Understanding Race and Culture by Bill Braun
I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring, I will step into the pool. Sojourner Truth
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King "I have a dream" speech http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdream.htm
Courage is a reflection of the heart - it is a reflection of something deep within the man or woman or even a child who must resist and must defy an authority that is morally wrong. Courage makes us march on despite fear and doubt on the road toward justice. Courage is not heroic but as necessary as birds need wings to fly. Courage is not rooted in reason but rather courage comes from a divine purpose to make things right. Marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, we weren't supposed to make to Montgomery in 1963. But we did. Congressman John Lewis http://www.jfklibrary.org/newsletter_summer2001_07.html
Racial Disparities - persist even today, and we rarely measure them
Race Is a Poor Measure - NEJM editorial
The Roosevelts also did their part for civil rights, but not without great controversy http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/tmirhfee.html
The performance of black people in the civil war, World War II and the Vietnam War advanced equality.
Lincoln in his second inaugural address approached the platform slowly and deliberately. He looked for a place to put his top hat. His long time opponent Stephen Douglas stepped forward to help. Lincoln set down his papers, pulled out his reading glasses, and delivered perhaps his best work ever. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who has borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Lincoln approached Frederick Douglass later to ask about the address. Douglass, the abolitionist, was critical of Lincoln in his first inaugural because it did address the slavery issue to his satisfaction. Douglass responded to Lincoln noted that his thoughts about the speech were not that important. Lincoln responded that there was no one else whose opinion he valued more. Douglass responded to Lincoln, "Mr. President, this was a sacred effort." Only days later Lincoln was killed. 50 years elapsed before the Lincoln Memorial was established, fortunately this was enough time to dilute out the Battle Glories of the era and instill Lincoln's leadership and values for the ages.
Douglass also noted that Lincoln was the only white man that he had ever met who did not behave differently toward him because he was black. More about Lincoln, God, the Civil War, and Civil Rights at Strength for Anxious Days
Minorities, Admissions, and Underserved
Character, Color, Admissions, and Physicians
Bayard Rustin - the organizational genius of civil rights in the US
Statistics of a Fatherless America - may be a more important factor in many studies than color or status or economics or education
WHITES SWIM IN RACIAL PREFERENCE
Tim Wise, AlterNet
In criticizing affirmative action at the University of
Michigan, Bush made clear the inability of yet another
white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15223
King's Dream by Chuck Colson
The Good Society and the Moral Law
Forty years ago today, August 28, 1963, a quarter million people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. They marched here for the cause of civil rights. And that day they heard Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, a speech in which he challenged America to fulfill her promise.
"I have a dream," he said, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."
While we know of the speech, most people are unaware that King also penned one of the most eloquent defenses of the moral law: the law that formed the basis for his speech, for the civil rights movement, and for all of law, for that matter.
In the spring of 1963, King was arrested for leading a series of massive non-violent protests against the segregated lunch counters and discriminatory hiring practices rampant in Birmingham, Alabama. While in jail, King received a letter from eight Alabama ministers. They agreed with his goals, but they thought that he should call off the demonstrations and obey the law.
King explained why he disagreed in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. "One may well ask, how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer "is found in the fact that there are two kinds of laws: just laws … and unjust laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," King said, "but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
How does one determine whether the law is just or unjust? A just law, King wrote, "squares with the moral law of the law of God. An unjust law … is out of harmony with the moral law."
Then King quoted Saint Augustine: "An unjust law is no law at all." He quoted Thomas Aquinas: "An unjust law is a human law not rooted in eternal or natural law."
This is the great issue today in the public square: Is the law rooted in truth? Is it transcendent, immutable, and morally binding? Or is it, as liberal interpreters argue, simply whatever courts say it is? Do we discover the law, or do we create it?
Many think of King as a liberal firebrand, waging war on traditional values. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dr. King was a great conservative on this central issue, and he stood on the shoulders of Augustine and Aquinas, striving to restore our heritage of justice rooted in moral truth.
Were he alive today, I believe he would be in the vanguard of the pro-life movement. I also believe that he would be horrified at the way in which the Supreme Court has trampled on the moral truths he advocated.
From the time of Emperor Nero, who declared Christianity illegal, to the days of the American slave trade, from the civil rights struggle of the sixties to our current battles against abortion, euthanasia, cloning, and same-sex "marriage," Christians have always maintained exactly what King maintained.
Martin Luther King's dream was to live in harmony with the moral law as God established it. So I say today, reflect on that dream—for it is worthy of our aspirations, our hard work, and the same commitment Dr. King showed.