MLK’s “I’m Living The Dream” Speech

July 15, 2021June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Editor’s Note: Recently, legislators across the U.S. have initiated new guidelines for public school educators banning the use of literature or history with the potential to make students feel uncomfortable about race or gender. Teachers can also be severely punished for information or lines of reasoning which could be misconstrued to suggest that systemic racism or sexism has in any way shaped the society they live in today. As a service to educators in these evolving, more enlightened states, this well-known speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., has been updated to more accurately reflect state-approved concepts and historical understanding.

Five score years ago, a great Republican (let’s not ever forget he was a Republican) signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This largely symbolic decree verified the great beacon of hope already guiding millions of Negro slaves who had been freed by the fire of American greatness. It came as a joyous reminder of their long flight from their REAL captivity (which started in Africa – let’s not ever forget that slavery started IN Africa) to the glorious shores of America.

But 100 years later, the Negro is even more free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is far better than the manacles of tribalism and the chains of paganism. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a prosperous continent in the midst of a vast ocean of freedom and prosperity…

And so we’ve come here today to celebrate our ever-improving condition. In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to thank them for the checks. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to agree. This note was a promise that all educators – yes, black educators as well as white educators – would guarantee that everyone has plenty of life, liberty, and opportunities to pursue happiness already and that any claims to the contrary are tragic evidence of how much they hate our founding documents, preferring instead to teach “Critical Race Theory” and Marxist ideologies because what-is-wrong-with-those-people?!

It is obvious today that teachers’ unions and liberal universities have defaulted on this promissory note insofar as BLM and other terrorist groups are concerned. Instead of honoring their sacred obligation, they continue to insist that America has given the Negro people a bad check – a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” Insufficient patriotism is more like it!

But we refuse to believe pretty much anything that contradicts our emotionally manufactured ideologies. And so we’ve come to tell them to run that check through again – no matter how many times it comes back marked “NSF.” There’s plenty in that account! If it’s not clearing, it’s definitely something they’re doing wrong. I’ve never had trouble cashing my check from America, so obviously that’s not a thing that happens…

Now is the time to celebrate the triumphs of democracy. Now is the time to stop pointing out the dark and desolate spectre of segregation instead of the sunlit path of how things worked out for that one black friend who’s doing so well. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of protest to the solid rock of mandated unity and agreement. Now is the time to make justice a reality in the textbooks and lesson plans of all educators.

It would be fatal for this nation to confess it’s own shortcomings. This sweltering summer of the right wing’s manipulated discontent will not pass until there is a serious crackdown on questioning freedom and equality…

There is something that I must say to my people in order to give white folks of the future isolated quotes to use out of context in service of their own bewildering agendas: “In the process of gaining an upper hand via ‘affirmative action’ and liberal guilt, we must not be suspected of wrongful deeds. Let us not satisfy our thirst for justice by drinking from the cup of blocking traffic and damaging private property.”

Seriously, it’s probably better not to even march peacefully or kneel or anything else that annoys white people. I never do.

There are those who are asking their one black friend, are you satisfied? I mean, you seem alright to me, so… you are, right? We should always be satisfied as long as a handful of Negros have found pathways to success in sports, music, or pizza chains, thus proving anyone could have done it if they’d simply made better choices. We should always be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with fatigue, can theoretically vote no matter how long the lines are or how limited the access to water, protection from the weather, or transportation. We should always be satisfied as long as our children are periodically given free lunch at school or granted the dignity of sitting next to white kids in detention.

Yes, yes – we are satisfied, and we will always be satisfied as “justice” crashes over us like a tidal wave and “righteousness” is wielded against us like a mighty club. Sure, some of you have experienced great trials and tribulations, but that’s usually an indication you’ve done something wrong. Other than very rare examples involving “bad apples” who are in no way representative of the masses who support and defend them, when does anything horrible ever happen unless you kinda deserve it?

Besides, suffering makes you creative. It’s redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow any minor inconveniences you experience can and will build character.

Let us not tolerate wallowing in negativity, I say to you today, my friends.

Even though we may face isolated difficulties from time to time, I’m still living the dream. It is a dream exactly the same as everyone else’s American dream, because I prefer not to divide people by focusing on race. I’m living the dream because this nation has risen up and lives out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were made equal when a lot of white men died to free them in the Civil War and yet somehow never get a “thank you” a century later.

I’m living the dream because the sons of former servants and the sons of former employers now sit down together at the table of brotherhood. Some of them even have homes in the same neighborhood and that’s gotta be proof of something, right?

I’m living the dream because my four little children have been given the opportunity to live in a nation where they are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character – if only BLM and liberal educators would stop trying to make EVERYTHING ABOUT RACE! (That is SO divisive!)

I’m living the dream because state law mandates that every valley be portrayed as already exalted, every hill and mountain taught as if socioeconomic mobility means they could just as easily become low, that rough places will be ignored, crooked places denied via assertive gaslighting, and the glory of the one true Lord revealed in public funding choices and morally-driven legislation.

With faith we will be able to transform the complex history of our nation into a beautiful country song of brotherhood. With faith we will be able to work together (but away from those people), pray together (but not with those people), to struggle together (hey, everyone struggles, so stop pretending you’re the only one who’s had a few challenges along the way when most of us don’t even see color), to celebrate our shared freedom together, knowing that we are all free as free can be today (except for straight white men who – let’s be honest – really have it rough these days… it’s SO unfair).

This will be the day we add yet another bill requiring all God’s children to sing together like they mean it: My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let capitalism reign!

America is a great nation. This must be true. (I’ll link to the website where you can report any of your children’s teachers who suggest otherwise.) Freedom rings from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Freedom rings from the mighty bastions of Wall Street. Freedom rings from the prosperous ski lodges of Colorado. Freedom could ring from the curvaceous slopes of California if they’d get rid of about fifteen million hippies and academic elitists. Freedom rings from the prison system of Georgia, in the sense that so much inmate labor is available to the state and local businesses without financially compensating those doing the work.

From every political platitude and state-mandated textbook, let freedom ring!

And when we require “freedom” to ring, when we insist it rings for every ZIP code and every demographic, in every state and every city, and has throughout most of history, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to finally get it together and join my preferred denomination and appropriate the words of the old Negro spiritual: Living the Dream! Living the Dream! Thank God almighty, we are living the dream!

MLK, Wobblies, and National Insecurity

January 18, 2016June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

It’s MLK Day, and while there’s much to celebrate, the skeptic in me can’t help but focus on some things we conveniently ignore or write off as ‘no longer relevant’ in King’s legacy. There will be plenty written today, as there should be, about all he said, and did, and the positive impact he had. I’d like to suggest we not forget along the way some lessons to be learned from how the United States and the ruling classes therein responded.

MLK and the Civil Rights Movement in general were treated with hostility and violence, ugly words and ugly actions. Social and political leaders took the lead, demonized those involved, and used the tools of power to subvert those exercising their very inconvenient human rights. While white commoners gladly spouted racist ideology, respectable types were more likely to explain their concerns based on ‘national security’.

The FBI tapped King’s phones, and threatened his life. MLK was labeled un-American, a tool of foreign powers intent on subverting our way of life. Government leaders – those specifically chosen as our collective voice – condemned him as a liar, and officially categorized him with other ‘hate groups’. It wasn’t just J. Edgar Hoover or a handful of overzealous individuals; this was policy, from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on down. Why? National security, of course.

Even after it was beyond doubt King was no Communist (and so what if he was?), government policy was to keep pushing this idea in the media through leaks, innuendo, and good old-fashioned name-calling. But it was justified, because… national security.

When MLK came out against the Vietnam War – a position fairly common in later years, but still somewhat “un-American” at the time – these accusations seemed substantiated. Who but a subversive tool of foreign powers and ideologies would oppose America’s light-shining and democracy-building overseas? Come on, people – national security!

Perhaps the Reverend’s greatest sin in the eyes of the establishment was shifting his focus from racial equity alone to a ‘war on poverty’ in general. It was a dangerous mindset – that perhaps being poor was not a character failing or the natural results of some people being smarter or working harder than others, but rather the results of a corrupt – or at least broken – system. The proverbial playing field was in no way level.

Today we celebrate King’s movement for its non-violence, but media at the time fixated on the sporadic exceptions. They painted even those outside the movement who destroyed property or threatened individuals as evidence of what MLK was really about. No matter how often King and others denounced bad behavior, the movement was constantly accused of supporting violence because they didn’t denounce it enough. Clearly they were a threat to… national security.

The movement wasn’t perfect. There were internal disputes and inconsistencies, as there always are, and individuals and moments which didn’t fit the larger picture, to be seized upon by critics as proof of what they’ve wanted to believe all along.

But most of them didn’t want to hurt anybody, or even break anything. They just wanted to be treated like ‘real Americans’, real humans, and have access to a shot at the same American Dream as everyone else. That in and of itself, however, was a very real change in the established way of doing things. It was threatening to some and uncomfortable for most.

That’s just not how things had ever worked before, no matter what our ideals said.

It’s important to note that those in power, with access to the bigger picture and far more information than the average citizen, knew that their accusations and fear-mongering were nonsense. While the average racist asshole in the street may at least be painted as a product of their times, those making policy, controlling the courts, and holding most of the guns, were lying in ways that got other people hurt and killed, and doing so for their own comfort and power. Any rationalizing they did about the means serving noble ends was just that – rationalizing.

Did I say comfort and power? I’m sorry – I meant ‘national security’.

Fifty short years before King came into national consciousness, there was a labor organization called the International Workers of the World (I.W.W.) – nicknamed “Wobblies” for reasons long lost. They sought to organize unskilled workers in factories and fields, those marginalized due to limited education and no political power. Unlike other labor unions of the time, they weren’t about protecting certain skilled professions or choosing respectable members – they were the little people even among little people.

The response from both business and government was predictable – demonized in the media, the I.W.W. was constantly accused of being the tool of foreign powers, un-American and dangerous. Government infiltrators joined their ranks, and arrests were made on the most thinly manufactured charges. This was necessary, it was said, to protect national security.

Their homes and businesses were searched without warrants, and entire blocks of prisoners were promised leniency if they’d testify that various I.W.W. members had confessed nefarious doings to them – even if they’d never met that person, let alone shared a cell. When there were trials, due process was rare – although in a few cases a particularly idealistic judge would hold the line and refuse to allow extensive shenanigans, no matter what his personal loathing for the organization.

Of course, by the time the process had played itself out, the accused had been held in dark, damp cells with appalling sanitary conditions and inadequate nutrition for months – sometimes years. Because, you know… national security.

When the Wobblies came out against World War I, government and business had the excuse they needed to up their game. Laws were passed to make the free speech, press, and assembly of the Wobblies state and federal crimes in the name of… national security.

All violent acts done by labor or those of foreign descent became I.W.W. violence, no matter how condemned by the group itself, because… national security. And the I.W.W. was essentially a Socialist – maybe even Communist – organization at heart. They virulently attacked the Capitalism around them as more about entrenched power than competition and opportunity. The proverbial playing field, they argued, was in no way level.

When the courts failed to produce the desired results, representatives of the union were whipped, tarred and feathered, their lives threatened and their property destroyed, presumably by “spontaneous” mobs but often with the explicit cooperation of law enforcement. Periodic lynchings of ‘radicals’ were considered very American things to do – tacitly supported by government, vocally supported by the popular press.

That’s just not how things had ever worked before, no matter what our ideals said.

It’s important to note that those in power, with access to the bigger picture and far more information than the average citizen, knew that their accusations and fear-mongering were nonsense. While the average nationalistic goon might have been the product of his times, those making policy, controlling the courts, and holding most of the guns, were lying in ways that got other people hurt and killed, and doing so for their own comfort and power. Any rationalizing they did about the means serving noble ends was just that – rationalizing.

Did I say comfort and power? I’m sorry – I meant ‘national security’.

Thankfully in the 50 years since MLK’s assassination, we’ve learned a few lessons, and human nature has fundamentally altered from what it was from the dawn of time until 1968. It’s unthinkable that we’d allow political and business interests to unite against marginalized groups to protect entrenched power, or to give the unwashed masses a target for their frustrations and hatred so as to distract them from their ongoing neglect and overt exploitation by those whose comfort requires their ignorance, and their apathy.

We’d never tolerate gross violations of our highest ideals and explicit laws in the name of protecting those exact same ideals and laws – the irony would simply be too much.

No, thankfully today we’ve realized that if our ideals are, in fact, so very unique and wonderfully noble – if they have the power we insist they do – then the laws and social expectations based explicitly upon them are more than sufficient to deal with any discomfort, or even the occasional very real danger, which may result from holding to them. The best way to defend our national ideals… is to live by them.

Joan of Awkward, Part One – Missing Voices

October 29, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

Several years ago, I went through a bit of a Joan of Arc fetish. I watched the Leelee Sobieski mini-series again, several documentaries, and read a half-dozen historical explorations of our “Maid of Lorraine.” Several novels stood out – Mark Twain’s semi-historical fiction of her, of course, and An Army of Angels by Pamela Marcantel, an amazing imagining of her short life with just the right balance of grounded history and literary license.

In short, I got a little Joan crazy for a time.

Unfortunately for my academic credibility and witty dinner banter, I’m not a big ‘retain the details’ guy unless I’m either consciously studying it or teaching it to others. I read history for pleasure, along with whatever else grabs my attention at the time, but I don’t have the kind of memory that retains most of it in sharp focus easily or often.

That’s not actually the stumbling block you might think teaching high school in the 21st century. Nothing locks the minutiae of your subject into permanent recall like explaining it repeatedly throughout the years, and almost anything that doesn’t stick is easily researched when necessary. We’re still trying to get them to bring a pencil and check the class website periodically; there’s little danger they’ll without warning probe such historical depths that I end up academically cowed.

I can’t say that it does much for relationships, though, this hazy grasp of specifics – birthdays, middle names, her not liking raisins, forgetting her mom died last year… people get touchy about so many little details. Hey, we all have different gifts.

But I digress.

The basic story of Joan goes something like this:

Joan was born in early 15th century France, near the end of the Hundred Years’ War. As she became a young woman, the nation was enduring another dispute over who would inherit the French throne. The outcome would determine not only who’d get the nice chair and fancy castle, but who would control France for the foreseeable future – the French via the Dauphin, Charles VII, or the English through a sizeable faction of ‘Burgundians’ (Frenchmen who cooperated with the English) and their up-and-coming monarch, Henry VI.

Charles’s daddy, Charles VI (nice system, right?) was insane – even for royalty – and may not have been his daddy at all. The dear Queen was thought to be having an affair with the Duke of Orleans, aka the King’s brother, and he may have been Charles VII’s biological father. That would explain in part why the Queen was so cooperative with England when it came time to designate an official heir to the throne; she signed off on Henry VI holding that honor.

Henry was a tiny little English king-to-be, you see. He was legit, with king-blood flowing through his wee little veins. This was a big deal to royal types back in the day – hence all the inbreeding and weird genetic issues which resulted. Perhaps the Queen wanted peace with England for more traditional reasons as well, but the common people of France were not impressed, and assigned her unflattering nicknames when speaking privately amongst themselves.

See how fun it is to study history? Your family’s not as messed up as you think. “Dysfunctional” is merely a fancy term for “typical royalty, but without money or power.”

Joan dealt with none of this as a child, of course. She was a peasant, which sounds to modern ears like it must include both servitude and poverty. Neither seems to have been the case, however. Daddy Jacques d’Arc and crew were certainly near the bottom of the social hierarchy, and times were tough all over, but they don’t appear to have been in need by the standards of the day.

Somewhere around age 13, Joan begin having visions and hearing voices from Saint Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine – telling her from God that she must be a good girl and stay faithful, and that she had a destiny and purpose far beyond her upbringing.

Divine communication. It’s a large part of what makes her so fascinating.

It’s also the kind of thing which makes historians crazy, you understand. It’s just so awkward to deal with the supernatural in an academic context, especially given the typical disconnect between those book-learnin’ types and people of faith. We’d rather not talk about it at all.

It’s downplayed even with major figures like the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Notice how many history books drop the ‘Reverend’ whenever possible. Granted, after the first mention of someone in a history text, they’re usually referred to only by their last name, no matter WHO they are – but the designation is usually missing in that first mention as well. And in sidebars. Photo captions. Even that separate section in the back with the long excerpt of “I Have A Dream.”

Usually if someone’s a ‘Dr.’, a ‘Prof.’, or even a ‘Sir’ we work it in there at least once. But ‘Rev.’ we like to slip past.

When his primary calling IS included, it’s used as framing for the story we actually wish to tell – a colorful bit of context to get past as quickly as possible. Its significance is more often than not presumed to be as preparation or practice for his “real” historical function, helping King build organizational skills and hone his powerful oratory – and what a lucky break THAT turned out to be because that kinda thing ended up SO useful later in service of the Civil Rights movement!

Faith becomes a happy fluke of background rather than a key component – as if King just happened to sit next to someone randomly on the bus who ended up playing some key role we never saw coming, or left his coat too close to the oven and accidentally invented penicillin. As if taking up the call of ministry – of spreading the Word of God to the downtrodden and fighting for justice – made a nice placeholder before changing careers and fighting for civil rights.

As if they weren’t both manifestations of the same inner fire.

It’s easier the further back we go. Dismissing the Puritans or the revival preachers of the Second Great Awakening happens almost naturally; they seem so radical by today’s mores. Any pantheistic cultures are tacitly patronized without question, as are those more driven by nature, visions, or quests than westerners find comfortable.

In more recent years it’s been quite in vogue to mock groups like the Latter Day Saints in ways which would be borderline hate crimes with any other demographic. (Can you imagine large, loud groups at Applebee’s cackling over song fragments from the hit Broadway musical, ‘The Book of Mohammed’ or ‘Sing-Along-With-Brother-Malcolm’?)

I get that issues of faith are problematic- especially if we’re teaching them in public school. But Joan, by all historical accounts, followed up the predictions of her ‘voices’ with successful action. That makes dealing with her especially tricky.

Just ask the English.