August 28th 2010 marked the 47th anniversary of the historic 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” It was during that momentous event that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in which he made a provocative appeal to America’s collective conscience to create a society in which people were judged on “the content of their character and not on the color of their skin.” Unfortunately, people often get caught up in the mesmerizing delivery of King’s “call to conscience” and fail to respond to his call to action. Many people often ignore the first part of Dr. King’s speech where he criticized America for defaulting on the promissory note “to which every American was heir…a promise that all men would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’” Dr. King admonished:
“America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds but we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”
Fast forward to 2010 and the promissory note Dr. King referenced still has not been honored and once again we are in a critical moment in history faced with the fierce urgency of now. Although some argue that the election of our country’s first Black president is evidence that we are now living in a post-racial society, a close examination of several major indicators of social and economic progress reveals otherwise. Some individuals are indeed living the American dream, however far too many Americans, especially Blacks and the poor of all race and ethnic groups, are living social nightmares struggling to survive.
According to 2009 US Census data, the poverty rate climbed from 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million people, in 2008 to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people in 2009. Among the working-age population (ages 18 to 65), poverty rose from 11.7 percent to 12.9 percent, which is at the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a war on poverty that expanded the federal role in social welfare programs from education to health care. Poverty rose among all race and ethnic groups, but was particularly higher for blacks and Hispanics. The number of Hispanics in poverty increased from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent; for blacks it increased from 24.7 percent to 25.8 percent. The number of whites in poverty rose from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent and child poverty rose from 19 percent to 20.7 percent.
The unemployment rate for the last 12 months (August 2009 to August 2010) has been between 9.5 and 10% for the general US population, the unemployment rate for the same period for Blacks has been between 15.2% (August 2009) to 16.3% (August 2010). Although poverty rates among Blacks declined during the 1990s it is now on an upward turn. While 4.5 percent of white mortgage borrowers lost their homes to foreclosure between 2007 and 2009, Black and Latino borrowers had 7.9 and 7.7 percent foreclosure rates, respectively and high-income black borrowers were 80 percent more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure than their white counterparts, while Latino borrowers were 90 percent more likely (Center for Responsible Lending). Gentrification is eroding historically black neighborhoods and black owned land tracts and residential segregation--a primary mechanism for reproducing race and class-based social inequality is becoming more widespread. The American criminal justice system and prison industrial complex are ensnaring people of color especially Black males into legally sanctioned systems of oppression, social control and exclusion that are tantamount to the Jim Crow era as pointed out by Dr. Michelle Alexander.
The gains in upward social mobility that many people made before the Bush years (e.g. moving into the middle class) are being demolished by the effects of a worsening recession caused by years of outrageous and uncontrolled greed on Wall Street, senseless spending on wars that we should have never engaged, and a government gone wild—tending more the interests of the extremely wealthy and corporations than to meeting the needs of the workers, middle class and poor families and children in our country.
And, yet the voices of outrage over the direction that our country is heading that are the loudest are the ones representing the most outrageous and vitriolic minority including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, to mention a few.
It appears however that the masses are awakening a new civil rights movement. On October 2, 2010 the national NAACP, the AFL-CIO, National Council of La Raza, United for Peace and Justice and many other organizations from around the country will assemble in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to show the real face of the American majority. Unlike the Tea Party movement’s factions e.g. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin’s followers, the “One Nation Working Together” movement on 10.2.10 will galvanize people from diverse race/ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds into a united front representing “one nation, indivisible” fighting for “liberty and justice for all.” On that day Americans will stand together and demand that Congress refocus its priorities to put unemployed Americans back to work, stimulate the economy in our local communities, ensure the protection and civil rights and liberties of ALL people, and invest in a sound high-quality education for ALL youth.
Like faith without works—words without action are dead—inconsequential or of no effect. Romanticizing Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech without fighting to turn its core principles in reality diminishes its worth. Dr. King’s warning is just as significant and relevant today as it was back in 1963. We are yet again faced with the “fierce urgency of now” and “this is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism; now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
For more information on how you can sign up to participate the One Nation Working Together 10.2.10 visit the national website at www.onenationworkingtogether.org.
