Anyone remember the opening to Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech?
“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.”
When that speech was delivered forty-seven years ago tomorrow, Barack Obama Jr. had just turned two years-old and was living in a state that was just barely four years-old. His parents’ interracial marriage was still intact, but it was not recognized and would have been illegal in much of the country.
On the anniversary of the speech, a guy who said the following will be holding a rally at the Lincoln Memorial:
“This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture….I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.” – Glenn Beck, July 28, 2009
The theme of the rally is ‘restoring honor,’ which can only be interpreted as a call to get the half-black man out of the White House.
I ignore Glenn Beck as a matter of principle. It’s easy to simply not watch his show and not read articles about the idiotic things he says. But it’s not easy to ignore the offensive nature of this rally. Jim Crow technically ended forty-five years ago, and no one wants to harp on the injustices of the past. But we have a right to use the anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech to look back and remember the way things were and what it took to change them.
Instead, we are treated to a Glenn Beck rally at the site of the great speech that will be headlined by Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin recently defended a radio shock jock’s repeated use of the word ‘nigger’ by saying she shouldn’t apologize but ‘reload.’
Compare this nonsense to the history it seeks to besmirch:
“But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”
There isn’t enough shame in the world for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.