"...(that) they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
While the ad was no doubt a clever marketing ploy by the front office at McDonald's, the ad also showcases so much of what is wrong in our society when it comes to dealing with the issue of race.
Balkanization and 'multiculturalism' will not cure racism. Rather, it is my contention that by focusing on cultural differences, the 'multiculturalism' movement did more to foster balkanization, racism, misunderstanding and mistrust between races than white supremacist groups were ever able to accomplish.
Racism and division will not end until people stop focusing on the amount of melanin in one's skin, and instead focus on our common humanity, and common goals as fellow citizens of these United States.
Only by focusing on shared, common values as human beings will we be able to move forward; and then and only then will we be able to achieve Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society.
Have Dr. Martin Luther King's dreams been realized?
Some may say that the coronation inaugaration of "The One" tomorrow may be the embodiment and realization of that dream. While in a way that may be so, in so many other ways Dr. Martin Luther King's dream has yet to be realized.
I was only three years old on that fateful day in August of 1963; the day that Dr. King delivered his "I have a dream" speech; so I was certainly too young to have understood and or appreciated the beauty and content of what would be contained in that oratorical masterpiece. I would, however, in my youth witness firsthand the effects of the Black man casting off one slavemaster and embracing another, namely, the "Great" Society and the Welfare state.
Forty five years and change later, are we really any closer to Dr. Martin Luther King's dream? Closer, perhaps. There? Not by a longshot. There are still racepimpsamong us, of every race, creed and color who, as cheap opportunists refuse to embrace the color-blind society that Dr. King envisioned.
Dr. King's dream will not be realized until there is no longer a need to have a Congressional Black Caucus. Dr. King's dream will not be realized until there is no longer a need to have the NAACP. Dr. King's dream will not be realized until race is taken totally out of the equation with regard to getting into college or getting a job, and affirmative action quotas are totally done away with. Dr. King's dream will not be realized until democrats cease and desist their fearmongering that black people cannot get along without the meager crumbs of government largesse that are thrown their way. Dr. King's dream will not be realized until there is color-blind opportunity coupled with color-blind accountability. Dr. King's dream will not be realized until all people are truly judged not by the color of their skin, but of the content of their character.
Today, I ask you to read well, heed well, and reflect upon these words:
"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, 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, 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.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
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 so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
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:
So say the Stalinists at the University of Minnesota, according to Katherine Kersten:
In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U's College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of "the American Dream" in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace -- and be prepared to teach our state's kids -- the task force's own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.
Read the whole thing. And while you're at it, if your insides can take it, read the document upon which Kersten's article is based.
While matriculating at the School of Arts & Sciences back at UW-Eau Claire in 1988, there was a mandatory prerequisite for graduation called, "Human Relations." True to liberal doublespeak form, rather than being a class that centered on how relationships are formed, it was a wall-to-wall, semester-long diatribe about how whitey was oppressing everyone else. Every week, a guest speaker from the "victim group" du jour would walk into class, grab the podium, and bash every white male student in the room as to how they were oppressing the victim class, simply by breathing.
The only saving grace regarding the "Human Relations" course was that when you were done with all the nonsense you could go about your life and leave the hoop behind. Back then, they didn't actually demand an oath of loyalty to that rubbish as a prerequisite to earn a livelihood.
To wit:
The first step toward "cultural competence," says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize -- and confess -- their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the reeducation camps of China's Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi.
The task group recommends, for example, that prospective teachers be required to prepare an "autoethnography" report. They must describe their own prejudices and stereotypes, question their "cultural" motives for wishing to become teachers, and take a "cultural intelligence" assessment designed to ferret out their latent racism, classism and other "isms." They "earn points" for "demonstrating the ability to be self-critical."
The task group opens its report with a model for officially approved confessional statements: "As an Anglo teacher, I struggle to quiet voices from my own farm family, echoing as always from some unstated standard. ... How can we untangle our own deeply entrenched assumptions?"
And what of those who resist? Well, as they, as they say, "Haff ways..."
The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must "develop clear steps and procedures for working with non-performing students, including a remediation plan."
I wonder if the "remediation" plan includes being sent to a 're-education' camp.
And what of the great unwashed who managed to escape the ivory tower all-seeing eye of the diversity police at U of M in past years without the benefit of their all-knowing indoctrination?
"Requir[e]training/workshop for all supervisors. Perhaps a training session disguised as a thank you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year?"
Well Komrades, nothing left to do now but cue the music!!
This story was on Neil Cavuto on Fox News, nearly a year ago:
Given a prime example of what the piece was talking about happening in my own city here in Minnesota, I can see Cavuto's point. It's long been a cultural thing in Minnesota to be "nice" to everyone; but as with respect to any instance of unlimited hospitality extended to strangers, that otherwise admirable trait is ripe for abuse by those who would benefit from it. Ben Franklin had it right when he said, "Fish and visitors smell after three days." Those in the Somali community who refuse to assimilate; instead demanding that we assimilate to their culture, are in that respect becoming an odiferous lot.
