MLK's Dream

Today is Martin Luther King’s Birthday, which means schools, government employees and bureaucrats get the day off but most of us have to work. And if history serves, it will be a day for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to race to the nearest camera and remind everyone just how evil and oppressive white slave owners are today. And by white slave owners today, I mean Caucasians.

I believe MLK was a legitimate martyr for civil rights, speaking out even after being threatened. His ‘dream’ was spelled out in the now famous I Have a Dream speech. But his legacy has been perverted by activists like Jackson and Sharpton, who are less interested in an equal society than in whipping up blacks into frenzy for political gain. It’s no coincidence that both men are reverends; after all nobody can dispense guilt like a man of the cloth. Reverends are granted authority to rail about the 'sins of the past' and point a righteous finger at evil, whatever they define it to be.

No doubt, someone today will make a speech that includes the phrase: “We’ve come a long way, but there is still a lot left to do”. How ironic if these words come from a black president.

Look, I’m not going to say there is no racism in America or that everyone is treated equally everywhere. But I’m also not willing to apologize for being born white, and I believe that we do have people and places in America that really are colorblind when it comes to race relations. I remember when my young son asked me ‘why is it that some people don’t like blacks?” Racism didn’t make any sense to him. He wasn't born with a bias, and he didn't absorb one from his environment. He saw people as people, and skin color had no more meaning than hair color or eye color. But we never seem to get credit for this from the self-appointed African-American rights spokesmen. Instead of seeing racism as a problem to be solved, they foster oppression as an identity to be embraced by blacks who then need strong civil leaders (coincidentally like themselves) to lead them. Thus, an oppressed, angry mob is their power base and they have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. Racial harmony makes activist leaders like Jackson and Sharpton obsolete, which means they would have to get real jobs and do something meaningful to get on TV.

Here’s a segment of the historic MLK “I Have a Dream” speech, given on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial.

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!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
….
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!


Notice that he didn't dream about a future with black activists injecting racism into every public discussion, he didn't dream of a college fund specifically for negroes, and he didn't dream of a TV station that was just for black entertainment. He dreamed of a day when we stop talking about skin color as an identity trait that prevents us from trusting, serving, living, working and rejoicing together. Thanks to relentless efforts from the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the black community can be assured that MLK’s dream will always remain just that: A dream.