In the 57 years since MLK's "I Have A Dream" Speech on the National Mall, are we any closer to realizing his dream, that his children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?
It's a sad irony, that this MLK Day, the National Mall is on military enforced lockdown, due to a white supremacist failed coup that began with a racist lie, that our first black President, was a Muslim Illegal Alien.
What's ironic is that 1/4 of Americans (the gullible, "White Christian", 1/4) believed that hateful lie and many others that were built upon it, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, just because it made them feel good to know that they were better than all those Pinko Commies yelling "Black Lives Matter", that they enjoyed far more rights than them, to hell with the facts! Gimme my gun!

And that's how delusion gained control of the nuclear football, temporarily.

Thank goodness that football was never spiked in a delusional fit of grandeur.

Many of us have progressed, but not all.

Oh, yes!!

I'm not saying everything today is perfect (because it isn't), but the change between then and now is hugely--and nearly unbelievably--dramatic.

We as a country aren't obligated to reach a utopia benchmark in order to acknowledge the truly enormous progress we have made...

...and now that we have properly recognized our national and societal real progress, it is time for us to get back to work, because there is still a whole lot of work remaining for us to do.

[EDITED TO ADD: For those who don't know my background, the maternal side of my family were racist in every molecule of their bodies. During Emancipation, that side of my family had been slaveholders in Kentucky, and I was told, over and over and over again--proudly!!--a whole bunch of **** about how "our family's" slaves did NOT want to be emancipated, and sobbed because they were, involuntarily, legally released from being my family's legal possessions. The "other" [also maternal] side of my family, the ones who lived in Kansas (and I don't know where else) were "out and proud" Ku Klux Klan.

Starting when I was about junior high school age, every Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner became a nightmare because our relatives surrounding the dining room table (a real life, perfect, Norman Rockwell scene) would turn on me and start criticizing my feelings about human rights and civil rights over the Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey--which meant that those dinners always ended as disasters....which *I* was always 100% blamed for.

So regardless of how far we, as Americans, still have to go to reach full equality and dignity, nobody can tell me that we haven't already (in the year 2021) accomplished (by my junior high school understanding standards) almost fantastically (to me, back then) farther than I E-V-E-R thought would be possible to achieve during my lifetime.]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2021 09:54PM by Tevai.

I think the answer is more complicated. Yes, we have made a lot of progress. Interracial marriage is now legal everywhere in the U.S., and there are laws against overt racial discrimination in employment and school admissions.

On the other hand, African-americans tend to be a great deal poorer than their Caucasian counterparts, they tend to live in substandard housing, their public school education is still inferior to that of white children, and their employment numbers in many fields do not match the overall percentage of them trained in those fields and seeking employment.

Then the question becomes in what direction we are heading. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the political parties to argue voter fraud when no evidence supporting the claim was available. In 2013, the same Court struck the provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that prevented southern states from making changes to their voting laws without seeking Federal approval first. Affirmative action, used to give African-americans and other minorities a better chance to enter college, is under attack by Caucasians all over the U.S. And all of these changes and efforts at changes were done prior to the addition of the last three justices made by the soon-to-be former U.S. president.

In a piece that aired last week on NPR, long-time legal affairs reporter Nina Totenberg noted that with the addition of the last three justices, particularly the most recent appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, it is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will 1) remove affirmative action from education altogether; 2) remove ongoing efforts by employers to increase minority participation in the workforce; and 3) allow individual states to handle voting in whatever way they see fit, regardless of the effect it could have on minority voting access.

To my mind, all of this suggests that we are moving very much in the wrong direction, and I am most concerned about the dismantlement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. If Ms. Totenberg's speculations in this regard are correct (and I wouldn't bet against her here), then the new rallying cry will be:

HAIL AGAIN, JIM CROW!

You read it here first.

And it will never be.

The problem is in our very wiring.

We inherited wiring which once enhanced survival of the species.
It is very much alive and well.
It evidences in phenomena such as
https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2357311

"Homo sapiens" is misnamed.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2356899

Horus and Set are alive and well

Yea I've progressed a little. Used to hate everybody and now I just hate users and abusers that have no souls. Thats progress if you ask me. I will leave the narcissists of religion to Jesus basically and just heal myself.

I think somebody punted

A: Yes, we're closer. But we have a long way to go.

Attitudes have changed.

But structural racism remains ‐-- as we have all seen.

Things are improving...slowly.

Two steps forward, 1.9999 steps back. Sometimes 2.5 steps back.

I am.
I was raised in an environment Where N===== was a common everyday word. My mother was raised on a plantation in Louisiana where they still (1909to 1919) spoke of our n===== Jim or our n====== sarah. They were racists and that was just their society.
Even at a young age I never bought into that. I always knew it was wrong.
Personally I don't give a damn what the pigment of your skin is. If you respect me I will respect you



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2021 11:49AM by thedesertrat1.