wfn.org | King's dream, 40 years later: Has it been lost?

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April 14, 2003 News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
    10-31-71BP{224}

NOTE: Art is available with this report.

"Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a
dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that
one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" -
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

A UMNS Feature
By Linda Green*

Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I have a
dream" speech, African Americans have achieved success on many levels --
professional, social and political.   

Those were aspirations that King held out in his speech, along with a vision
for society as a place of social and economic justice, equity and equality.
The speech, delivered Aug. 28, 1963, was a defining moment in the life of the
civil rights leader - a life cut short when King was assassinated April 4,
1968.

King's call was rooted in the American ideal of equity and justice for all.
The cornerstone laid through years of struggle in the 1950s and 1960s
supported the success that African Americans have enjoyed since then. But
what does King's dream mean for today's generations? Does it mean the same
thing to Generation X'ers and millennials as it did to their parents, or has
it been lost, deferred or reinterpreted?

Leon Franklin, a 21-year-old student at Gammon Theological Seminary in
Atlanta, says he and his peers have had to interpret the dream for themselves
"in a cloudy landscape of ideas and interpretations" that leave them
"frustrated and confused." He finds that ironic, he says, because "young
adults are the dream."

"Young adults comprise the first generation of Americans raised in integrated
public school systems, and Jim Crow and 'de jure' segregation exist in their
minds as pages in history books," he says. While the parents hoped their
children would grow up in a prejudice-free society, Franklin sees evidence
that racism and racial tension remain problems - the verdict and riots that
followed the trial of white Los Angeles police officers accused of beating
black motorist Rodney King; the use of Native American imagery in
professional sports; the profiling of Arab Americans in the wake of the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and attempts to roll back affirmative action. 

However, young adults possess greater tolerance because colleges and
universities now offer courses in multicultural studies that help build
sensitivity to the ethnic and cultural traditions of the United States and
the world, Franklin said. "It is in these efforts of education that we find
many young adults redefining the deferred dream of their parents in exciting
and provocative ways."

Sixteen-year-old Alexandria Hicks of Nashville, Tenn., believes the "dream is
at a standstill."  She attributes that to "those deeply submerged in the
vileness of the world of yesteryear who refuse to believe in equality."
Because of the opposition, she and her peers - all African Americans - feel
as though they are in a battle, characterized by struggles "that seem petty -
too petty to fight outwardly."

Trudie Kibbe Reed, president of historically black Philander Smith College in
Little Rock, Ark., wonders if "we've ... really claimed personal ownership of
King's dream."

"Perhaps because of the failure of my generation to mentor and pass on the
dream, too many of our young people do not vote, have little interest in
eliminating world hunger, and seem apathetic about addressing a social
consensus that appears to take for granted that incarcerating is a better
option than educating," Reed says. 

"We are reaping many benefits from those who gave their lives for a vision of
a world and church in which the full humanity of all might be realized," she
says. "It is up to us to break down mental walls that resist that vision, and
to work with the generation to come to refashion a society according to
King's dream," she said.

With the exception of segregated Sunday worship, today's youth and young
adults have not shared the experiences that formed and shaped their parents.
They have not dealt with public facilities and services that are segregated
based on race.

"My generation has failed," Reed says. "We have failed both to translate the
dream, with the values it embodies - mutual respect for the dignity of every
human being - to a new generation and to impart that dream to those we mentor
today."

The real impact from King's life and vocation came in the transformation of
mindsets, with the emphasis on accepting people regardless of differences
that seem to divide, she says. King called for a change in thinking that was
far more fundamental than taking social action. Reed says that if outward
behavior does not reflect inner transformation, a revolution in values, then
people are deceiving themselves and are not living the dream.

Asked what this generation should be doing to keep her late husband's legacy
alive and to keep the movement going, Coretta Scott King, in an interview
with BET.com, says, "I think there is a tremendous need for young people to
be educated and to understand what Martin Luther King's method of nonviolent
social change meant. They have to be informed on the issues, but they have to
be informed on how do you organize a campaign to work for change, and that's
why his principles of nonviolence that he used are so important. I hope the
younger generation will study those and understand what it means to live a
nonviolent lifestyle, and I would hope that once people are educated they
will read a lot of his writings ... and that they would organize themselves."

In his book I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Michael Eric Dyson, a prominent African American pastor, asserts that King's
speech has been taken out of context and used to oppose affirmative action.
In fact, Dyson says, King advocated social action and affirmative action
policies not only for people of color but for poor whites as well.   

Recent assaults against affirmative action have been highly publicized. The
Supreme Court is reviewing two University of Michigan cases challenging the
constitutionality of including race among factors in admissions decisions.
The justices heard arguments on the cases April 1 and are expected to give
their rulings by June. In January, President Bush used King's birthday to
launch his assault against affirmation action.

King raised the affirmative action issue amid the civil rights struggles of
the 1960s.  He knew that the Jim Crow laws of segregation, the concept of
"separate but equal," had to be changed. Separate but equal, as King and
other civil rights leaders pointed out, was a farce.  

Affirmative action is an intentional effort to ensure that African Americans,
other people of color and white women are given the chance to receive all the
benefits of society: education, employment, housing and the opportunity to
pursue the American dream. 

Throughout the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s and continuing into
the late 1980s, society made strides in implementing affirmative action. That
has resulted in African Americans, other people of color and white women,
becoming more common in leadership positions throughout society.

April 11 marked the 35th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which Johnson
signed to prohibit discrimination in the sale, financing or rental of housing
because of race, color, religion, sex, disability, family status or national
origin. The act was amended in 1988 to provide the Department of Justice and
Department of Housing and Urban Development larger roles in enforcing the
law, in an effort to combat discrimination in housing across the country.

But where are we now? "There is clearly a setback in education, the key
factor that ultimately determines where equality is realized," says Brenda
Wilkinson, author of The Civil Rights Movement: An Illustrated History. The
country has poor grades at every level, from day care, where funds have been
cut; to public education, which has seen a rise in segregation in addition to
funding decreases; to higher education, where a move is afoot to abolish
affirmative action, she says. 

African Americans acknowledge the progress made but wonder if people have
become caught up in hyperbole when asked if there is an assault on civil
rights and policies that give an edge to minority students. Their argument is
that there have always been people opposed to any legislation that would
benefit African Americans and other minorities. 

"As long as there are unequal opportunities in this country for individuals
to learn, there will remain an uneven field for pursuit of equal chances to
compete in society. Subsequently, we will move more rapidly toward being 'two
nations".  . . There will continue to be the haves and have-nots, and all the
ills of society that result from this," Wilkinson says. 
 
A product of the segregated system of the South who reached adulthood in the
'60s, Wilkinson was optimistic that the country was moving toward not only a
"new South" but also a "new America." She believed that all the "haters" of
the older generations would die off, and the next generations would want "no
part of the mess of the past. In my wildest dreams, I could not imagine baby
boomers, my generation, reaching middle age and possessing the same old
racist attitudes and selfishness of their parents. But I have been rudely
awakened and see whites my age only concerned with getting theirs and
segregating themselves as much as ever." 

Although life today is far better than it was for their parents, many African
Americans say they still have a long way to go. 

Bishop Charlene Kammerer of Charlotte, N.C., says King's dream is the same as
God's dream -  for all people to be in community and unity with each other
across the globe.

"I see little children across the world who don't see barriers of race,
ethnicity, language, geography, religion, but who just hold out their hands
to each other, smile and play, whether they speak the same language or not."

"I feel that in some ways we as a people have no real dream because we
continue to ride on the dream of Dr. King. When a people continue to ride on
a 40-year-old dream, they ride a nightmare," says the Rev. Arnetta Beverly of
Madison, N.C. The dream becomes a nightmare because it is never realized.

She says that African-American children today can enter the front door of any
school and receive an education beside children from other races. They also
can live in any neighborhood their parents can afford, "but unless and until
those little black boys and girls are part of the decision-making process in
this country and share power, they will still be the little black boys of
King's dream," she says. 

"We as a people are also losing the dream of Dr. King," she says. "I feel
that because the village has been shattered by drugs, violence,
individualism, greed, complacency and apathy, there is no one left to raise
the child. The children are being reared by television, movies and shallow
superstars," she says.

In the anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the church is commissioned to
remember the past and challenged to continue the struggle until victory is
won, but in fact, "we have strayed from the places of our God where we met
thee," Beverly says. "Our hearts have become drunk with the wine of the
world," which keeps dreams from becoming reality, she says. "As parents and
grandparents and elders in the village, we need to teach our heritage, affirm
our culture, instill everlasting values, uphold moral truths and show love
like Jesus," she says.

People of color are reaping many benefits from those who gave their lives for
a vision of a world in which the full humanity of all might be realized, Reed
says. 

"It is up to us to break down mental walls that resist that vision, and to
work with the generation to come to refashion a society according to King's
dream, one that gives hope and healing to all."
# # #
*Green is United Methodist News Service's Nashville, Tenn., news director.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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