Martin Luther King's Forgotten Dream

It occurred on Aug. 28, 1963. Fifty years ago, the black evangelist organized an extraordinary march of 250,000 people and uttered a speech in which he expressed his dream of social equality. He expressed the need for better jobs and salaries for blacks and for a justice that did not use the color of one’s skin to define who was guilty or innocent. He dreamed that, 100 years after Abraham Lincoln declared the emancipation of black people, it was viable to achieve this blessed equality through action.

His words marked a milestone in the history of the fight for civil rights in the United States. Half a century has passed since that famous speech sparked a series of changes in the conscience and laws of the United States. The advances throughout the years that have succeeded in questions of equality and social justice have been substantial, not only for blacks but also for other racial minorities, including Latinos. It is significant that now there is a black president. When there are elections, this seems to be taken into account.

One should recognize the evolution of American society in the social sphere, but one cannot ignore the inequalities that still prevail. Poverty, low salaries and low-grade jobs, those to which King alluded in his speech, not only have not disappeared, but have increased proportionally within the black population.

However, if blacks are lagging behind in the economic sphere, discrimination is even more drastic regarding justice and has shown itself to be insensitive to the equality that should exist. Despite the fact that only 14 percent of the population is black, blacks represent 37 percent of the population currently incarcerated. The assassinations of two black youths — Trayvon Martin in Florida and Oscar Grant in California — caused astonishment and outrage. In both cases, the white murderer was exonerated by a jury with a white majority. And that’s that.

The path that the United States has to follow in order to fulfill the beautiful dream of the prominent pastor is still very long.

However, the issue is even worse than that. There are more and more doubts if democracy even exists in that nation. Prominent voices state that such a thing is null and empty — pomp and circumstance. Noam Chomsky has been saying this for a while. Likewise, Gore Vidal concluded that the U.S. political system has one party, with two right wings. Some declare that the growing economic inequality and the concentration of wealth do indeed annul democracy. Others warn that the United States is already a plutocracy with elements of a totalitarian dictatorship.

A commentator from The New York Times concluded that, with the trial and sentencing of Bradley Manning and the persecution of Edward Snowden, who may have to remain in exile for the rest of his life, the fiction of a democratic game is already over in the United States. Unfortunately, everything suggests that he is right.

The Yankee political leadership never tires of repeating everything it has done with respect to national security, just as it claims its economic and social policies are in the name of defending democracy, freedom and the American dream, here, there and throughout the world. However, it cannot defend democracy while spying in secret, acting as if its citizens, the defenders of civil liberties, and black and white dissidents alike were the enemy.