The Dream Today

Today, we reflect on the legacy that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. left for us, and what we have done for it in the interim. I think it is best summed up in the by-line for the lead story on CNN.com’s website today. Apparently there is a terrible conundrum facing African-American women in America:

“For these women, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?”

Whatever happened to simply voting your conscience?

America today is defined by race politics and partisanism. Every ethnic group clusters tightly in their enclaves (either virtually or geographically) and hang together as a unified bloc. The primary concern on political pundits’ minds revolves around race. What are the Blacks thinking? What are the Latinos thinking?

You see this on the micro scale as well as the macro. Couples naturally pair off along racial lines; only the most enlightened of individuals can overcome racial separations to find love regardless of the color of their skins. Social groups, for the most part in this country, are very racially homogenous. Black men hang out at the barbershop, white man at the bar. And never the twain shall meet.

This is not how the Reverend would have wanted it.

It seems that even a nominal reading of his words indicates a strong preference for true color-blindness. The “I Have a Dream” speech is a cry for equality, for a time when the people of America look beyond issues of race and ethnicity and simply love each other for who they are.

In many ways, we have gone in the opposite direction in the four decades since his death. We are more cognizant of race than ever before. It is front-and-center in everything we do. Politicians and public figures step carefully through a minefield every time they open their mouths. We aggressively teach our children to celebrate the differences of people with different ethnicities, but by doing so we at the same time teach them to notice these differences.

Of course, this situation is far preferable to the world King grew up in, with race-specific water fountains and rampant cross-burnings. But something in his message has been lost along the way. We try so hard to make everyone equal, that we drive wedges between groups of people. By telling employers “you must hire a certain percentage of underrepresented minorities,” we imply that these people aren’t good enough to get these jobs on their own. These things do a great disservice to King’s dream. By celebrating racial differences, we enlarge them. By defining people by their racial demographics, we belittle them. Assuming that an African-American man will vote for Obama, or that a white woman would vote for Hillary, is just as insulting to them as assuming a white man would vote for a Republican.

Were King alive today, he would be a bit sad at the rut we’ve gotten ourselves stuck in. We, as a culture and as planet, will not make any progress towards enlightenment until we learn to truly look beyond the surface differences. This is possible. There was a time in New York when there was bitter enmity between people of Italian ancestry and those of Irish ancestry. Now, no one cares about those differences; they are seen as quaint anachronisms. The day an African-American or a woman becomes President is, in itself, not a milestone. What will be a true milestone will be when an African-American or woman becomes President, and the fact of their race or gender is not mentioned in the media because it is no longer an issue. When the color of a candidate’s skin is no more of a concern than the color of their eyes, we will truly have achieved King’s dream.