Note the admission by a president of the United States in 1965 that there is a “racist virus” that infects the country. Was that true? If so, when did that condition change?
Note also LBJ’s admission that the racist hostility in White America was primarily targeting Black Americans. He readily admits to Congress and the nation that after 100 years of being the center of a bullseye of national White hostility, from both public and private sectors of society, Black Americans have been significantly wounded as a population of people. Ironically, today there are White Americans who point to chronic conditions in Black America and blame personal decision-making as the key culprit without understanding the systemic forces that crippled those communities and continued to cause conditions that compel a series of daily dilemmas which have no positive outcomes.
Let’s also note the fact that MLK was alive and active in leading the Negro Revolution before … and after … the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Most Americans aren’t aware that this was yet another ineffective law, among a series of ineffective CRAs passed by Congress, dating back to the first in 1866.
Public policy changes did not translate into systemic changes of chronic conditions in Black communities. For example, MLK wrote about how the historic Supreme Court ruling in the 1954 Brown v Board case was nullified by the same Court in 1958 when it upheld Alabama’s Pupil Placement Law. Yet, today, teachers, scholars, politicians and journalists continue to point to 1954 as a watershed moment in desegregating schools, even as data show that schools today remain as segregated as they were when King was alive. How many Black children have been denied a quality education due to inept policies and systemic racism in the education sector? How many more will be in the next generation?
Despite all the rhetoric today about “saving democracy” from hostile forces seeking to acquire political power by any means necessary, few politicians are talking about the fact that all of America’s most vulnerable children are ubiquitously served by the worst quality schools in the world’s richest nation. This is not a new condition. It is how the public school system for Black children was established after the Civil War. Killing the dreams of Black children is how public education was initially designed. King fought to disrupt that policy and practice.
Yet, today, racial segregation and systemically poor-quality education for poor children of color is an ongoing crisis operating in plain sight. Saving Black children was the number one priority of the Negro Revolution, which professed three demands. Sadly, all three have been summarily denied, diminished and dismissed. And those who are considered the least in our society are still treated the worst.
