Today is Martin Luther King Day, 2026.\u00a0\u00a0This \u201choliday\u201d is relatively new.\u00a0\u00a0Surprisingly, it was \u201cproto-type\u201d Republican-Conservative President, Ronald Reagan, who signed the law into effect in 1983.\u00a0\u00a0It was fifteen years after King\u2019s death. The first Federal holiday was actually celebrated in 1986.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s forty years ago.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For most of those forty years it seemed like the rights of minorities in the United States progressed.\u00a0\u00a0Each passing generation endured the biases of the past, and let many of them go.\u00a0\u00a0What was \u201cexceptional\u201d, changed:\u00a0\u00a0minority 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.\u00a0\u00a0Hell, a black man \u201ccalled the future\u201d, and became the President of the United States in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be honest, that was the beginning of the backlash.\u00a0\u00a0It certainly wasn\u2019t Barack Obama\u2019s fault. Politically he moved to the \u201ccenter\u201d during his Presidency.\u00a0\u00a0And, he was always sensitive to the fact that he was the first Black President. Obama didn\u2019t make many of the changes for minority rights that we expected, and his Black constituents anticipated.\u00a0\u00a0He \u201ctread lightly\u201d on that issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But many white Americans felt that a Black President was a \u201cbridge too far\u201d. So, if the kernel of the backlash was in the election of 2008, the first iteration of protest was in the \u201cTea Party Movement\u201d (\u201ctea\u201d stood for \u201ctaxed enough already\u201d). Sure, they were against big government and increased taxation; but they were also mostly white \u201cvictims\u201d of big government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The essence of \u201cwhite victimhood\u201d is that white men (mostly) did not receive the same advantages their fathers had.\u00a0\u00a0I can attest to the truth of that.\u00a0\u00a0It was 1973, and I was applying for colleges.\u00a0\u00a0Another student in my high school, with similar grades, extra-curriculars, and test scores, applied for many of the same schools.\u00a0\u00a0He was black, I was white.\u00a0\u00a0He was admitted to one high-level school,\u00a0\u00a0I was \u201cwait-listed\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was OK with that.\u00a0\u00a0As a black man in our 1970\u2019s society, he certainly had a harder \u201cway to go\u201d than I did.\u00a0\u00a0Universities called it affirmative action. That allowed schools that were overwhelming white to diversify their student bodies.\u00a0\u00a0It was the right thing to do, then, and still is today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, starting in the 1970\u2019s, white men started to lose their \u201cadvantage\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Instead of just competing against other white men, they had to compete against the whole range of racial, ethnic, and gender groups.\u00a0\u00a0It was, and is, what diversity, equity and inclusion in America is supposed to be about.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the Tea Party was the kernel of backlash, the MAGA movement was the whole ear of corn.\u00a0\u00a0MAGA made white \u201cvictimhood\u201d a major building block in their ideology.\u00a0\u00a0Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court added to the concept.\u00a0\u00a0John Roberts declared that,\u00a0\u201cThe way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n That trite statement implied that discrimination against minorities was \u201cover\u201d, and there was no need to take further measures to remedy the centuries of mistakes of the past.\u00a0\u00a0And , it was \u201cgas on the fire\u201d of MAGA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So today, \u201cDEI\u201d is now a \u201cdirty word\u201d, as is affirmative action.\u00a0\u00a0The MAGA authorities now in power want to declare \u201cwhite people\u201d the winners of the \u201crace\u201d, and tell everyone else to \u201ccatch up\u201d on their own.\u00a0\u00a0As I often told my government classes, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite MAGA, and Donald Trump and JD Vance, there is an inevitable outcome to the minority crisis.\u00a0\u00a0Within the next decade, white people will no longer be a majority in America, no matter how many people of color ICE kidnaps and deports.\u00a0America will be a minority\/majority Nation.\u00a0\u00a0The balance of political power will shift.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump, Vance, and the 2025 Project folks are fighting a \u201cvaliant rear-guard\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0MAGA will not succeed.\u00a0\u00a0Change 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Speech on the steps of the State Capitol, Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody\u2019s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody\u2019s 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\u2019s 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?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nWritten in Stone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Dr. King<\/h2>\n\n\n\n