For your information, at noon CNN will be airing the entire ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, which is only rarely seen. They are also reporting that a new poll shows that, with the election of Barack Obama, over two-thirds of blacks think Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has come true. Surprisingly for such polls, whites are less optimistic.
The poll found 69 percent of blacks said King’s vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 “I have a dream” speech — roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March.
But whites remain less optimistic, the survey found.
“Whites don’t feel the same way — a majority of them say that the country has not yet fulfilled King’s vision,” CNN polling director Keating Holland said. However, the number of whites saying the dream has been fulfilled has also gone up since March, from 35 percent to 46 percent.
In my experience, the polls usually show the opposite…that whites perceive less racism than blacks. The results are probably temporary, but they are a good indicator of how massively validating many blacks find the election of Barack Obama to be in their own lives.
Exactly!
Since I’m not qualified to opine on such emotions, I’d be interested to hear what this means to you and others.
Anecdotally, when I was in DC on Saturday it seemed like every black person I saw was almost floating on air. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
It is, in many ways, a validation of our citizenship, of our vestment in this nation. It’s a positive version of the original OJ Simpson case. Prior to the slow-speed chase OJ was the poster boy for sellouts, but once he was charged with murder an interesting quandary was posed: we know that the justice system is slanted against Blacks and towards people of means, so is it possible to acquire the means to “overcome” one’s Blackness in America? The reason that Blacks celebrated OJ beating the charges was because it gave us proof-positive that a Black person can indeed acquire the same privileges as Whites – green is more important than Black an White. Had OJ been convicted the revolution may have been televised.
The celebration of Obama is similar in that Blacks often have to tell our children that they can be anything that they want to be in this society. By and large that is taken for granted by Whites – it is, after all, your society. Obama’s election reminds and affirms to Blacks that it’s our society too, and that is an unalloyed good thing.
Of course, trying to speak for all Blacks is an exercise in futility, but generally speaking that’s what’s up.
Both my parents were born in the Jim Crow South. If my father had remained in the South, instead of coming up North, he would have been 45 years old, before his full citizenship would have been granted in the law in such a way that it had to be respected in the South.
45 years old.
After fighting in not one,but two wars for this country.
I’m in my 30’s, and I never, and I do mean NEVER thought I’d see a Black man elected President of the United States.
I admit that I’m more thrilled about Michelle Obama becoming First Lady than I am Barack Obama becoming President.
A Black, no doubt about it, her ancestors were in the hulls of those slave ships…BLACK woman
Is going to be First Lady of the United States.
I don’t think a lot of folks, especially White folks, understand what this means to an educated Black woman like myself. Or the educated Black women who raised me and guided me in my life.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful and I know it’s off thread, but, yesterday, I saw pro football players (Cardinals) so happy there were tears coming down their cheeks. Wow.
This poll will backfire whenever the black community attempts to address black poverty. The neocons can say “dream fulfilled” move on.
I hate this simpleminded polls to tell you the truth.
That’s some pretty negative thinking. Polls don’t backfire. Did the poll have a goal other than establishing a snapshot of public opinion?
I believe so. It seeks to establish his job done because Obama is President.
It is possible to ask leading questions.
Well after midnight on the night of the election, so emotionally pumped that I couldn’t even fathom going to bed, I sat and watched King’s entire speech via the internet. I’ve got to say, the emotion of the night of November 4, coupled with the hope and courage on display on the Washinton Mall that day so many years ago, was almost too much for me to take.
I spilled tears on top of more tears. That was all I could muster. Unbelievable emotions. Words just cannot do it justice.
My hypothesis–
If people identify racially, perhaps whites know that having a president the same color as them has infrequently led to much improvement in their lives. Accordingly, perhaps whites feel that just because a president is black will not necessarily lead to improvements in the lives of blacks.
At the same time, most blacks I know are filled with pride at President Obama. While that pride signifies something changed and real, perhaps it might prove to be a little transitory in the next few years.
Yes. I agrre with your analysis. I’m white and I fear that Obama is just Bush in blackface. The core of his cabinet, Defense, Treasury, Transportation (which will dispense those hundreds of billions of juicy road contracts) are dedicated Republicans. The rest are DLC.
What happens when this hits the black community in the face is anybody’s guess.
Yes, his foreign policy and economic policy team are filled with neoliberals. If you think neoliberalism is an improvement look at Tony Blair in England.
I find that statement kind of curious. Or maybe I misunderstand.
After 219 years of nothing but white guys, saying that having an all white presidency since the nation’s creation has only “infrequently led to much improvement in their lives” is odd. As far as I’m concerned, I’d say white people like me have been the recipient of much improvement in virtually every facet of my life simply due to the fact that I was born white. In fact, white guys have cared so much about having only white Presidents that they have done everything, including killing, dehumanizing and legislating against non-whites in an attempt to keep the status quo.
White people, in general, have for centuries been firstly concerned with keeping power concentrated within their race. It has been, unfortunately, a significant part of this country’s legacy.
Did you know king was so badly marginalized toward the end of his life that he often suffered bouts of depression.
Here is the rest of this interesting article by Mark Erik Dyson
http://globalgrind.com/source/nakedwithsockson.blogspot.com/251559/the-burdens-of-martyrdomwhy-mlk-w
as-depressed/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97XrMoSuDoc
something l suspect AG, and jazz fans who may not be aware of it, would appreciate; a seldom recognized address by MLK…the opening address to the 1964 berlin jazz festival:
brief, but historic. arc of the universe, indeed…as obama lists miles and trane as some of his favorite players…or as albert ayler said: Music is the Healing Force of the Universe.
Barack Obama betrays the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King
“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.”
These words by Dr.Martin Luther King in 1967 are as poignant today as back then. The names change but the nightmare remains the same. Today’s Iraq and Afghanistan replace yesterday’s Vietnam. Today’s increased level of poverty and imprisonment of a hugely disproportionate number of African Americans in the prison system, the slaughter of millions more of the world’s poor and Dr. King’s subsequent murder at the hands of his own government bear witness to exactly which initiative was taken.
President-Elect Barack Obama, in his speeches, expresses his desire to inculcate the ideals of Dr. King in to his decision making and his attitude to his fellow human beings. He “chokes up” repeating the words of this Man of Peace, but he’ll “hold it together” on Inauguration day. He’ll make America, in Dr. King’s words “a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace – a land in which all of God’s children might come together in a spirit of brotherhood.”
He stands silent as his country aids in the genocide of the Palestinians. He will forge peace by sending 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan to intensify the massacre that has left nearly 6,500 of his civilian brothers and sisters dead. He stands silent on the more than a million of his brothers and sisters who have been murdered in Iraq. He threatens War against Iran, Syria and already destroyed Lebanon. He remains silent on the murder of his brother Oscar Grant III by police officer Johannes Mehserle in California. He perpetuates what Dr. King called “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift”.
“Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten….America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness–justice” Martin Luther King, 1967.
The President-Elect refuses to bring George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and the rest of the War criminals to justice as he looks forward from the mountain top and points the way to spiritual death.
Would Dr. King, if he actually held public office, have voted for invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, sending arms and money to Israel and remained silent as his poverty stricken brothers and sisters were slaughtered?
The words of Martin Luther King have been hijacked by those would would use his message to further their narcissistic goals. His peaceful supplication has been betrayed by lies and a sickening adulation of meaningless oratory. His greatest statements of love and humanity have been relegated to sound bites for mass consumption by a deceived public who have put their faith in a man who represents all that Dr. King was fighting peacefully against.
Making MLK’s Dream A Reality:
http://democralypsenow.blogspot.com/2009/01/his-dream-our-reality.html