How Long, O Lord, How Long?

We'll be living with the negative consequences of the 2016 election for the rest of our lives. https://t.co/tqMBT3yWPs

— Dean Barker (@deanbarker) June 30, 2023

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. 

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only. 

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

We’ve removed the signs and kept the sentiment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 took care of the signs. The Voting Rights Act of  1965 took care of the vote. But we couldn’t have that, so the 15th Amendment gave way to states rights. The affirmative remedies of the VRA could not stand. And now neither can affirmative action. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

As Martin Luther King Jr said, people should be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

The Supreme Court affirmed that fundamental truth in today’s decision.

The greatness of America is that it doesn’t matter where you start — you get to decide…

— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) June 29, 2023

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.

Funny how context changes the character and meaning of misquote. Dr. King was not speaking in vague and glittering generalities. He was talking specifically about his children. Then as now whites judge blacks on the color of their skin; indeed, they still make skin color the content of their character. George Floyd. Black Lives Matter. That simple assertion outrages whites. Our character, we still insist, is pure. The character of nun-whites is still suspect.

We brought slavery to this continent when Columbus landed. We turned it into a business in itself. We built an international commerce in human beings. We even wrote it into our founding documents and our laws, until 1964. And yet we still can’t face that reality.

What King dreamed of still hasn’t come true. But white people absolve themselves of the sins of their history, and insist our evil has been undone in only 50 years. We defenestrate King’s words so we can feel better about ourselves. And then we insist any further correction of the evil we did and are heir to is a greater evil than ours.

We are nowhere near seeing Dr. King’s dream. We are moving in the opposite direction.

Haley: Can I just say God bless The Supreme Court? pic.twitter.com/yD8E20e1tg

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 30, 2023

Tell me I’m wrong.