40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream
My dear friend and brother Dedrick Muhammad, Senior Organizer and Research Associate at the Institute for Policy Studies, has written a saddening report on the state of African-American community and ultimately democracy in Post-King America. The report helps to situate the legacy of King in a concrete way within the prophetic tradition to call our nation into account.
Dr. Martin Luther King recognized that the next phase in the African American’s quest for civil rights and equality was one that would focus on the economic divide between the wealthiest Americans, the working class, and those in poverty. King’s analysis of economic inequality as the foundation of racial inequality remains as valid today as it was 40 years ago.
40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream examines the progress in and challenges to economic equality between African Americans and whites since April 4, 1968 using data from the US Census Bureau, the Economic Policy Institute, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and other sources. Findings conclude that despite educational advances, economic equality for African Americans is still a dream, not a reality.
The ever expanding prison-industrial complex, stagnate wages, under-employment, under-education, and the stalled Gulf Coast recovery are symptoms of the fact that race and class are salient issues and the poor are living in vicious times with no one rushing to their defense in the public square. May this report cause our nation to hear and heed the words of a fallen prophet.
