"But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."
I read an alarming statistic today: the richest 85 people in the world have as much wealth collectively as half of the Earth's population.
"So I’m ambivalent about sweatshops. On one hand, it’s exploitation. People in Chinese factories are working 12-14 hour days so we can refresh Facebook on a 4-inch screen. They’re being paid cents on the hour. On the other hand, isn’t this the pace of progress? There were once sweatshops in the States. And what about the fact that these workers wouldn’t have jobs if the sweatshops didn’t exist?"
"There’s an important distinction between equality of opportunity versus equality of condition. Sure, the opportunities exist for factory workers. They could theoretically make more money than they would have in other conditions. They can move to the cities. But on the whole, this is a separate discussion from how the people are actually treated. The conditions themselves—the mere fact that we exploit their low labor costs—amount to de facto economic slavery. Those facts that they work way too many hours in unsafe conditions just belie that point."
"So it is exploitation."
"Whether or not it is a semantic discussion. We have a moral obligation to improve those conditions. And the only way to do it is through income redistribution."
MLK would have been 85 today, and it's worth wondering what he would have thought about our society today. He'd be overjoyed to see a black president, the end of de jure segregation, the end of anti-miscegenation laws, and the increased numbers of black congressmen, judges, and political officials. But I also think that he'd have a lot to be disappointed about: the sweltering inequality between the rich and poor, the lack of educational opportunity for young minorities, the ongoing racial profiling and disparate sentencing of black males, a Congress denying food stamps to the hungry (most of them children), and a wasteful military spending budget that could feed the world.
These are racial problems, but they are also political ones. There are policy decisions that could turn the tide in the fight against inequality, discrimination, and poverty. Perhaps I'd be naive to say that socialism could save the world, but perhaps look no further than this: society can change. But it can't wait--"the airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society," as King put it, threatens all of us. It promotes a culture of insecurity and fear and makes our brothers into enemies. His sentence from 'A Letter from a Birmingham Jail' is as relevant today. The dream lives, deferred as it is by injustice, by the lives of the poor and the marginalized who cannot wait.
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