I'll Be Glad When Martin Luther King's Day is Over

I don’t know about you, but I sure will be glad when Martin Luther King’s Day is over.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing but the utmost respect for Dr. King. He was certainly a man for his time and he did all that he could have reasonably been expected to do, and more. His efforts helped to reverse some of the lingering, race-based negativity that resulted from more than 250 years of slavery and from an additional 100 years of overt, black economic and political marginalization that contributed directly to the country’s early economic growth and expansion.

Thank you, Dr. King.

Rather, the problem with Martin Luther King’s Day and with the whole image of what he represented, is that it has become some kind of strange litmus test that is now used to determine which politicians deserve black election-day support. Almost never have we black voters, or the country as a whole, required any tangible, 21st Century substance from King supporters on how they plan to eliminate black economic and social disparities.

How they feel about “good ol’ Dr. King” has always been more than enough for us.

As the newest twist on the Martin Luther King game, we're now being informed that there is a growing "generation gap" within the black community between those who don’t carry the “baggage” of the Civil Rights era and those who actually lived through those times. Those without the so-called "baggage," including some elected officials, are constantly being presented by mainstream media as being somehow more astute, more sophisticated and more generally appealing to the mainstream.

Curiously, no other ethnic group in America is currently being accused of having “generational political issues,” and none is being advised that their young people should be ashamed of the struggle for equality made by their parents and their ancestors – not Jewish people, not Hispanic people, not Asian people, not Irish people and not Italian people. Why is this divisive game being played only on African Americans and why do we accept it?

Well, for one thing, as long as we continue to be bogged down in these manufactured internally divisive story lines, we don't have time to place our focus where it should be--on our economic condition.

According to Algernon Austin of the Economic Policy Institute(EPI), “The black unemployment rate is typically about double the white unemployment rate and, in the last two recessions, it rose faster than the overall unemployment rate. If the national unemployment rate reaches 6.2% by the end of the year, as Goldman Sachs predicts, then unemployment among African Americans may well reach 10.7% or more.”

Austin went on to explain that, “If historical patterns hold, the typical black family will lose 6% or about $2,400, over the course of the next two years, from a combination of lost work hours and falling wages. This would be a social catastrophe as well as an economic calamity, with racial inequalities worsening, communities and families facing new stresses and strains, and the gains of recent decades eroding.”

If what the EPI has said is anywhere close to the truth, and there is growing evidence that it is, then where are the substantive proposals from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee that would address the economic malaise which has so disproportionately impacted 40 million black Americans. Why can’t our elected officials, of their own accord, speak specifically about the lingering economic disparity that affects the families of one in every eight Americans who happens to be black? Why can’t the politicians make the logical, public case that a country like this one, that is sorely challenged on virtually every important economic level, can only regain its global comparative advantage when it stops excluding meaningful black economic participation? That is not a message of “preferential treatment,” that’s a message of national, economic, common sense.

Why haven’t we heard these questions being raised by the mainstream news outlets? Why haven’t black voters, themselves, demanded from the candidates a more specific focus on issues of black inclusion? Why is the black community content to measure a candidate’s worth by how many black churches he/she visits, whether he/she ever played saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, whether he/she ever once did community work in Chicago, or whether they believe the candidate really “likes” them or represents some kind of “symbolic breakthrough” for black people.

Why are we led to believe that it is somehow impolite to discuss, in public, the details of the continuing economic disintegration of the national black community?" Why do we allow the use of the phrase "race card" to send us running for the political hills?

Even worse than enduring the annual politicization of MLK’s memory is having to endure what passes for coverage of these issues and his holiday on the 24-hour news networks, including CNN.

As an African-American voter, I am increasingly confused that there can be daily discussions about illegal immigration, the importance of the Hispanic vote and that community’s legitimate issues without network correspondents relegating those discussions to someone “playing the Hispanic card.”

I am even more confused that it seems that CNN can find no other credible Presidential Primary analyst than Bill Bennett, who famously said on his nationally syndicated radio show last year that a good way to reduce America’s crime rate is to "abort" all black babies. I am having a very difficult time taking Bennett’s comments seriously, especially after hearing him, inexplicably, compare the Iowa Caucus format favorably with the electoral process in Kenya where, he said, people were attacking each other with guns and machetes as part of their elections. Was that absolutely necessary, did it add meaningful context to what was going on that evening in Iowa, or has Bennett demonstrated, finally, even to CNN, that his place on the panel of political experts is ill-advised. But, I digress...

I am also losing patience with having to watch the otherwise politically astute Lou Dobbs, who is increasingly prone, now, to making ugly faces and ranting whenever the issue of “race” or the names “Al Sharpton” or “Jesse Jackson” are introduced to his nightly audience.

Don’t we live here, too, Lou?

Is it always us “playing the race card” or have some African Americans simply grown tired of having their justifiable issues ignored by media and by national political candidates except on Sundays and on Martin Luther King’s Day?

If you think I'm kidding, let me refer you to an excerpt from today's New York Times: "As he stood at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, here, addressing worshippers at the former congregation of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Barack Obama was doing something Sunday that he has rarely done in his months of campaigning for the presidency.

"He was appearing before a black audience, and he was speaking about race."

I rest my case.

I sure will be glad when Martin Luther King's Day is over.


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