Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I can recall the feeling of the adults around me at the time. A few believed that he had pushed too far too fast, most others believed that with his death, our plight as Negroes, as we were known then, was that of being permanently relegated to second-class citizens. Forty years later, the question of racial equality remains, at best, a mixed bag.
Edward W. Brooke, a witness to the last 40 years of history, believes that we have far to go.
The core conditions that the Kerner Commission identified as key contributors to civil unrest are as prevalent, if not as virulent, today as they were 40 years ago. The lack of affordable, safe housing and the absence of jobs or hope for the future have confined even more of our citizens to an eerily familiar world that not so long ago gave rise to cities in flames.
Until we root out and eradicate the conditions that cultivate generations in deprivation and despair, we are bound to harvest a bitter crop.
Leonard Pitts, relying on this article by Shanhar Vedantam, says how much progress has been made depends upon one’s perspective.
That blacks and whites live different realities is hardly news. What’s intriguing is the reason, as suggested by the second study. Yale University researcher Richard Eibach found that whites and blacks employ different measures in assessing racial progress. Whites judge it by looking at how far we have come (”How can you say there’s still racism when we have an Oprah Winfrey and a Barack Obama?”) Blacks judge it by how far we have yet to go (“How can you say there’s no racism when police keep stopping me for no reason?”)
I don’t see the glass as either half-empty or half-full. What I see is a glass that is not brimming over. The progress of the last 40 years has been, in many ways, astonishing and at the same time, quite sad. The upward mobility of blacks has allowed some to get to the mountaintop while leaving behind others. Black neighborhoods, self-sustaining and nurturing out of necessity, have given way to ghettos, making even black Americans fear other black Americans. This isn’t progress.
Daily, I experience events that make me realize how far we have to go: a funeral where I am one of only two blacks in the church, another event where there are only two or three whites in the room. This isn’t progress.
And then there is the presidential race. When I talk to black folk who are supporting Obama simply because he is black, running through my head is King’s desire to have his children judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Yet far too many of those with whom I’ve spoken are doing just the opposite, telling me that they support him only because he’s black. This isn’t progress.
I hear the national media repeat ad naseum that Wright’s comments are “typical” of black churches yet no one with whom I’ve spoken has ever heard such language in their church. The notion goes unchallenged and becomes a part of the meme of black people in America, along with “the scary black male,” “the welfare queen,” and other such stereotypes. This isn’t progress.
Four days before his assassination, Dr. King gave a sermon that resonates with me to this day. Forty years ago, Dr. King advised us on Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution:
… one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.
I fear that many are still sleeping.
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Viv, where’s your trackback link?
Found it.
Vivian, You might want to check out my comments on my blog. The institutions built in the Black community to overcome segregation created a community of hope. What has happened since 1965 – forgive my nerdy affection for quantification – which was discernible in the early 1980s when I was teaching American Government was that 15% of the Black population was moving forward faster than anyone else by all measures of accomplishment. But, a majority of the Black population was actually losing ground. And there were folks in the middle making some progress.
I believe that bifurcation in the Black community was directly the result of the failure of one key institution – the family. It continues today. Families without fathers suffer. Getting married and staying married as much as possible makes all the difference in the world for the measures of every social pathology. Following the teachings of the Christian church count.
Every family in America is one generation away from getting out material poverty. The barrier isn’t racism. The barrier is the price to be paid by one generation of parents pouring themselves out for their children – and their children not blowing it by bad choices. Immigrants from across the world prove the point.
Illegitimacy affects every ethnicity. It is the root, not the sum, of most of the stress and sadness shared by so many of our fellow citizens.
Politically what has happened (and this is where we are likely to disagree) is an absolute Orwellian perversion of the Civil Rights movement. Racism remains a sin on the national soul.
Let me fix that for you, James. It should read:
And seriously, “illegitimacy”? In 2008?
MB: Your edit isn’t a fix unless you meant as in fixing a dog. Families need fathers and mothers. The two parents need to be married to each other. It works best.
So what you’re saying, James, is that you oppose stable and loving environments for children unless they involve a man and woman, married in a Christian church that you approve of. Well, okay.
Actually, MB, what I say is what I say, not what you write. FYI, for the future, if you want to know what I say, read the words. If you don’t follow, or I speak clumsily, then ask, and I will give you new words. All of my words, what I say, is what I say alone – never what you write. Never.
Did you follow that?
Children need a mother and a father. If they commit themselves, in this culture, through the legal relationship of marriage it is even better.
I know you fancy yourself a man of words, James, so I’m not going to go through the obvious illustrations of the benefits testing statements, or that simply declaring something does not make it true.
MB:I say what I say. You say what you say. We can disagree amicably. The readers can decide for themselves what is true, false, fancy or terrible – as they like.
Absolutely agreed.
Going from “I Have A Dream” to “God Damn America” is not progress.
JAB said:
James – do you know what caused the breakup of the black family? It was the government’s war on poverty – and it didn’t just affect black families, it affected poor white ones, too.
The government essentially gave poor families a choice: let us help you without the father in the home or continue to be poor on your own with your family intact. So the men did the honorable thing and left their families because the government provided more for them than they could on their own.
I happen to think this was an unintended consequence but there are others who believe the government’s motives were more sinister. But the results cannot be ignored: the black family, which had endured things unheard of and yet remained committed to each other, was broken up. As were poor white families.
VJP: I agree wholeheartedly that the culprit in the destruction of families was the War on Poverty. The output was illegitimacy. The outcome was heartbreak and tragedy – and so few triumphs as to prove the rule.
Careful Viv, you’re at risk of sounding something like a libertarian with your last comment.