“CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER”

“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. I have a dream today!” MLK.

Some years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King’s inspirational words were appropriated  from his “I Have a Dream” speech and co-opted by those that were otherwise opposed to his vision. The transference of this proclamation, for their own cynical political self-interest, was a rationale for pursuing a race neutralized platform, where race is never a factor in consideration of allieving grievances. This new articulation embodied a wider more elusive paradigm of a color blind appeal, applied to all, rather than the original black complainant.  The misappropriation of his words was now a twisted metaphor, striking from its original ownership with the civil rights movement, and now used for the inclusion and well-being collective obligation of the wider majority [white] society.  Essentially, this usage negates the immediate meaning and aim of the message. The aspiration was never intended to encompass the inherent privilege enjoyed by the majority. To the country, it was meant to address the opposition to America’s racial intransigence, and pursue correcting the problem of  racial injustice existing in every fabric of American society.

The underlying agenda to this misappropriation was to disarm the compliantant  and smother the words of Dr. King, and thereby subvert the political, social, and legal aspiration of the disenfranchised, still awaiting their forty acres and a mule. If pressed for supportive affirmative actions, in recognition of a legacy of privilege and opportunity, the usurper would fail to move beyond their conservative utopian idealogy. However subtle and persuasive this misrepresentation is, the substance of the objectives remained the same. Although the content of their words may have changed, the reparations for correcting America’s injustices are still unfulfilled and denied….in the words of Dr. King, “one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.”–MLK.

JB

But I digress…

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