And the speech from Memphis the day before he was killed, when he recalled another encounter with death, seems prophetic. Only 39 years old when he died.
Today, we have a black president, wildly popular at the time of the inauguration, but losing support fast. We have different race problems today than the ones MLK Jr. faced.
Shelby Steele, a man with a black father and a white mother (like the President), has an interesting theory about President Obama's fall from the heights, based largely in his own personal experiences. Steele did not think that Obama would be elected, because he thought the inconsistencies in Obama's political approaches to the issues would become too apparent before the election. He was wrong about the election. The mainstream media was pretty much united in its support for Mr. Obama, and he had the psychology of the American people in his favor.
Steele was right in his forecast that Obama would face failures in his efforts to promote his policies if elected. Part of Steele's theory about the dilemma of black public figures involves the idea that America is now "racially sophisticated":
The essence of our new "post-modern" race problem can be seen in the parable of the emperor's new clothes. . .Mr. Steele's article makes interesting reading. Not everyone agrees with him. But I think he was right about this:
The lie of seeing clothes where there were none amounted to a sophistication—joining oneself to an obvious falsehood in order to achieve social acceptance. In such a sophistication there is an unspoken agreement not to see what one clearly sees — in this case the emperor's flagrant nakedness.
America's primary race problem today is our new "sophistication" around racial matters. Political correctness is a compendium of sophistications in which we join ourselves to obvious falsehoods ("diversity") and refuse to see obvious realities (the irrelevance of diversity to minority development). I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.
Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If "hope and change" was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.
Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency. . . (emphasis mine)
The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol.Whatever you think of Mr. Steele's analysis, we still have some distance to go toward Martin Luther King's dream of a more colorblind society. President Obama's election may have been an important step in that direction. The voters elected a black president. His inauguration day was a day of healing for many, and a day of hope for more consideration toward people with views differing from the positions of the new congressional majority. That part of the hope started to fade within hours of the inauguration. Disappointments have piled up rather quickly since then.
By now most of us have learned to see Obama as a real person rather than just as a symbol. His election (along with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress) has been tremendously costly and damaging to the country in a number of ways. The issues which alarm me the most involve the steamroller-like movements to concentrate power in Washington, the reckless use of taxpayer money and the tremendous increases in the advantages of political corruption. Other people have similar concerns, as well as serious concerns about the economy and foreign affairs. Liberals have their own disappointments with the President. Obama himself had foreseen than many would project their own hopes onto him and be disappointed.
Things are not going well for President Obama. I think the country would be much better off today if we had had a clearer picture of Barak Obama as a person and as a leader, rather than just as a symbol, before the election. Many of his actions since taking office are consistent with his actions before the election, but few people knew much about his history - despite his two autobiographies. The mainstream media's fawning treatment of Obama is a primary reason that we knew so little about him.
President Obama has shown a few signs of more realistic political insight and maturity over the last two or three months. Maybe he can turn things around to some extent.
Update: What happened to MLK's Dream?
Zo goes after the missteps of both Liberals and Conservatives.
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