The once-in-a-generation storm that hit America’s East Coast, forcing the postponement of the dedication ceremony of the long-awaited Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, may have been wished by King himself. Perhaps he would have wanted us – just for a moment – to step back from the emotional sway accompanying monuments to men to think, and not just feel.
The sheer emotion of witnessing the nation’s first black president dedicate the memorial could have caused us to not think about the historical fact that King, first and foremost, was the leader of and for black Americans. So beyond our marveling at the diversity of people and races his monument will cause to assemble, let us analyze and rationally understand the difference between the black president’s saying during his 2008 presidential victory speech in Chicago’s Gramercy Park that, “I promise you, we as a people will get there,” and King prophetically saying 40 years earlier: “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”
When the black president-elect spoke of “we as a people” before that overwhelmingly white audience on the night of his historic victory, he was magnanimously referring to all Americans of every race and color. When King, on the eve of his death, spoke those words in a sweltering hot black church before an audience of almost entirely African Americans, he was referring to black Americans making it to the promised land.
This is perhaps what he wants us to now pause and ponder before justly memorializing him as a messenger for justice for all mankind. Namely, has America fulfilled his dream of becoming a promised land for his people, black people?
King became famous for his speech about a dream at what was initiated and organized as a mass national black protest for jobs and freedom – a follow-through of the national black protest envisioned and threatened two decades earlier by A. Philip Randolph, the powerful black leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. And King died protesting the treatment and conditions of black workers in Memphis. Thus, beyond being blissfully and nostalgically enwrapped in the moment of honoring a black man who boldly broke the boundary of segregation, King might want us to think for a moment about the 21st century economic status of black Americans.
The latest economic data about that huge segment of this country known as black America leaves no room for celebration. Indeed, the new millennium disparity between the economic well-being of black Americans and their fellow white Americans is cause for a confrontation with America the likes of King’s 1963 March on Washington.
In 2009, the median wealth of white U.S. households was $113,149, compared to $5, 677 for blacks, and currently, whites on average have 20 times the net worth of blacks. Because wealth is a barometer of power and the quality of life in this society, these economic facts are telling not just about the economic status of black Americans versus white Americans, but telling about the inferior freedom of the millions of Americans emancipated almost two centuries ago by the president whose monument also adorns the National Mall.
If the equality of Americans that King both dreamed about and died for is to become a reality, then we will have to create economic parity by paying heed to his words not found among the 14 King quotations inscribed in his memorial: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
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