I Have a Dream: 50 Years Later

50 years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke during the March on Washington.  He delivered his immortal 'I Have a Dream' speech, in which he hoped that his children would live in a country where they were judged by their character, not skin pigmentation.  It seems to me that his dream has not come to pass.  Certainly, the Jim Crow laws are gone and blacks have risen to great heights, including the presidency.  However, we can also see with such instances as Trayvon Martin that no one was concerned with Trayvon's character, only his skin color.

Is it not peculiar that neither Clarence Thomas (the only black justice on the Supreme Court) nor Tim Scott (the only black Senator) were invited to speak?  Reverend Al Sharpton got an invite.  Ben Jealous of the NAACP got an invite.  Black Republicans need not apply.  At least that is a judgment on character rather than skin color.  It seems that everyone has forgotten that a greater percentage of the Republicans in Congress voted for both the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) than did Democrats.  Jim Crow and Segregation were Democrat policies.  Bull Connor was a Democrat.  It was a Democratic governor (Orval Faubus) who sought to prevent a Republican President (Dwight Eisenhower) from integrating an Arkansas school.  And yet, somehow today there is this inexplicable belief that all of that was Republican.  How did that happen?

 

Race relations are a shambles today.  A big part of that is Barack Obama.  It is so easy for him or his allies to accuse his opponents of racism.  It isn't that Republicans oppose his policies, it is that they oppose him because he is black.  Charges of racism abound.  Chris Matthews declared that pointing out the national debt was racism, that mentioning Obama was from Chicago was racism, that talking about his frequent golf outings was racist, and so on.  Why debate opponents on the merits when you can just call them racists and thereby dismiss anything they say?  This may be an effective political move but it is disastrous for race relations and in stark contrast to what MLK said 50 years ago today.