Writing to commemorate the anniversary, coming Thursday, of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, David Broder, dean of Washington political writers, recalls King’s famous hope that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but my the content of their character.”
In a revealing measure of how far King’s hope is from being realized, Broder, as close to an “establishment” voice as there is in political journalism, then adds:
But judging people by character does not equate, as so many, including Justice Clarence Thomas, have argued, to judging each individual on the basis of talent and ability regardless of race.
Broder introduces a straw man here, however, for King’s point was not that “talent and ability” were the only permissible bases of judgment but simply that race was not one of the permissible bases. Broder does not deign to say why he thinks we should disregard the formerly fundamental “without regard” (to race, creed, color, etc.) principle, or what principle he would have us substitute for it.
Broder goes on to quote some moving comments Rep. John Lewis, the only surviving speaker from the 1963 march, made at a commemoration event last month in the capitol (I am quoting now from the text of that speech, not from Broder):
As the leaders of our people — as Members of Congress — we must recall the passion, the vision, and the determination that made the United States the greatest nation on earth.
Call it the spirit of our Founding Fathers. Call it the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt or FDR. Call it the spirit of the March on Washington. Call it the spirit of history.
We must recapture this spirit. As a nation and a people, we must take this spirit and make it part of our thoughts, our actions and our lives.
If we do this, we can make Dr. King’s Dream come true….
Lewis here sounds a faint echo of King, who in The Speech that is now commemorated so widely affirmed that his vision, his dream
is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four 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.
Whatever King’s own thoughts, motives, values, vision — on that afternoon in 1963 and any changes of heart he may have had before he was killed — his speech that day would not have resonated as it did, the civil rights movement he embodied would not have had the success it did, if he had not called on the nation, on us, to live up to the “American dream,” the “creed” we professed to believe.
John Lewis did not attribute any substantive content to the “spirit of history” that he invoked, but I firmly believe that spirit, that dream, has no room for the divisiveness of racial and ethnic and religious preferences. (Perhaps that’s why he didn’t.)
The civil rights movement ran out of moral steam, derailed, and turned itself into just another interest group demanding favored treatment the moment it abandoned the “without regard” principle to which King so eloquently appealed in his speech. (Don’t come back to me with arguments that King favored affirmative action before he died, etc. I’m not taling about what King believed in 1963 or later; I’m talking about what he said that day, and why his appeal to the colorblind ideal was so moving and successful.)
In a news article today the Washington Post has a picture of the crowd at the recent commemoration march that is centered on a poster held by a shouting marcher that proclaims “NAACP Continues The Fight To Fulfill America’s Promise.” What promise is that? Most Americans believe that America promises equality — more specifically, equality of opportunity, equality unburdened by barriers of race. Insofar as the NAACP works to preserve and extend racial preferences, it is not working to fulfill a promise most Americans believe they have made. (As a not irrelevant aside, I think it also worth noting that in the hard copy of the WaPo today the title of the article linked above is “Renewing King’s Call for Equality.” In the online edition, however, the title has been changed to “Crowd Amplifies King’s Call for Equality.” Amplification frequently introduces distortion.)
A constant refrain of all the commemorations is that “we still have a long way to go.” That is certainly true, in large part because the commemorators and their sympathizers have been leading us in the wrong direction for so long.
King’s dreams were primarily those of social justice, which is befitting a christian minister. But King also had plans and dreams of an economic sort. We don’t often hear much of those. Is that perhaps because those who agree with one set of dreams disagree with the others?
Of Clarence Thomas, it must be said that those lawyers and judges most in tune with King, Judge Higgenbotham was outstanding in both his strong support of the Civil Rights agenda and his vehement opposition to the Thomas nomination.