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“I have a dream that my four 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 always get chills when I see that clip of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which was given in front of the Washington Monument at the March on Washington in August 1963. King’s message of hope and forgiveness resonated with people all over the world. The event was covered live on TV, and it was arguably the turning point for the entire civil rights movement in America.
1963 was also the year of my birth. Even though I was too young to fully appreciate it at the time, I’ve carried King’s dream with me all my life. King’s compassion, his ferocious intellect and, most of all, his passionate commitment to nonviolent protest still inspire me. It may sound corny, but I think about him almost every day, and I contemplate what a profoundly different world it would be if King were still here.
As we begin the final week of Black History Month, it’s important to consider how far we still have to go before we can live out King’s dream. Since his assassination in 1968, we seem to have taken a huge step backward with regard to civil rights. The crippling disease of racism is making a comeback in America.
People have grown more intolerant of each other at a time when we all should be uniting for the good of mankind. We are a divided and utterly conquered nation.
King would have found the situation intolerable and done everything in his power to change it. His message is my message: If we can’t learn to get along, we will destroy ourselves. There is no other option.
In many ways, our country is still fighting the Civil War. There are deep wounds that will take more time to heal. The popularity of recent blockbuster movies such as “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” reflect our conscious need to re-examine that troubled era, even if it’s heavily sanitized by Hollywood. Director Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” is brilliant, but it portrays a world of pure fantasy. It’s not even based on a true story — it’s based on another movie. The reality of slavery in America was far more hideous and brutal.
A controversy recently erupted over an upcoming posthumous biopic of iconic jazz singer and political activist Nina Simone. The debate centers on the casting of actress Zoe Saldana in the lead role. An online petition has been submitted to the producers demanding the replacement of the “Avatar” actress — who is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent — with someone who actually looks like Simone.
Photos were leaked from the set of “Nina” showing Saldana wearing an afro wig, dark makeup and a prosthetic nose to make her look more like Simone. University of Southern California anthropology professor Lanita Jacobs lectures on the portrayal of black people in films and on TV. She told National Public Radio that Saldana’s casting in the role of Simone is offensive to women who have struggled with self-image. After all, Simone was proud of her looks. She sang songs celebrating her “blackness.” But it’s not Zoe Saldana’s fault that Hollywood and the mass media still favor light skin, straight hair, thin bodies and sharp features over women with curvy hips, kinky hair, dark skin and full lips.
Larry Ward, president of the right-wing lobbying firm Political Media Inc. and organizer of last month’s grotesque Gun Appreciation Day, invoked King’s name in an interview with CNN, asserting that if African Americans had been armed, the institution of slavery could have been prevented. He said, “I think Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.”
King was a pacifist who vehemently opposed violence and oppression of any kind. He never would have agreed with an imbecile like Ward. And it’s not like the slaves were handed guns as they were being led off the Amistad in chains. Where does Ward think the slaves were supposed to get all of those weapons to defend themselves with?
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History shows there were in fact several famous slave revolts in the United States during that dark period, but none of them succeeded due to the overwhelming firepower of the slave owners.
Look up Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. In every case, the swift retribution faced by the rebelling slaves and their families was merciless and genocidal. Hundreds of people died.
Here’s a quote from Ronald Reagan from back when he was governor of California in 1967: “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
OK, so he only said that after a bunch of Black Panthers walked into the California Statehouse in Sacramento carrying rifles to protest a gun control bill. Funny how quickly people change their tune about gun control when a bunch of armed black guys show up.
As president, Reagan also supported the Brady Bill, which required background checks and mandatory waiting periods for all gun buyers, after he was nearly assassinated by a lunatic with a gun.
Just saying.
A far more difficult problem in defeating racism in America is widespread ignorance. Ignorance and intolerance go hand in hand.
It doesn’t take very long to teach someone how to hate, but you can spend a lifetime trying to repair the damage and undoing the web of lies that racism embodies. Overcoming the core values learned in childhood can be one of the most difficult tasks as an adult. Parents, siblings and other role models wield enormous influence over the moral development of young minds. There are still generations of Americans of every color who have grown up with some form of racism.
The idea for Black History Month is credited to historian Carter G. Woodson. He created the holiday to encourage scholars to study the contributions African-Americans made to American history. In 1915, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and in 1926 he declared the second week of February to be Negro History Week. It was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
Negro History Week grew in popularity over the ensuing years, eventually spanning the entire month of February. But it wasn’t until 1976 that the federal government officially recognized the expanded commemoration. Then-President Gerald Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
It’s important to note that Woodson created the holiday in the hope that it would eventually be eliminated when black history was recognized simply as American history. Until that day comes, it’s essential that black history be celebrated every year to remind everyone of the important contributions black people have made to our country.
