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Ever since Obama was a Senator (when most of the country was made aware of him) and then decided to run for President, I've been hearing talk of how he's somehow fulfilling the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. As Obama got more support, more people made a connection between him and King. Then he won the presidential election. People went nuts.
I like Obama. I voted for him. I'll continue to support him.
But what irks me is how, just because he's the President now, people want to pretend as if racism doesn't exist and all the problems in the world are solved. Then they like to reference King's "I Have A Dream" speech. Have people actually paid ATTENTION to his speech? The FULL speech? If you haven't, go look it up. The full version's on YouTube, or you can read the full speech elsewhere. King basically starts the speech saying how, a hundred years after Lincoln, black people are still getting a lot of crap and are not happy. He talks about how a lot of work still needs to be done for the country to be truly a place of full justice and equality for ALL. How, he wants his children to live in a nation where they won't be judged for their skin color, but by themselves as people. How he hopes everyone will feel free to sit/stand together. How he hopes one day everyone feels free, like they can do anything, go anywhere, and be anything.
A lot of the stuff King talks about in his speech is STILL happening TODAY. True, Obama being president DID give hope to many people, but let's not play dumb. Obama's gotten 4 times as many death threats as Bush, and he hasn't even been in office a full term yet!! It took Bush a full term (4 years) to be as threatened as Obama is. It took Bush a full term to be criticized the way Obama is. Bush was, let's face it, a moron in power for 8 years, and yet already people are saying Obama's not qualified to lead (even though Obama's smart) and he's only been in office one year so far. Obama is ONE MAN. He can't solve the world's problems alone, and he can't do for people what they can do for themselves. He's even said in at least a couple speeches how now is not the time for people to be complacent and expect all their troubles to be solved just because he's President. They need to get up and start working on solving things on their own. He belives change happens, not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up.
I don't care who doesn't like it, I still feel (and have always felt) that part of the reason Obama got so many votes (beyond being the better/best candidate) was so that racist idiots could justify themselves and their stupidity. "I'm not racist, I voted for Obama!" has become the new "I'm not racist, my friend is black!". Why else would people say black people ONLY voted for Obama because of his skin color (thereby indirectly saying black people are too stupid to think), but ignore the past 43 presidents? If black people only voted for Obama because of his skin color, then what does that say about white people and the past 43 presidents and the fact that non-white people who tried to get support to be president, or just have any sort of major political power, were never given a chance? Obama's not the first black man to run for president, there was even a black woman once. Those racist idiots need to sit down somewhere, because most people who voted for Obama were WHITE.
How is King's dream fulfilled? Not once in his whole speech did he ever even mention a black president. He was focused on greater issues. Obama even understands this, so why can't other people?
There's NO WAY King's dream is fulfilled. People are STILL judged based simply on skin color. Many black people are STILL trapped in ghettos. Much of the country is STILL practicing segregation and discrimination. Like I said, the crap that was happening in King's time is still happening today.
According to various studies and statistics, black people only make up about 12% of the total U.S. population. Yet somehow, about 80% of inmates in prisons and jails are black. That's not a part of King's dream. Black people, especially black females, are still greatly discouraged from being their true selves by altering their natural features as much as possible. Black people still hate themselves. That's not part of King's dream. There's STILL racial profiling and bias in law enforcement and the justice system. That's not part of King's dream. People still don't have equal access to proper education, nutrition, employment, healthcare, or neighborhoods. That's not part of King's dream. People still don't feel welcome to share their religious/spiritual beliefs. Atheists are shunned, Muslims are painted as terrorists, and Christians are either whining about feeling oppressed, or imposing their beliefs on others. That's not part of King's dream.
Poor places and people go ignored and are plagued by poor health, disease, and violence, while more money gets thrown to the rich and wealthy. That's not part of King's dream. A person's quality of life is most likely determined, not by hard work or what that person can do, but by how that person looks and what economic/social class that person has. That's not part of King's dream. People are trying to erase and destroy different cultures and languages. That's not part of King's dream. There are still places that don't welcome certain people based on skin color. Just recently, such a place got in trouble when it asked a bunch of black kids to leave its pool because it didn't "want the complextion of the environment to be changed". That's not a part of King's dream. When oversees, Obama's daughters were criticized for not having straight hair and people felt they "didn't represent America properly". That's not part of King's dream.
So tell me. How in the world has Martin Luther King Jr's dream been fulfilled? There's still a buttload of work and improvement that needs to be done. By saying King's dream is fulfilled and everything's all happiness and rainbows now because Obama's President, is just ignoring the issues and allowing the same crap to continue.
Obama being President is NOT fulfilling King's dream!!! It's only the BEGINNING. It seems people have missed the point of what King wanted the nation and the world to be when they got drunk off the Obama juice.