Josh First's Blog

We all have a shared dream

One of America’s greatest speeches, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” on the Washington mall, still inspires Americans.

The question is, who does it inspire?

In my opinion, the vast majority of Caucasian Americans are the audience today most inspired by King’s speech. They have fully accepted upon themselves not only words of King’s speech, but its spirit. It was that great majority that elected Barack Hussein Obama. Inspired by the opportunity to elect an American of color and prove wrong those who claim America is a racist place, Americans voted in Obama. The same Obama who, as Candidate Obama said he would change the dialogue on race, and who, as Candidate Obama, challenged long-held victimization identity in the black community, but who as President Obama has allowed the black community to languish in its self-inflicted pain, whose Justice Department advances anti-white racism by black racists in the name of defeating “racism.”

Mostly to its benefit, America is awash in black culture. White kids want black clothing, black music, black humor, black life partners, black sports players, black heroes, and black friends.

Americans elected a black president. America’s most conservative whites tried to elect another black president, candidate Herman Cain, who remained my top pick even after he stopped his campaign. Alan Keyes and Allen West remain political heroes to the most conservative of whites, who themselves are wrongly labeled as racists by black racists.

Racism is not a white problem today, it is a black problem, a result of an unwillingness by most blacks to accept that blacks have been accepted by the vast, overwhelming number of whites in America. By an almost universal unwillingness to either break out of ghettos and inner cities or reclaim them, to remain largely inactive where all institutions have failed, even the legendary black churches.

And I know this to be true, because I inhabit a largely white world, where the number of racist comments or experiences I witness can be counted on one hand year after year, after year, and because I inhabit a largely black city, where the problems of fragmented black family and community are played out daily on our streets to the point where I have long since lost count.

Black Americans, my fellow equal citizens, I say to you as a white American that you are as precious to me and to the vast majority of other “whites” in our great nation as are any other group of American citizens, and perhaps more so due to your longer presence here and greater sacrifices on our behalf. Skin color is irrelevant to 99.8% of white Americans. Culture, shared values, and the good content of character are relevant to 99.8% of white Americans.

American culture is the great equalizer, accepting all and any to its ranks, with the simple expectation that each citizen both appreciate and promote the America of its founding. The greatness of constitutional America is that it is designed to change, to improve, and having heard MLK’s call, arisen, and changed, it remains the greatest nation in the history of the planet.  It is a place to be proud of.

Today, we are especially proud of one of our great American leaders, MLK.  We all share the dream that his message will reach not only the intended white audience of 1963, but the black audience of 2012.