Forty Years
Today is Martin Luther King Day, 2026. This “holiday” is relatively new. Surprisingly, it was “proto-type” Republican-Conservative President, Ronald Reagan, who signed the law into effect in 1983. It was fifteen years after King’s death. The first Federal holiday was actually celebrated in 1986. That’s forty years ago.
For most of those forty years it seemed like the rights of minorities in the United States progressed. Each passing generation endured the biases of the past, and let many of them go. What was “exceptional”, changed: minority kids were able to go to the best colleges. Minorities got management jobs in business. Minorities (the majority of many professional athletic teams) became coaches and managers. Hell, a black man “called the future”, and became the President of the United States in 2009.
Call the Future
To be honest, that was the beginning of the backlash. It certainly wasn’t Barack Obama’s fault. Politically he moved to the “center” during his Presidency. And, he was always sensitive to the fact that he was the first Black President. Obama didn’t make many of the changes for minority rights that we expected, and his Black constituents anticipated. He “tread lightly” on that issue.
But many white Americans felt that a Black President was a “bridge too far”. So, if the kernel of the backlash was in the election of 2008, the first iteration of protest was in the “Tea Party Movement” (“tea” stood for “taxed enough already”). Sure, they were against big government and increased taxation; but they were also mostly white “victims” of big government.
Victimhood
The essence of “white victimhood” is that white men (mostly) did not receive the same advantages their fathers had. I can attest to the truth of that. It was 1973, and I was applying for colleges. Another student in my high school, with similar grades, extra-curriculars, and test scores, applied for many of the same schools. He was black, I was white. He was admitted to one high-level school, I was “wait-listed”.
I was OK with that. As a black man in our 1970’s society, he certainly had a harder “way to go” than I did. Universities called it affirmative action. That allowed schools that were overwhelming white to diversify their student bodies. It was the right thing to do, then, and still is today.
So, starting in the 1970’s, white men started to lose their “advantage”. Instead of just competing against other white men, they had to compete against the whole range of racial, ethnic, and gender groups. It was, and is, what diversity, equity and inclusion in America is supposed to be about.
MAGA
If the Tea Party was the kernel of backlash, the MAGA movement was the whole ear of corn. MAGA made white “victimhood” a major building block in their ideology. Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court added to the concept. John Roberts declared that, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
That trite statement implied that discrimination against minorities was “over”, and there was no need to take further measures to remedy the centuries of mistakes of the past. And , it was “gas on the fire” of MAGA.
So today, “DEI” is now a “dirty word”, as is affirmative action. The MAGA authorities now in power want to declare “white people” the winners of the “race”, and tell everyone else to “catch up” on their own. As I often told my government classes, it’s like the white group starts the 100 meter dash at the starting line, and the other groups have to start 10 meters farther back. It’s unfair.
Written in Stone
Despite MAGA, and Donald Trump and JD Vance, there is an inevitable outcome to the minority crisis. Within the next decade, white people will no longer be a majority in America, no matter how many people of color ICE kidnaps and deports. America will be a minority/majority Nation. The balance of political power will shift.
Trump, Vance, and the 2025 Project folks are fighting a “valiant rear-guard” action, trying to stop time. They are even trying to convince Americans that non-white, non-citizens of the United States sway voting outcomes. That’s simply not true, but the truth isn’t important to them.
MAGA will not succeed. Change in America is already written in the stone of demographics, and while MAGA can try to cover that up, or hold back the tide of the future, Dr. King himself had the final word, over a half a century ago.
Dr. King
(Speech on the steps of the State Capitol, Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965).
I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody’s asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?” Somebody’s asking, “When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?
I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”
How long? Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.”
How long? Not long:
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
I lived the black/white experience long before many/most of you were born, and in a truly hostile part of America for blacks, Alabama. Far into the woods from any town where we treated each other in accordance with how we were treated and that was mutual respect. The term Aunt was a reference of respect and my dad required his boys to use it with black ladies as well as whites. Our problem then was the same as now, Democrats who get an advantage due to their political views. Then it was voting and job opportunities. Now, if there is one thing that affects black integration into the system, it is educational. Far, far too many urban school systems are failing their students. And, NO DEI is not and was not anyone’s ticket out except maybe the grifters. Build on a completely false premise. The most meaningful diversity is diversity of thought, but Democrats made it about skin color, which makes no sense at all. Equity was also built on a false assumption. We are not all equal,so it takes some kind of stupid to say we are so we should all get the same thing. And, finally your, inclusion. You would no more want me helping you with track than you would want a tooth ache, and you shouldn’t, I know nothing about track. As I have said before, was a big fan of King and he was only asking for one thing that we de treated the same, what Robert’s is really referring. That is never going to happen as long as Democrats saying that the minority can not do it without their help. They have proved otherwise, be it Tulsa or Dunbar High School. If we would take Americas tremendous energy and do nothing more than provide minorities the fairness King asked for, they can do the rest, in varying degrees just like whites do. But for that to happen requires that they be allowed to succeed and fail on their own accord rather than as a prop of political parties.
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Second comment, a joke that is really not a joke. “ Want to know if racism still exists, all you need to do is be a brown skin person and tell Liberals you are a MAGA supporter “.
Or really a sad joke: want to know if racism is still alive, watch what ICE is doing.