I HAVE A DREAM: A UTOPIA

KAYJATTA

November 15, 2011

“I Have A Dream”, a historical speech delivered by the revered civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to “dramatize a shameful political and economic condition” (I Have A Dream; 1963)of discrimination and segregation was utopian and remains largely unfulfilled today.  The speech is one of hope and optimism, although a vague one.  The combination of biblical references with images from the natural (physical) environment makes the speech highly impressive and effective. Despite the hope expressed in the speech, there are times when it appears that violence is suggested. For example, when Dr. King stated that “it would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment…”

The optimism in the “I Have A Dream” speech rests on Dr. King’s trust in the ultimate good in (White) people based on the Christian gospel and believe in liberal democratic principles somewhat based on the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Dr. King’s ideology that underpins his speech of 1963 was informed by both theology and politics; an ideology that will be tested by the resilience and persistence of poverty, inequality and injustice for not only the Southern Blacks but also the inner-city Blacks in the north.

Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, very little has changed for the impoverished urban Blacks, according to Dr. Floyd W. Hayes of John Hopkins’ University. In his speech at the Chicago Festival in 1966, Dr. King described the urban slum as a place to confine those who have no power and perpetuate their powerlessness, according to Dr. Hayes in his article Discourse: The Political Theology of Martin Luther King Jr. This description of the urban slums in America compares fittingly to the Russian immigrant, Yezierska’s descriptions in his work ‘America and I’. This further indicates that despite the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, which were modest steps towards race equality; poverty, injustice, and segregation were evolving into a more recalcitrant and resistant strain.

Dr. King’s attempt to win the sensibilities of White Americans and his projection of Blacks as the “moral conscience” of America is also earlier observed in Booker T. Washington, a strategy often described by more-pragmatic activists like W.E.B. Dubois as elitist. Hence Dr. King’s hope for an America where prosperity, equality and justice for all prevails was not felt by the majority of Blacks then and now.  Perhaps Dr. King over-estimated the goodness in men; human nature might after all be a complex combination of both good and bad and in a fiercely competitive capitalist economy like America; equality, justice and prosperity for all may remain an illusion.

The continued deterioration of the economic and social condition of the Blacks well after King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech and the passage of both Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, both in the South and the North, led to an erosion of faith in Dr. King’s dream of America. This despair resulted in the emergence of several more-militant splinter nationalist groups and leaders such as Nation of Islam Minister, Malcolm X. Malcolm X, a firebrand ultra-nationalist ridiculed Dr. King’s integrationist approach as elitist and used the house-nigger versus field nigger analogy (The Autobiography of Malcolm X; 1965), and looked outside the prevailing white establishment for radical solutions for separation; just falling short of Marcus Garvey’s call for repatriation. Perhaps Malcolm X could have been influenced by the writings of the Caribbean revolutionary, Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon; 1961) as compared to Dr. King’s more ‘Ghandi-ist’ approach.

Despite, Dr. King’s lofty dream of equality, liberal democracy, and the general goodness of mankind to do the right thing, poverty, inequality, and injustice remains rooted in American society today.

REFERENCES:

1.      Discourse: The Political Theology Of Martin Luther King Jr.; Floyd W. Hayes, 2011

2.      I Have A Dream, Dr. Martin Luther  King Jr.; 1965

3.      The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965