This week marks the sixtieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s eloquent “I Have a Dream” speech in which he envisioned a day when his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Time and again, he spoke of an America where blacks and whites would live together in peace and harmony.
He referred to “the promises of Democracy.” There were no blacks in the 9th Congress that outlawed American participation in the slave trade in 1808, and there were no blacks in the 38th Congress that approved the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery. The 88th Congress that passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act included but five black legislators—less than 1% of its membership.
Whites contributed the civil rights struggle’s success in many other ways. Roughly 90% of the Union soldiers who died during the Civil War were white. Most of the civil rights protesters murdered by the Klan following the 1965 Selma marches were white. A 2014 poll on the effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act found that 80% of Americans believed it had a positive effect, while only 1% thought the effect was negative.
All Americans should embrace Dr. King’s inspiring vision without respect to their color or creed. Sadly, today that dream conflicts with a very different and blatantly racist narrative designed to persuade the nation that 21st-century whites are inherently evil and contemporary blacks are victims. The remedy, we are told, must be a reverse racism in which blacks are given special privileges (and perhaps vast sums of money) as compensation for the evils of American slavery and the tragic racist policies that followed.
Continued…
Approved ~ MJM
