Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Can his dream be fulfilled?
There are eleven federal holidays:
New Year’s Day
Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Washington’s Birthday
Memorial Day
Juneteenth Independence Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Veterans Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
Today we are celebrating one of three federal holidays named after an individual person – Martin Luther King, Jr. The other two are, of course, George Washington and Christopher Columbus.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University. So, yes, he was a doctor, but a Doctor of Theology. He pastored for six years at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and then co-pastored at his father’s church in Atlanta, Georgia until he was assassinated. You can read a lot about Dr. King as a civil rights leader, but little about the fact he was still a pastor up until the time of his death. Why is that?
Dr. King is probably best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech given during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Here’s part of his speech, “I have a dream 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” and the desire to “transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
Closing with, “And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'”
Has today’s America achieved what Dr. King dreamed of or are we headed in the opposite direction with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)?
CRT makes everything about race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life—and do so with a degree of persistence that has helped CRT impact all aspects of American life.
Derrick Bell, the widely-acknowledged “godfather” of CRT, explains that the work of CRT authors “is often disruptive because its commitment to anti-racism goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures.” Bell quotes Angela P. Harris as explaining that CRT inherits from its Critical Legal Theory ancestor the commitment to dismantle all aspects of society through unremitting criticism.
Because the law “systematically privileges subjects who are white,” CRT calls for a “transformative resistance strategy.
Adherents can apply intersectionality, for example: Someone can claim to be oppressed in more than one way by citing association with more than one social group, or “axis.”
CRT results in people looking for “power imbalances, bigotry, and biases that it assumes must be present,” which reduces everything to prejudice, “as understood under the power dynamics asserted by Theory.
Of the three critical theories mentioned tonight -- CRT is the most political.
Its use of story-telling—easy to understand fictional vignettes that seek to portray in every-day life terms the “systemic racism” that CRT scholars insist exists in America—is but one of the ways that CRT scholars seek to effect change
CRT opposes the original goals of the Civil Rights movement, which sought to redeem America’s promise by calling for color-blind equality. “Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law,” acknowledges Richard Delgado, an architect of CRT.
CRT clashes with strong protections of property rights and any notion of equal protection under the law. Free Speech is also a target -- “Being committed to ‘free speech’ may seem like a neutral principle, but it is not.” -- one proponent said. And now we have today’s cancel culture.
Even the idea of rights itself—the very concept upon which this country was founded—is a target of CRT. Think how that system applauds affording everyone equality of opportunity but resists programs that assure equality of results.” Rights are “alienating. They separate people from each other—‘stay away, I’ve got my rights.’
CRT is purposely political and dispenses with the idea of rights because it blames all inequalities of outcome on what its adherents say is pervasive racism in the United States. “White supremacy,” a term that comes up repeatedly in CRT discourse and continues to be heavily used today by leaders of the Black Lives Matter organizations must be smashed.
Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, states, “I hope to have made clear that white supremacy is something much more pervasive and subtle than the actions of explicit white nationalists. White supremacy describes the culture we live in.”
The target is a free-market system that rewards hard work, ability, and other virtuous traits. Other CRT terms that have specific and unique meanings when used by its practitioners are “equity,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “people of color.”
Identity Politics -- Under identity politics, America is no longer a country where the individual is the central agent in society, who, because of his very existence possesses individual rights. Instead, membership in the official categories becomes the identity that matters when it comes to rights (mostly positive rights, not natural ones), responsibilities, and everything else. Identity politics has become the new paradigm under which many Americans now operate. Victimhood is what commands attention, respect, and entitlements, seen as compensatory justice.
State and school officials are integrating CRT material into instructional content.
California: As of August 2020, the draft curriculum acknowledged CRT priorities such as power and white privilege, including statements such as, “Ethnic studies courses address race within the context of how white dominated culture impacts racism” and educators can “create and utilize lessons rooted in the four foundational disciplines alongside the sample key themes of (1) Identity, (2) History and Movement, (3) Systems of Power, and (4) Social Movements and Equity.” The curriculum has an entire section devoted to intersectionality”
Washington State: The Seattle Public School Board has also included critical ethnic studies in its activities. In 2017, the board adopted a resolution that led to the creation of an “Ethnic Studies Task Force” that called for a decolonizing of school curricula. -- Whatever that means!!
When a school’s emphasis is not on academics, but an ‘woke’ agenda: Impact on black students: In 2010, Pew Center research reported the staggering statistic that more black men ages 20–34 without a high school diploma are in prison than employed, which means educators are disadvantaging minority youth when they steer K–12 schools away from rigorous content and toward “naming your reality.”
Dr Carol Swain, former political science and law professor at Vanderbilt University (a black woman) said in an essay, “Critical race theory is an analytical framework to analyze institutions and culture. Its purpose is to divide the world into white oppressors and non-white victims. Instead of traditional forms of knowledge, it uses personal narratives of marginalized minority “victim” groups (blacks, Hispanics, Asians) as irrefutable “evidence” of the dishonesty of their mostly white heterosexual oppressors. The ultimate goal of this theory’s proponents is to remake society so that the victim class eventually displaces the oppressors and becomes the new ruling class.”
Almost on a daily basis we hear the word “racist” when talking about almost anything. We hear math is racist, art is racist, money is racist, etc., etc. This is not the America Dr. Martin Luther King dreamed of. Instead of eliminating racism, instead of looking at someone with color blind eyes, Americans are encouraged to look at everything through the lens of racism! Instead of being judged by the content of one’s character, everyone is judged by the color of his or her skin . . . and the whiter it is, we are told the more racist that person is, and there’s no way around it because we are told the world is full of oppressors and the oppressed and whichever of those categories you were born into is where you will be your entire life.
Until CRT and DEI are tossed aside, America will never be, as Dr. King dreamed, “a beautiful symphony of brotherhood”.