The Dream Has Come?

On August 23, 1963, Martin Luther King gave his most famously remembered speech. That speech, "I Have A Dream," looked to a time, in the future, when Blacks and Whites would peacefully live together. Today, we celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday (relatively). Tomorrow, Barack Obama, as a black man, will assume the job of President of the United States. I don't quite think the premises contained within the "I Have A Dream" speech will simply be achieved by what happens in the next days to come. There still will be racial tensions in this country. And, just so we understand, those racial tensions aren't just restricted to Whites against Blacks and Whites against other races and religions. There are tensions between Blacks and Hispanics and vice-versa. Between Blacks and Koreans and other other Asians. For sure, some amount of Blacks are practitioners of reverse discrimination against Whites in anger over years of racial hatred.

Racial tensions will always exist in this country and in the world. It is exists in Darfur and in the streets of Paris with the burning of cars every night. Just look at the total history of the Jews. It is something that humans can't seem to dispense of. It is an attitude that can be passed on from parents to their children. New hatreds are always being brewed in the cauldrons of human groupings and within changing attitudes in our society. Absolutely, the hatred of Muslims by many Americans was set to brew as a result of 9/11. I am sure that the senseless and brutal beheading of Nick Berg, and others, just festered that hatred. It absolutely angered me to some level of hatred at the time it happened. And, to be truthful, I still feel hostility because of those events. Mostly, because of the sheer brutality of the acts and the cheering by other groups of Muslims over those acts. I also think back to 9/11 and those Palestinians and other Muslims who danced in the streets at the deaths of thousands of Americans. In many ways, Al Qaeda's hatred for us and their attack of 9/11 just conversely created the basis of a new hatred for many Muslims by many Americans. There are some Americans who are alive today who absolutely hate Japan and the Japanese as a result of the brutality that they saw while fighting in World War II. I know a couple of those people and, in theory, that hatred will only die when they do.

Tomorrow will go a long way to help heal this country's White/Black race relationships. But, it isn't the panacea that some would espouse. It will not, by any stretch of human imagination, bring an end to racism in America. Abolishing racial hate and racial tensions of any kind will always be a work in progress. Mostly, it is time, and time alone, that washes away hate. Christianity and other moderate religions go a long way to help reverse hate. But, make no mistake about it, new tensions and new hatreds will always take the place of those that have been been moderated by time and religion. And, moderation is the best we can every hope for from our imperfect human race.