Dr. King said America owed a debt to the Black community 60 years ago. It still hasn’t been paid.

August 28, 2023, will mark 60 years since A. Phillip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other prominent Civil Rights Leaders organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Over a quarter million people attended what would become the greatest march for justice of the 20th century, and Dr. Martin Luther King would go on to deliver what would become the most famous speech in our nation’s history.

We all know that speech. Or, at least, we think we know that speech. Most Americans think they know everything that Dr. King stood for, fought for, and risked his life for, based on a mere snippet of the 16-minute-long speech he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Specifically, this sentence featuring those infamous four words:

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.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — August 28, 1963

Folks love to use and abuse that line.

Folks love to abuse that line by using it as "glorified proof” that Dr. King’s dream was realized the moment the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law.

Folks love to abuse that line by using it to justify their bigotry toward the anti-racist activism of today’s social justice leaders, including, but not limited to, the banning of teaching accurate history in schools that would have taught students why Dr. King had a dream in the first place.

Folks love to use and abuse that line to justify their loud racism as they attack equitable policies, like affirmative action, and spread fallacies about our activism by calling it “woke ideology.”

I could go on.

The year 2023 marks…

…404 years since the first ship filled with enslaved Africans arrived in what would become the United States of America.

…158 years since the enslaved were emancipated and the Jim Crow Era began.

…59 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law.

And yet, somehow we are surprised, and even appalled, that we are still fighting racial injustice today. It’s only been 60 years since a law was passed to attempt to begin the undoing of the legacy of racism in America. That’s about two generations. A 345-year legacy does not get eradicated overnight by the swipe of a pen. Our biggest mistake we make and the greatest lie we tell ourselves is believing that the nightmare ended shortly after Dr. King declared his dream.

The fact that racists continue to use Dr. King’s words to justify their racism proves that we are still very much living in this nightmare.

Let’s zoom out for a minute and take a look at a few more lines from Dr. King’s speech. He didn’t just declare one dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day. No, no. He called out America for defaulting on its promissory note of freedom that is written in our founding documents. He boldly stated that they were gathered there to cash a check for what was owed to them after 345 years of holding the Black body in captivity; tightening the shackles of oppression 100 years after promising to remove the chains. Dr. King didn’t just call for children of all colors to be able to sit together in the cafeteria and skip rope together on the playground. He called for America to pay back the debt that was owed to the Black community after 345 years of stealing from it.

It has been 60 years since Dr. King charged America with paying back the Black community, and that debt still has not been paid.

There are still large disparities between the Black and white communities in terms of unemployment, wealth, incarceration, home ownership, educational achievement, maternal mortality, police brutality, and more, with some of these gaps being larger than they were in 1963. Our neighborhoods and schools are more segregated today than they were in 1990.

We have yet to dismantle the entire system that has held Black bodies in bondage since its formation, and any attempts to sign policies into law that would provide true equity are tossed aside. We still live in a society that exists to ensure the supremacy of whiteness and takes active measures to do so. We still live in a nation that aids and abets white vigilantes in committing racist mass murder against Black communities.

We live in a society of white supremacy that is as active and rampant as it was 60 years ago. White nationalist rallies have continued, lynchings are still happening, “woke” has become the new N-word, police brutality still has its knee on our necks, Affirmative Action has been overturned, gun culture has taken over our headlines, Black children are experiencing more racism in schools than previous post-Jim Crow decades, HBCUs have received bomb threats and removed potential active shooters from their campuses, and so much more. And every time we demand the justice we know we are owed, America tells us to sit down, shut up, and get over it, all while using Dr. King’s words as they spew their hatred.

Dr. King may have had a dream that one day his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, but he also said that we would not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Justice has not rolled down like waters. Righteousness has not rolled down like a mighty stream.

We are living in the illusion of a society that pretends white supremacy is a distant memory so that it can be upheld without being subject to question. Why would we question the existence of something that clearly doesn’t exist, right? Remember, Dr. King had a dream, and then white supremacy vanished.

White supremacy has all but vanished. It continues to be the plague that runs through our society. While I’m focusing specifically on the oppression of the Black community with this article, as that is the original and primary agenda of white supremacy, it is vital to understand that white supremacy is killing all of us.

It is killing us when it refuses to ban assault rifles, allowing for there to be more mass shootings than calendar days in a year.

It is killing us when its anti-Black policies become anti-human, creating a culture of isolated individualism that serves as a petri dish for our debilitating mental health crisis.

It is killing us when it refuses to take bold action to reverse the disparities that racism caused, increasing poverty amongst the Black and brown communities that, in turn, has an overall negative impact on the well-being of our nation.

It is killing us as systemic white supremacy has morphed into a culture of white supremacy, causing all of us to wonder why we never feel good enough in this society that has convinced us that our humanity is a threat to the supremacy of whiteness.

White supremacy has been killing us since its formation, when it ravaged Indigenous communities and trafficked Africans to enslave, and it continues to kill us today as it targets Black bodies through incarceration, policing, and violence, while creating an insufferable culture for any human to thrive in.

So, if you’re wondering why we’re still marching 60 years later, this is why. If you’re wondering why we’re still lamenting 6 years later, this is why. And if you’re wondering when we will stop demanding America pay back its debts to the Black community and every other group it has marginalized, the answer is not until the debt has been paid in full.

Every single human deserves to be released from the bondage of white supremacy.

Every single human deserves to be free.

- Caroline J. Sumlin, We’ll All Be Free

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The American Education System and White Supremacy