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
The core of the speech, its very soul if you will, is the section from which the speech derives its name [with my emphasis added]:
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
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.
I have a dream today!
We are both closer to and farther from that goal than we were in King's day. We are closer to his goal because there are no legal barriers to anyone, of any race, color, or creed, entering into full participation in the American experiment. We have not yet had a Black, or Hispanic, or Mormon, or female, President but no one can doubt that it is only a matter of time. At the same time, identity politics threatens to unravel much of the social fabric that unites our country.
Martin Luther King was a proud liberal, who believed with all his heart, that people should be judged as individuals, "where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character", yet this is no longer considered a liberal idea, but is now seen as racist and reactionary. Our most prestigious Universities and law schools have repeatedly gone to court to fight against the will of the people, that affirmative action, always an aberration, should finally be ended. The emphasis on quotas for minorities (African-American, though not including White African-Americans, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, perhaps soon to be further atomized into hundreds of self-identified identity groups) is an emphasis on equal outcomes for people based on the color of their skin in direct contradistinction to King's liberal desire for a world based on the dignity of the individual.
As a traditional liberal, I am often accused of being a right wing fascist, which typically includes the sobriquet of racist for anyone who opposes continued race/ethnic based affirmative action.
[Perhaps such accusations will only change when the Democrats take more responsibility for our foreign policy. The argument has been advanced that the country will remain polarized until a Democrat sits in the White House. Since the current war is unlikely to end any time soon, I suspect we will find out before too long.]
I often wonder, would Martin Luther King support continued affirmative action based solely or primarily on racial or ethnic self-identifications?
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
I wonder if we can be free as long as we refuse to treat individuals as free men and women. I wonder if our black citizens will ever be free as long as they continue to accept being treated as incapable of competing and remain dependents of the state.
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