King: We must live together as brothers or perish as fools
The annual celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. always provides an opportunity to measure how far we have come in healing the racial divide in our country.
Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Recent polling by multiple organizations that record public attitudes on the issue of race have found a significant setback during the tenure of the nation’s first black president.
For instance, Gallup has been asking about race relations for the past 15 years.
Adults conclude things are significantly worse today than ever over that time.
Those saying relations are “somewhat bad” have ranged from 20 to 28 percent over that period.
In 2015 the number rose to 36 percent.
In the “very bad” category, the number never exceeded 9 percent until last year when it grew to 17 percent.
President Obama says it’s in our society’s DNA.
Actual measures would conclude he is mistaken about that.
An excellent video explaining why he is wrong, by black author and talk show host Larry Elder, is available on Prager University’s website.
Elder discusses the remarkable changes in attitudes about multiracial marriage, the election of the nation’s first black president and the research published by the National Institute of Justice on racial profiling by police.
That report concluded that differences in black vs. white police engagement was a result of differences in offenses, not racism.
It dispels today’s popular notion that blacks suffer disproportionate enforcement policies in cities across the country.
He asks if there is racism in America and answers, “of course there is,” but not because it exists in America’s DNA.
Support for that conclusion comes from Harvard’s liberal professor of sociology, Orlando Patterson.
Patterson, who is black, finds that the United States is the least racist white-majority country in the world.
He points to a better record of legal protections for minorities than any other society and more opportunities to a greater number of minorities than any other nation, including all of those of Africa.
King’s niece Alveda King, in a commentary published Tuesday in The Daily Signal expressed a very different underlying concern that could be part of the racial divide revealed in Gallup’s latest findings.
“President Obama has made it a priority to prevent Americans from conceiving children, and when people of faith rise up in protest to this contraceptive mandate, we are accused of waging a war on women.
“When members of the pro-life black community tell the truth about abortion — that the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb — we are accused of racism.”
Alveda King says her uncle would be disturbed and vocal about our constantly eroding freedom of religion when it “bumps up against a liberal absolute.”
A few months ago, my family and I stood in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and looked up at the balcony where Martin Luther King Jr. was slain.
We met a U. S. Navy sailor, his wife and little girl there. They were on their way to a new assignment in Washington, D.C.
In a brief conversation between two men, one white and one black, we talked about what happened there.
We both wondered if King’s dream of the end of prejudice among the races was going to be realized.
Neither of us knew for sure if they would.
Alveda King’s concluding line in her Daily Signal commentary quoted her uncle’s words that may be the answer we were looking for.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish as fools.”
Our next president must lead us back to that reality.
Richard Greene is a former Arlington mayor and served as an appointee of President George W. Bush as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.
This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 5:39 PM with the headline "King: We must live together as brothers or perish as fools."