The End of the Dream

When King was murdered, civil uprisings occurred in scores of US cities, and the establishment myth makers made a second 180 degree turn. While the smoke rose from burning cities you heard the first references to Dr. King not as a champion of economic justice, not as a moral voice against militarism and empire, not the fighter for a guaranteed minimum income for all, but as “The Dreamer.” Media figures began instructing us on “Dr. King's Dream” – something nobody ever heard of before – as the reference point for our past struggle, our present predicament and our future agenda. Thus, as Gary Younge points out in his recent book, a new Dr. King was constructed

This new Dr. King didn't call into question poverty. But he did have a dream. This new Dr. King stopped wondering, as the living King once did, why people pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water. But still, he had a dream. This new Dr. King never again mentioned the right of black workers to form unions and negotiate for their dignity and livelihoods. But this new guy, he had a dream.

The Dreamer as we know him today bears little resemblance to the man who was murdered in 1968. The Dreamer was constructed out of whole cloth by the same powerful media institutions which built King up in 1965 and 66, which denounced and slandered him 67 and 68, and made him a useful saint after his death. King never lived to be forty, so the Dreamer has already lived longer than the man, and for the powerful, has been far more useful.

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[I]n the spring of 1967, Dr. King unequivocally denounced the war in Vietnam as unjust and immoral. He called the US government the greatest purveyor of violence on earth, and predicted that if nothing changed for the better we'd be marching to stop future murderous and unjust imperial wars in other places without end.

  Bruce Dixon: Black Agenda Report

Which may explain more than anything why Dr. King was murdered.

[The official MLK march on Washington commemoration] events sent a message to the world that the historical Black struggle for social justice and peace was nothing more than a ploy to achieve proximity to Power.

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The problem, of course, is not [Rev. Al] Sharpton’s personal vulgarity and corruption, but the worldview that he shares with the whole cabal of Black misleaders. To put it simply, they never agreed with Dr. Martin Luther King on the need for a “revolution” that is “international in scope” and would force the United States to “repent of her modern economic imperialism,” as historian Paul Street notes in this issue. They do not share Dr. King’s socially transformational “dream.” Indeed, they have no core vision at all, other than that Black American individuals be widely represented within structures of power in the United States: Black titans of Wall Street, Black generals and – the ultimate prize – a Black president.

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The collapse of the Black economy, the evisceration of the Constitution, mass Black incarceration, multiple and constant U.S. wars against weaker peoples – none of this can be allowed to tarnish or undermine the embodiment of Black progress, Barack Obama. Which is why it is perfectly logical to Sharpton and Ben Jealous and their ilk that Obama star in the March on Washington commemoration, as both the symbol and the personification of “The Dream.” It is the dream of those who want nothing more than to become full-fledged partners in U.S. imperialism.

It is inconceivable that Dr. King would share the stage with a president who was at that moment preparing a savage and illegal attack on a sovereign country. Dr. King’s voice has been censored and his dream vandalized, repackaged and presented as a gift to a corporate agent with a Kill List.


  Glen Ford: Black Agenda Report