60 years ago Martin Luther King gave his famous speech with the quote “I have a dream”. Conservatives in the US often refer to it – but take King’s words out of context.
Martin Luther King Junior said 60 years ago that he dreams of his four children living in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character. These lines were not in the manuscript of the speech; the young pastor added them spontaneously, in the style of a sermon.
“He knew it was important, but he didn’t know that refrain ‘I have a dream’ would resonate and live on,” says Jonathan Eig, author of a recently published biography of Martin Luther King, or MLK for short.
Conservative US politicians in particular often like to quote “I have a dream”, starting with Ronald Reagan. “We are committed to a society in which men and women have equal opportunities,” said the then US President in 1986. And that’s why he was against quotas. He wants a color-blind society that, in King’s words, judges people not by the color of their skin but by their character. At the time, Reagan was opposed to promoting women and minorities in the workplace. In King’s color-blind world, Reagan suggested, there were no quotas.
The daughter disagrees
Republicans argue similarly to this day, most recently with a view to the universities. King didn’t want young African Americans there to be favored because of their skin color, they say.
Bernice King, a daughter of Pastor King, disagrees. Because the inequalities that King fought against are demonstrably still there, she says. When it comes to health, income, wealth, and criminal law, blacks still come last.
King himself later spoke of his dream turning into a nightmare. And he demanded that society, which for centuries had done something against black people, must now do something for black people.
Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Junior, in front of her father’s memorial in Washington, DC
Taken out of context
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, also recently tried Martin Luther King. DeSantis wants to ban supposedly left-wing content from schools. Slavery, for example, should be treated in class in such a way that white children do not feel uncomfortable. Think about what MLK stood for, DeSantis said. He didn’t want to judge people by their skin color, but by their character. Nobody talks about that today.
Keri Lake, a politician from the Trump camp, goes even further: She firmly believes that King, John F. Kennedy and the Founding Fathers would be “America First Republicans” today.
Bernice King is lost for words. The problem is that people from all parties are taking her father’s quotes out of context and misinterpreting them, she says. They put together a “comfortable king” that suits their respective political programs. But her father was uncomfortable. WeWhen you read his entire work, you realize “that he said very radical things that we all feel a little uncomfortable about”.