Today is the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King's and it is a curious thing to listen to his I Have A Dream and I've Seen The Promised Land (delivered the night before he died) speeches. On the one hand so much has changed for the better: no longer are Blacks relegated to the back of the bus, Blacks have opportunities that would have been unthinkable in King's time. A Black man is credibly running for President. And yet so much of King's vision of the Promised Land seems as far off as it did when he gave his speeches.
The Great Society programs which had been advertised as way of levelling the playing field have largely devolved into a battlefield, where various identity groups fight for more; more money, more in-kind benefits, more, more, more. Those same Great Society programs wound up breaking apart the Black family, leaving us with a new problem; single mothers, largely poor and whose children are among the most likely to drop out of school, commit crimes, experience poverty themselves etc. Instead of a bright new day they helped usher in a morally bankrupt Gangsta culture.
And the dream of a color blind society has been perverted into a new voluntary segregation as can be seen on college campus' with separate Black studies, student union's, dorms and more. Affirmative action which has been promised as a method to assure access for the disadvantage has become a perverse plan in which color is now more important than the content of one's character or one's actual achievements.
While it is a fact that a Black man may actually get the nomination for President and could win that office it is disturbing that that Black man should be running supporting the policies that have so damaged Blacks over these years since Dr. King's death:
- Abortion, an idea which was historically promoted by such as early 20th century progressive, racist and eugenicist, Margaret Sanger as a way of eliminating inferiors (i.e. Blacks) from the population is high on Barack Obama's list of priorities. Since the Roe vs. Wade decision over 12 million Black babies have been aborted. Margaret Sanger would approve of Obama's abortion position.
- Dependence on government as opposed to self reliance. Obama wants to expand the intrusion of government into more and more spheres of American life, apparently incapable of telling the difference between the Great Society's stated goals and its actual results.
- Minimum wage increases which, numerous studies have shown harms the young poor (largely Black) when the additional costs to small businesses causes them not hire where they otherwise might if wages were lower.
The list could go on and on and probably will continue to grow Dr. King has been replaced by Black "leaders" of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose stock in trade is divisiveness.
One can only wonder on this day what Martin Luther King would think of the America of 2008. No doubt there would be much that would please him but I have to wonder if he'd think we are really any closer to the Promised Land he'd once seen all those years ago.
2 comments:
The notion of equality of opportunity has been replaced by the "goal" of equality of outcome, but that ignores so many other things. There is a black urban sub-culture which is incredibly damaging to blacks as a group. For teenaged black boys, working hard and doing well in school is seen as "acting white" in the cities, and that peer pressure increases the dropout rate. Just that one bad decision, taken by 14 and 15 and 16 year olds, leads to irreparable damage to the takers of those decisions, damage that will remain for the rest of their lives.
Dana:
Exactly right. While I don't think as complicated a social phenomenon as Gangsta "culture" (of which I believe the behavior you cite is a part) is caused by any one thing I think the foundation for it would have been removed if the Great Society programs hadn't destroyed the Black family.
With fathers abaondoning their families there was no stable male figure in the house and Black boys were left with overwhelmed mothers trapped on the dole. Gangs provide a place where young Black men can feel powerful, their role models being the other males in the gang who exhibit the same anti-social pathology.
So Obama's support of the furtherance of these programs can actually be seen, not as a reasonable solution but an increase in the causes of the problem and calling it a solution.
I don't understand how anyone can vote for liberals and I really don't understand how any Black person can.
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