Research Material for Speech- "The Broken Promise of 'Brown v Board of Education' ", 2004

The State of the Dream 2004: Enduring Disparities in Black and White

College Education, cont.

Moreover, the rollback of affirmative action for African Americans threatens to reverse the positive trends in African-American participation in higher education. During King's time, lawyers across the country were actively filing lawsuits to ensure a more racially inclusive America. Today there is an organized movement of lawyers focused on ending many of the programs that have bridged some of the educational divide resulting from centuries of discrimination. The Wall Street Journal described "conservative legal activists" working to end any scholarships or programs specifically aimed at increasing racial minorities' entry into college. If affirmative action had a strong impact on increasing Black college enrollment, then the recent efforts to end affimative action for Blacks could slow and reverse this progress.

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The State of the Dream 2004: Enduring Disparities in Black and White

Imprisonment

"So I must return to the valey. . . a valley filled with millions of people who because of economic deprivation and social isolation, have lost hope, and see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. . . I must return to the valley all over the South and in the big cities of the North -- a valley filled with millions of our white and Negro brothers who are smoldering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society."

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech in Atlanta, Georgia, January 27, 1965

• Rates of incarceration have grown for both Blacks and whites. From 1974 to 2001, the percentage of Black men who had ever been in state or federal prison rose from 8.7% to 16.6%. The percentage of white men who had been in prison grew from 1.4% to 2.6%. During the same period, the percentage of black women who had ever been in state or federal prison rose from 0.6% to 1.7% while the rate for white women rose from 0.1% to 0.3%.

• African Americans are about six times as likely as whites to have been imprisoned at some point in their lives. This gap between Black and white men is growing.

• One out of three Black males born in 2001 will be imprisoned at some point in their lifetime if current trends continue. That's up from one out of eleven in 1974. By comparison, 5.9% of white males born in 2001, 5.6% of Black females, and 0.9% of white females have a lifetime chance of imprisonment.

[image:] Graph with the following text: Lifetime Chance Going to Prison Males Born in 1974 and 2001 Males Born in 1974 White 2.2% Black 13.4% Males Born in 2001 White 5.9% Black 32.2% Years to Parity: 190 Parity Year: 2191

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974-2001, August, 2003. See Appendix for Years to Parity calculation.

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The State of the Dream 2004: Enduring Disparities in Black and White

Imprisonment, continued

There is no greater threat to the social progress America has made over the last three decades than the dramatic increase in incarceration for African American men. In 2000, there were at least 13 states in which there were more African-American men in prison than in college.⁸ As studies from the Sentencing Project, the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, and many others have documented, the unconscionable rate of Black incarceration is the product of persisent racism in the criminal justice system.⁹

Many states bar felons from voting, so the high incarceration rate affects Blacks' ability to participate in electoral politics.

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The State of the Dream 2004: Enduring Disparities in Black and White

Conclusion

Dr. King said in his historic "I have a dream" speech, "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism." Yet gradualism is what has in fact occurred. Over 40 years later, we still see an America that refuses to awaken to the urgency of the vast American racial divide.

If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were rewriting his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here?, the following section would need little update:

When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60 percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is 50 percent of a person. Of the good things in life he has approximately one-half those of whites; of the bad he has twice those of whites...Negroes have half the income of whites...There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality...is double that of whites."

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many governmental plans addressed this divide, such as the War on Poverty, Great Society programs and affirmative action programs. Today they have been replaced by "compassionate conservatism," which thus far has been very conservative in doling out its compassion.

Today we see an absense of bold initiatives to address the racial wealth divide. Rollbacks have weakened the positive programs of the past, such as President Clinton's rollback of welfare and conservatives' campaign to dismantle affirmative action programs.

Dr. King became more and more explicit during the last five years of his life in terms of socio-economic policy. He proposed an "economic bill of rights." He said that America must place its wealth at the service of correcting America's historical sin of white supremacy. "You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars."

We need to reclaim Dr. King's dream of American progress and make bridging the racial divide a top domestic priority. Hundreds of billions of dollars must be invested in the reconstruction of America.

The money to invest in America can be found without raising taxes on the middle class by shifting priorities. We must end the hemorrhaging of America's wealth to the super-rich and use it to re-invest in America. We must also limit US military expenditures and for a fraction of the cost put the funding at the service of all the American people. Dr. King would surely decry the ability of the federal government to find $160 billion for military intervention and occupation of a foreign country, and at the same

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The State of the Dream 2004: Enduring Disparities in Black and White

time claim "insufficient funds" for greater equality at home. In Dr. King's words, "Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession."

Dr. King, in his last address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference annual Convention, titled "Where Do We Go From Here," concluded his speech by saying:

"We have a task, and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction.

Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.

Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.

Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family will live in a decent sanitary home.

Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.

Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity."

In honor of Dr. King and his ideals of democracy, justice and equality, let us be dissatisfied with the State of the Dream in 2004.

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United for a Fair Economy • Racial Wealth Divide Project 23