4/14/2003 News media contact: Linda Green · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn
NOTE: Art is available with this report.
A UMNS Feature By Linda Green*
Paying
tribute to the late Martin Luther King Jr. is this unique sculpture by
Medina-Campeny at a busy intersection in Atlanta. Forty years after King
delivered his I have a dream speech, African Americans have achieved
success on many levels -- professional, social and political. But what
does King s dream mean for today s generations? Does it mean the same
thing to Generation X ers and millennials as it did to their parents, or
has it been lost, deferred or reinterpreted? A UMNS file photo by Mark
Westmoreland, Wesleyan Christian Advocate. Photo number 03-144,
Accompanies UMNS #224, 4/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Marla
Watts of Memphis, Tenn., holds a sign commemorating the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. following a march to the National Civil Rights Museum at
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in this 1992 file photograph. Forty years
after King delivered his I have a dream speech, African Americans
have achieved success on many levels -- professional, social and
political. But what does King s dream mean for today s generations? Does
it mean the same thing to Generation X ers and millennials as it did to
their parents, or has it been lost, deferred or reinterpreted? A UMNS
photo by Mike DuBose. Photo number 03-143, Accompanies UMNS #224,
4/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered his "I have a dream" speech, African Americans have achieved
success on many levels -- professional, social and political.
Those
were aspirations that King held out in his speech, along with a vision
for society as a place of social and economic justice, equity and
equality. The speech, delivered Aug. 28, 1963, was a defining moment in
the life of the civil rights leader - a life cut short when King was
assassinated April 4, 1968.
King's call was rooted in the
American ideal of equity and justice for all. The cornerstone laid
through years of struggle in the 1950s and 1960s supported the success
that African Americans have enjoyed since then. But what does King's
dream mean for today's generations? Does it mean the same thing to
Generation X'ers and millennials as it did to their parents, or has it
been lost, deferred or reinterpreted?
Leon Franklin, a
21-year-old student at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, says he
and his peers have had to interpret the dream for themselves "in a
cloudy landscape of ideas and interpretations" that leave them
"frustrated and confused." He finds that ironic, he says, because "young
adults are the dream."
"Young adults comprise the first
generation of Americans raised in integrated public school systems, and
Jim Crow and 'de jure' segregation exist in their minds as pages in
history books," he says. While the parents hoped their children would
grow up in a prejudice-free society, Franklin sees evidence that racism
and racial tension remain problems - the verdict and riots that followed
the trial of white Los Angeles police officers accused of beating black
motorist Rodney King; the use of Native American imagery in
professional sports; the profiling of Arab Americans in the wake of the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and attempts to roll back affirmative
action.
However, young adults possess greater tolerance because
colleges and universities now offer courses in multicultural studies
that help build sensitivity to the ethnic and cultural traditions of the
United States and the world, Franklin said. "It is in these efforts of
education that we find many young adults redefining the deferred dream
of their parents in exciting and provocative ways."
Sixteen-year-old
Alexandria Hicks of Nashville, Tenn., believes the "dream is at a
standstill." She attributes that to "those deeply submerged in the
vileness of the world of yesteryear who refuse to believe in equality."
Because of the opposition, she and her peers - all African Americans -
feel as though they are in a battle, characterized by struggles "that
seem petty - too petty to fight outwardly."
Trudie Kibbe Reed,
president of historically black Philander Smith College in Little Rock,
Ark., wonders if "we've … really claimed personal ownership of King's
dream."
"Perhaps because of the failure of my generation to
mentor and pass on the dream, too many of our young people do not vote,
have little interest in eliminating world hunger, and seem apathetic
about addressing a social consensus that appears to take for granted
that incarcerating is a better option than educating," Reed says.
"We
are reaping many benefits from those who gave their lives for a vision
of a world and church in which the full humanity of all might be
realized," she says. "It is up to us to break down mental walls that
resist that vision, and to work with the generation to come to refashion
a society according to King's dream," she said.
With the
exception of segregated Sunday worship, today's youth and young adults
have not shared the experiences that formed and shaped their parents.
They have not dealt with public facilities and services that are
segregated based on race.
"My generation has failed," Reed says.
"We have failed both to translate the dream, with the values it embodies
- mutual respect for the dignity of every human being - to a new
generation and to impart that dream to those we mentor today."
The
real impact from King's life and vocation came in the transformation of
mindsets, with the emphasis on accepting people regardless of
differences that seem to divide, she says. King called for a change in
thinking that was far more fundamental than taking social action. Reed
says that if outward behavior does not reflect inner transformation, a
revolution in values, then people are deceiving themselves and are not
living the dream.
Asked what this generation should be doing to
keep her late husband's legacy alive and to keep the movement going,
Coretta Scott King, in an interview with BET.com, says, "I think there
is a tremendous need for young people to be educated and to understand
what Martin Luther King's method of nonviolent social change meant. They
have to be informed on the issues, but they have to be informed on how
do you organize a campaign to work for change, and that's why his
principles of nonviolence that he used are so important. I hope the
younger generation will study those and understand what it means to live
a nonviolent lifestyle, and I would hope that once people are educated
they will read a lot of his writings ... and that they would organize
themselves."
In his book I May Not Get There With You: The True
Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Eric Dyson, a prominent African
American pastor, asserts that King's speech has been taken out of
context and used to oppose affirmative action. In fact, Dyson says, King
advocated social action and affirmative action policies not only for
people of color but for poor whites as well.
Recent assaults
against affirmative action have been highly publicized. The Supreme
Court is reviewing two University of Michigan cases challenging the
constitutionality of including race among factors in admissions
decisions. The justices heard arguments on the cases April 1 and are
expected to give their rulings by June. In January, President Bush used
King's birthday to launch his assault against affirmation action.
King
raised the affirmative action issue amid the civil rights struggles of
the 1960s. He knew that the Jim Crow laws of segregation, the concept
of "separate but equal," had to be changed. Separate but equal, as King
and other civil rights leaders pointed out, was a farce.
Affirmative
action is an intentional effort to ensure that African Americans, other
people of color and white women are given the chance to receive all the
benefits of society: education, employment, housing and the opportunity
to pursue the American dream.
Throughout the Lyndon Johnson
administration in the 1960s and continuing into the late 1980s, society
made strides in implementing affirmative action. That has resulted in
African Americans, other people of color and white women, becoming more
common in leadership positions throughout society.
April 11
marked the 35th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which Johnson
signed to prohibit discrimination in the sale, financing or rental of
housing because of race, color, religion, sex, disability, family status
or national origin. The act was amended in 1988 to provide the
Department of Justice and Department of Housing and Urban Development
larger roles in enforcing the law, in an effort to combat discrimination
in housing across the country.
But where are we now? "There is
clearly a setback in education, the key factor that ultimately
determines where equality is realized," says Brenda Wilkinson, author of
The Civil Rights Movement: An Illustrated History. The country has poor
grades at every level, from day care, where funds have been cut; to
public education, which has seen a rise in segregation in addition to
funding decreases; to higher education, where a move is afoot to abolish
affirmative action, she says.
African Americans acknowledge the
progress made but wonder if people have become caught up in hyperbole
when asked if there is an assault on civil rights and policies that give
an edge to minority students. Their argument is that there have always
been people opposed to any legislation that would benefit African
Americans and other minorities.
"As long as there are unequal
opportunities in this country for individuals to learn, there will
remain an uneven field for pursuit of equal chances to compete in
society. Subsequently, we will move more rapidly toward being 'two
nations". . . There will continue to be the haves and have-nots, and
all the ills of society that result from this," Wilkinson says.
A
product of the segregated system of the South who reached adulthood in
the '60s, Wilkinson was optimistic that the country was moving toward
not only a "new South" but also a "new America." She believed that all
the "haters" of the older generations would die off, and the next
generations would want "no part of the mess of the past. In my wildest
dreams, I could not imagine baby boomers, my generation, reaching middle
age and possessing the same old racist attitudes and selfishness of
their parents. But I have been rudely awakened and see whites my age
only concerned with getting theirs and segregating themselves as much as
ever."
Although life today is far better than it was for their parents, many African Americans say they still have a long way to go.
Bishop
Charlene Kammerer of Charlotte, N.C., says King's dream is the same as
God's dream - for all people to be in community and unity with each
other across the globe.
"I see little children across the world
who don't see barriers of race, ethnicity, language, geography,
religion, but who just hold out their hands to each other, smile and
play, whether they speak the same language or not."
"I feel that
in some ways we as a people have no real dream because we continue to
ride on the dream of Dr. King. When a people continue to ride on a
40-year-old dream, they ride a nightmare," says the Rev. Arnetta Beverly
of Madison, N.C. The dream becomes a nightmare because it is never
realized.
She says that African-American children today can enter
the front door of any school and receive an education beside children
from other races. They also can live in any neighborhood their parents
can afford, "but unless and until those little black boys and girls are
part of the decision-making process in this country and share power,
they will still be the little black boys of King's dream," she says.
"We
as a people are also losing the dream of Dr. King," she says. "I feel
that because the village has been shattered by drugs, violence,
individualism, greed, complacency and apathy, there is no one left to
raise the child. The children are being reared by television, movies and
shallow superstars," she says.
In the anthem "Lift Every Voice
and Sing," the church is commissioned to remember the past and
challenged to continue the struggle until victory is won, but in fact,
"we have strayed from the places of our God where we met thee," Beverly
says. "Our hearts have become drunk with the wine of the world," which
keeps dreams from becoming reality, she says. "As parents and
grandparents and elders in the village, we need to teach our heritage,
affirm our culture, instill everlasting values, uphold moral truths and
show love like Jesus," she says.
People of color are reaping many
benefits from those who gave their lives for a vision of a world in
which the full humanity of all might be realized, Reed says.
"It
is up to us to break down mental walls that resist that vision, and to
work with the generation to come to refashion a society according to
King's dream, one that gives hope and healing to all." # # # *Green is United Methodist News Service's Nashville, Tenn., news director.
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