Andrew Ferguson
Rejecting Your Reality and Substituting My Own Since 1986
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I think it’s somewhat fitting that the day after we celebrate a great black man with a dream, we celebrate the day that his dream takes another great step forward.
Source: http://www.africawithin.com/mlking/mlking.htm
Source: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2502
Tags: Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr.
ha..this is going to offend some people
I don’t agree that MLK’s dream has really taken a big step forward here. I think Obama being president is a sign that we have taken some steps forward, but merely having a black man be president is not a step forward imho.
And when I said “this is going to offend some people” I was referring to your post, not my comment..though my comment might offend some people too.
Obviously white supremacists would probably be offending by this post, but somehow I don’t think that’s who you were referring to. Who do you think will take offense, why?
People who think that Obama doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as MLK. Or people who think that you’re wrongly portraying Obama as some sort of civil rights leader.
I’m with Quinn.
But I’m not offended by the substance of the post per se. I do think that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has taken a step forward (though smaller than you imply, in my opinion), and I think he would too.
What I think is suspect is the photos. You seem to be equating the two people in some way. And if you are, you’re equating probably one of the top 1,000 people that has ever been produced by the human race with a guy who’s done… what exactly has he done again? Gotten elected as President of the United States? As the saying goes, where’s the beef?
However, you don’t actually say anything in the post that would lead me to make such a correlation. So perhaps I’m superimposing my own stuff on you. If that’s the case, I apologize.
“I have a dream 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 by the content of their character.”
Prejudice in America isn’t gone. Ten years ago, did anyone think that we would elect a black man as President?
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I have to say that plenty of people probably thought that electing a black president was inevitable, even 10 years ago.
And I just can’t agree with the idea that electing a one-term senator means that we know the content of his character. The people of the United States knew enough to vote for him over John McCain, but that in no meaningful way shows that we’ve judged him based on the content of his character.
It’s historic because it’s never happened before. But that doesn’t mean anything about the man himself.
Ah, no. I changed my mind right after I commented. Quinn is right.
Dr. King’s dream was that people be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Since we have little or no action (which proves the content of one’s character) to judge Barack Obama by, other than the fact of his election (which proves nothing about character), I’d have to say that yesterday’s events were a big ole judgment based once again on race. Getting elected doesn’t mean you got elected based on your real character, in fact most candidates don’t ever show their real character until they’re in office. If at the end of four or eight years people still have the same opinion of Barack Obama based on his actual presidency, then I’ll say that the dream has gone forward.
“I’d have to say that yesterday’s events were a big ole judgment based once again on race.”
So you’re saying that Obama was elected because he was black?
I contend that Americans elected Obama based on what they believe to be “the content of [his] character,” not because he was black.
No, I’m saying that all the hoopla over a black man being elected president was due to Obama being black.
I suppose you’re right that many people voted based on what they think (or perhaps just what they hope) is the content of Obama’s character, but his race is simply not a non-issue. My point is that you have to judge a person based on past actions, and Obama simply doesn’t have very many of those in the realm of American Federal politics. So people do the best they can when they pull the lever (though simply picking one person over another doesn’t really say much about the character of either), but I don’t think you can accurately judge his character until more of it is revealed in his presidency.
I’ve alot more respect for Malcolm X than I do MLK. He had better ideas and was genuinely anti-Establishment.
I do think Obama is in the MLK mould though; an Establishmentarian.