I thought it was for more than just that?
Most blacks say MLK’s vision fulfilled, poll finds
WASHINGTON (CNN) — More than two-thirds of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for race relations has been fulfilled, a CNN poll found — a figure up sharply from a survey in early 2008.
The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey was released Monday, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader and a day before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the first black U.S. president.
The poll found 69 percent of blacks said King’s vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 “I have a dream” speech — roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March. (more…)
As much as I love and appreciate what MLK and others in the Black civil rights movement did, I am getting real tired of folks making him into an unseen deity that has become the voice for about any cause.
Over the years I have seen how folks manage to interweave the wishes of a Black civil rights leader with various political agendas. If folks would take the time to read King’s actual “I Have a Dream Speech”, you will see NOTHING about making the hopes of Black folks subject to the skin color of who is serving in public office. If this were the case, most of our cities and small to medium-sized cities with Black leadership would be flourishing with hope and great pride. Instead, we see schools that are broken, governments that are corrupt, and a persistent cloud of poverty and crime that forces even Blacks (who have the ability) to flee to the suburbs.
Now again, the election of a Black man to serve as the Commander in Chief is a huge deal from a historical perspective and should be celebrated as such. But symbolism has done NOTHING to minimize the issues I mentioned earlier. Instead, it just added more players to the same political game that has been played since politics first existed.
King wanted an America where White racists no longer stood in the doorway of the American dream. I think that it is safe to say that not only do they no longer hold that position, but pointing them out and subjecting these would-be human barriers to public scrutiny has become a skill that even some Whites have learned to apply to themselves. This CNN poll even reflects some of that.
But whites remain less optimistic, the survey found.
“Whites don’t feel the same way — a majority of them say that the country has not yet fulfilled King’s vision,” CNN polling director Keating Holland said. However, the number of whites saying the dream has been fulfilled has also gone up since March, from 35 percent to 46 percent.
So pointing out racists is the easy part. Holding public officials accountable when they fail a city, even when they whip out the race card–now THAT is moving us closer to what King’s dream was about in the first place.
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In 1963, the landscape of America was such that my parents packed up their young sons and moved out of segregated Alabama for sunny Southern California. My father, a school teacher, was earning half of white teachers were earning, and my mother, a dental hygenist, couldn’t find work with white dentists in Mobile, so she caught a bus to Tuskegee each week.
So you’ll have to excuse them and their contemporaries if they see Obama’s presidency as validation of some of the symbolism contained in Dr. King’s speech. We of a younger generation take a lot of things for granted, acting like we never would have put up with the overt discrimination our foreparents faced.
You can be blase about a great many things. Obama’s ascendancy to the highest office in the land should not be one of them, because if you objectively analyze it, Obama’s presidential campaign was innovative in every way. No, our day to day lives won’t be that greatly impacted; we still have to do next month what we did last month to make our way in the world. However, I do wish Obama great success as president.
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My mom remembers as if it were yesterday the times growing up in South Carolina where she was not permitted to drink from the White man’s water fountain, how her mom was called by her first name by the children of a White family as she cleaned their house and washed their draws. She also can tell you the times her father had to look down to the ground anytime he talked to a White man. All the older members of my family had the same experiences. So telling people like this to simply “move on” isn’t always the practical thing to say.
I can tell you that for some of them, yes, watching a Black man become POTUS is a historical phenomena that has a special meaning to them. They have seen and witnessed some of the darkest days of this country, unlike the rest of us who largely rely on b/w film clips for the experience.
What disturbs me is that after the symbolism, many of the same family members I just mentioned live in communities where promise after promise has been made to improve schools, attract businesses, reduce government corruption or even bring in more cops. In other words, do the stuff that government is supposed to do. Some have left while others still live in those areas where every term they are reminded to vote for one particular party. This is the other side of the symbolism. Like you mentioned and unfortunately for them, their everyday lives will not be affected.
In less than 24 hours, Obama will be my president. Although my family and I did not vote for him, we are committed to praying for him that he will make the right decisions for this country. I may be critical of many of his stated policies, but I have the sense enough to separate those from the man and this historical moment.