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Thursday, January 15,2004
Oregon Daily Emerald
COMMENTARY
Editor in Chief:
Brad Schmidt
Managing Editor:
Jan Tobias Montry
Editorial Editor:
Travis Willse
EDITORIAL
King's Dream,
goal of unity
are timeless
Editor's note: In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill
codifying into law an annual remembrance of Martin Luther
King Jr. In memory of King, the Emerald is reprinting an edito
rial originally run Monday, Jan. 20, 1986, the first national cel
ebration of the holiday. Much has changed since his time, and
indeed, since 1986, but King's message of tolerance, equality
and human rights is timeless.
Today marks the first celebration of a national holiday
honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Newspapers have been full of recounts of King's life, and
administration officials and others have been busy prais
ing King in speeches around the country. On campus, the
Black Student union sponsored a speech by civil rights ac
tivist Vincent Harding in King's honor.
Establishing a national holiday and organizing events to
remember King are excellent ways to honor the man and
his accomplishments. But remembering King is only a
start. It is not enough to recognize that he was a great man.
It is not enough to praise his speeches. It is not enough to
honor condemnation of violence.
If anything King taught is to make a real difference, we
must strive to live by the codes King preached. And we
must strive to make his dream a reality. King fueled the
modem fight to end black oppression in America, but the
struggle is far from over.
During King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he said,
"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.'"
But the dream is still only a goal. The "whites only" signs
are gone. Blacks can vote in every state. Blacks cannot be
refused service. Blacks cannot be refused access to real es
tate purchase. But blacks have a long way to go before
reaching economic and employment parity with white
Americans. The unemployment rate for blacks, 15.5 per
cent, is almost twice that for whites. And 42 percent of
black Americans live in poverty.
A report released June 3, 1985, revealed black children
are three times as likely as white children to be poor, four
times as likely not to live with either parent and five times
as likely to be on welfare. The study found that the poverty
rate for black single-parent families headed by women,
about 70 percent is about 30 percent higher than for white
single-parent families headed by women.
Racism has not been extinguished. Black family mem
bers in a white Philadelphia neighborhood recently were
terrorized out of their home. Membership in white su
premacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations
and the Posse Comitatus is growing. And the Ku Klux Klan
will march today in Pulaski, Tenn., in protest of the holi
day honoring King.
And though President Reagan has been full of kind
words for King this, past week, it is his administration
that is dismantling affirmative action policies. It is his
administration that has failed to vigorously enforce civ
il rights codes such as fair housing practices. And it is
he who opposed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and it is
he who initially opposed establishing a national holi
day for King.
Take time today to remember King. And in his memory,
take time to remember American blacks who struggle
against racism, South African blacks who must fight for
even fundamental human rights, starving Ethiopians cast
out by their government and oppressed people through
out the world. And in King's memory, make a commit
ment to take action against racism and oppression.
EDITORIAL POLICY
This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald
editorial board. Responses can be sent to letters
@dailyemerald.com. Letters to the editor and guest
commentaries are encouraged. Letters are limited
to 250 words and guest commentaries to 550 words.
Authors are limited to one submission per calendar
month. Submission must include phone number and
address for verification. The Emerald reserves the right
to edit for space, grammar and style.
VJON!)€RflAL
THAT'S A
Steve Baggs Illustrator
distorting the dream
HAVE
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DREAM
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LUTH^
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood be
fore the Lincoln Memorial and delivered
the keynote address for the March on
Washington, D.C., he couldn't have real
ized that a single sentence from his speech
would come to encapsulate his entire ca
reer in the collective consciousness of
white America:
"I have a dream my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their
skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!"
We're all familiar with this quote. We
were taught these words in high school.
A mural with these words greets us in the
foyer of the EMU. The majority of Ameri
cans know nothing about Dr. King ex
cept for his "I Have a Dream" speech. It
is quite possibly the most beloved
speech of all time.
As a young, black man I have learned to
hate Dr. King's dream.
Or rather, white America has made it
near impossible for younger generations
of blacks to love the dream in the same
way as the older generations. Because,
for us, Dr. King's dream of America has
been twisted into America's dream of
Dr. King, a dream that has nothing to do
with the reality of the man or the sub
stance of his message.
Conservatives for years have ripped
the words "content of their character"
away from its context in order to suggest
that Dr. King would be against affirma
tive action programs.
Last year in our University's own con
servative journal of opinion, the Oregon
Commentator, Colin Elliott wrote, "Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., a patriotic, ration
al American activist, put it best when he
hoped for a world where his children
'will not be judged by the color of their
skin but by the content of their character.'
Dr. King knew that character, not race,
was more important."
Let us forgive Elliott for describing the
greatest civil rights leader in American his
tory as "rational," which could be inter
preted as a tad condescending. What both
ers me is that Elliott knows nothing about
David Jagernauth
Critical mass
Dr. King s life or else he realized that he
could exploit his audience's ignorance and
advance this blatant lie.
I'll let Dr. King defend himself: "If a city
has a 30 percent Negro population, then it
is logical to assume that Negroes should
have at least 30 percent of the jobs."
And: "It is impossible to create a formu
la for the future which does not take into
account that society has been doing some
thing special against the Negro for hun
dreds of years. How then can he be ab
sorbed into the mainstream of American
society if we do not do something special
for him now, in order to balance the equa
tion and equip him to compete on a just
and equal basis?"
White America doesn't want to re
member the Dr. King who advocated
quotas and special privileges for blacks.
White America doesn't want to remem
ber Dr. King the anti-war activist who
said, "We have committed more war
crimes than any other nation, and I will
continue to say it."
That is not the hero white America
feels comfortable appropriating. They
need the patient, long-suffering Dr. King
who was a champion of conservative val
ues like color-blindness and personal re
sponsibility as defined by the religious
right. That is the Dr. King they want to re
member and celebrate in January: The
Dr. King of their dreams; the Dr. King
who never existed.
The same year as the "I Have a Dream"
mural went up in the EMU, Jesse Jackson
wrote an essay about protecting the history
of Dr. King.
"We must resist this the media's weak
and anemic memory of a great man," he
wrote. "To think of Dr. King only as a
dreamer is to do injustice to his memory
and to the dream itself. Why is it that so
many politicians today want to empha
size that King was a dreamer? Is it be
cause they want us to believe that his
dreams have become reality, and that
therefore, we should celebrate rather
than continue to fight? There is a strug
gle today to preserve the substance and
the integrity of Dr. King's legacy."
The first thing we at the University can
do to preserve the substance of Dr. King's
legacy is to paint over the mural in the
EMU that repeats the oft-repeated words
so beloved by the enemies of the man.
I call on the Black Student Union to
demand that the mural be replaced with
a quote from Dr. King that is more char
acteristic of his message and more rele
vant to the realities of present-day
America.
I have a suggestion, from Dr. King's Let
ter from the Birmingham City Jail:
"I have been gravely disappointed
with the white moderate. I have almost
reached the regrettable conclusion that
the Negro's great stumbling block in the
stride toward freedom is not the White
Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Man
ner, but the white moderate who is more
devoted to 'order' than to justice; who
prefers a negative peace which is the ab
sence of tension to a positive peace
which is the presence of justice; ... who
patemalistically feels that he can set the
timetable for another man's freedom;
who lives by the myth of time and who
constantly advised the Negro to wait un
til a 'more convenient season.'
"Shallow understanding from people of
good will is more frustrating than absolute
misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more be
wildering than outright rejection."
Contact the columnist
at davkljagemauth@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.