PURELY POLITICAL DREAM
Sixty Years on, Martin Luther King's Dream a Little Closer to Becoming Reality
He Had a Dream
It looks like we really have begun to put an end to the disgraceful “race quota” environment that we’ve been living in for, oh, the past 60 years.
Don’t break out the Dom Perignon yet but there is good reason to believe we’ve done just that.
And it’s been a long time coming.
Sixteen years ago, in June 2007, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts opined aloud, while okaying yet again some form of reverse discrimination in a suit brought by Parents Involved in Community Schools against Seattle School District # 1, that “the way to stop discrimination by race was to stop discriminating by race.”
Unfortunately, there’s big bucks in the “racial equity” scam and race hustlers and hucksters both white and black have been living off the proceeds of racial resentment for way too long.
The latest 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina) was delivered on June 29, 2023, and it has finally begun the process of tearing down the 60-year program of reverse racial discrimination along with forty years of legal precedent called “affirmative action,” created in the aftermath of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed by President Johnson at the White House on July 2 of that year.
All Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has ever wanted or asked for was to be judged on the basis of his qualifications rather than the color of his skin; Sacramento businessman and civil rights lawyer Ward Connerly’s lifelong fight has been for racial equality and to be respected for what he had accomplished, not the melatonin in his DNA. Ditto all the conservative black men and women who’ve been insulted, de-platformed, reviled, attacked, beat up, shut out and canceled by colleges, universities, even places of worship simply because they believed that All Men are Created Equal, that All Lives Matter.
As we approach the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous speech in which he expressed the hope “that all of God's children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” would be able “to join hands and sing,” it would be good to remember some of those inspirational words he so passionately delivered.
The civil rights leader delivered a brave and memorable speech to an assembled mass of humanity some half-a-million strong on August 28th, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He spoke facing towards the George Washington memorial at the other end of the capital city’s largest reflecting pool (2,030 feet long, 167 ft wide, 13/16thof a mile around) as the enormous crowd spilled down from the steps and filled every space on all sides between one end of the pond to the other.
“I am happy to join with you today,” Dr. King began, “in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”
Turns out he was right about that, as he was right about so many other things. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced shortly thereafter.
“Five score years ago,” he continued, “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.
“But one hundred years later,” he intoned, “the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
“One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
“And so, we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”
And that he did. Dr. King praised the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, calling the words contained within them “a promissory note” and that he was ready to call in that note.
But Dr. King’s approach wasn’t about retribution.
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred,” he said, then outlined a series of indignities that had led up to this day and this speech.
“We can never,” he admonished, “be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: ‘For Whites Only,’” and ended his speech by outlining his hopes.
“I have a dream,” he said, “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 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.
“And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring!
“And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to 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!”
NIce Jim. We are illuminated by the past,
BTW It is melanin not melatonin, which regulates sleep.
Fortunately and unfortunately, I lived through those troubled days of Dr Kings famous speech. Dr King was denied the witnessing of the links coming off the black chains as a result of his noble efforts. Had he been blessed to live to witness the revival of discrimination being taught to our children today, now toward those of “non-color”, how now might he compose his speech?