Are black leaders refusing to acknowledge
that the buck stops with them?
Fifty years have passed since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s noble "I Have a Dream" speech bellowed forth down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and into the homes of America. It was not just a speech filled with words to trigger emotions but was a set of guidelines that were meant to lift up a nation of all people to find the better angels in each American.
Each word and each sentence and passage was crafted to remind America about the fierce urgency of now and to hew out a pathway for economic justice and civil rights that would build a bridge of unity across the chasm of America’s divergent cultures.
Yet fifty years later it appears that the finger pointing, and the name-calling and the segregation of the mind and of the spirit and even of the black culture in poor urban areas appears to be more separate and isolated now. Are black leaders refusing to acknowledge that the buck stops with them?
Certainly one can point to the many countless examples of African Americans being able to eat, drink, visit and even pay for accommodation in the hotels and motels across the nation as progress. But is that all that Martin Luther King wanted for all Americans?
Unfortunately, it appears that instead of lifting African Americans from poverty, and providing educational freedom and liberty from the conditions that shackled them as former slaves, in many ways the conditions have worsened. Are race-based excuse baiters covering up the real problems?
In 1963, there were more families who were headed by a father and a mother in the black community. According to the 1965 Moynihan Report in 1960 approximately eight percent of black babies were born out of wedlock. Now the percentage is 72.3 percent as of 2008.
Black children are dying in escalating numbers at the hands of young black murdering thugs. There are not being beaten by racists thugs, or by police using hoses or being lynched by the KKK. Instead, black children are being murdered by their own. Where are the marches and the outcry for the hundreds of black children that were murdered?
In the hometown of President Obama, 108 of the 500 plus murder victims were children who were murdered by blacks in Chicago in 2012.
Was that the fault of white people who were engaging in nefarious racist actions? Of course the answer is no. The real question is, have civil rights leaders been making money off of these problems by refusing to confront them? Are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton afraid to march for the black community’s freedom from this murderous violence?
Why are the fear mongering and race baiters silent about telling the real truth concerning how King’s Dream has gone sideways in the black community, and they are tolerating it.