Posts Tagged → dream
What Would MLK Say?
Today is a national holiday honoring and remembering a great American leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Like great leaders across human history, King captured a moment in time, crystalized it, and put a flame in it that later generations of people can touch and be inspired.
Below is the famous I Have a Dream speech that King gave in Washington, DC, probably the last great speech given in that swampy town.
However, before we get teary-eyed and inspired by Dr. King’s honest speech and honest goals, let’s ask a simple question.
Today, the word “racism” and “racist” have become immediate responses for just about anyone who disagrees with liberal ideas. Any ideas, not just the subject of skin color.
This includes debates about the role and place of Islam in a democracy and republic. Islam is not a race, it is a bunch of ideas. Race has nothing to do with it, unless you are looking at the skin color caste system in most Muslim countries, or how Arab slavers started the African slave trade and continue it to this very day. Those things aside, race is not a component of Islam.
And yet proponents of American security, freedom, and Judeo-Christian culture are called racists if they do not accede to demands for unlimited Muslim immigration with zero acculturation and assimilation.
Accusing people of being racist even now takes off from completely unrelated subjects, as in “You said you follow the Bible, and it is not pro-gay. That is almost like racism. In fact, it is just like racism. It is like being racist. You are a racist.”
Don’t laugh, I have seen it happen in person and in writing.
So that “racism” becomes the standard synonym or fill-in for any kind of discrimination or bigotry or even self-selective behavior based on thousands of years of human history, at best. At worst, it becomes an empty accusation that as soon as it is uttered is seen for what it is, fake.
And let’s not even delve into the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, or even the Congressional Black Caucus, where members accuse someone of “racism” if they merely sneeze, and where brutally racist statements are made nearly daily. The NAACP has become one of the most racist organizations in America, and it is enabled by the outrageously bigoted Southern Poverty Law Center. Which is funded and run by white liberals. Ditto for BLM.
When one of these groups says “You are a racist until we say you are not,” it is meaningless, because they have misused, abused, and failed on this claim for decades. By making it partisan, where racists in one party are excused because they are from “the correct” political party, and members of the other political party are always shamed and accused and never excused, these self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong are exposed as hypocrites. Their credibility plummets as a result.
If you are having trouble following this, try this: What results from the misuse of accusations of racism is a watering down of the word and idea.
If racism becomes subjective, and not quantifiable, then those wrongly accused of being racist will burn out and lose their yearning for fairness. After all, they themselves are being treated unfairly, accused unfairly.
Hijacking the word can only boomerang back. People stop listening. Oh, they care, but they no longer ascribe credibility to the NAACP, BLM, SPLC, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the other fakers who have long overreached and overplayed that hand.
Yes, it is true that there are many things worse than racism, but if we are going to value a racism-free America (a good thing), then we must reserve that word and its connotations for when it really applies. We must not misappropriate it, nor may we engage in racist behavior and then accuse the subjects of our abuse themselves of being “racist.” Especially when there are simply legitimate disagreements on policy and law.
“Racist!” cannot be a crutch. That will only undermine everything MLK fought for, and what he got the vast number of Americans to buy into: The idea that we are all meant to be free, we are all meant to be equal, we all deserve to have equal opportunity and no artificial barriers between us and our dreams and goals. An America devoid of discrimination is an America full of its greatest promise.
So what would MLK say about today’s misuse and watering down of the white-hot word that used to galvanize tens of millions of Americans to do the right thing?
What would MLK say about how the Left has turned nearly every American institution into a force of discrimination and persecution against those with whom the Left merely disagrees, politically?
What would MLK say about the fake accusations of ‘racism’ to cover up the internecine mass murders among young black men occurring daily in nearly every single American city… That is done to obscure and excuse the utter and complete failure of nearly all of America’s black leadership, so that fifty-four years later, the American black community is in some ways in much worse condition than when Dr. King had his dream?
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.