“I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH AT 50 BY RAHEEM OLUWAFUNMINIYI "It is fifty years since that speech was made yet fifty years down, not many believe the United States has made progress. Two dissenting views/opinions suffice here. One opinion argues that with the emergence of a black man as America’s president coupled with the elevation of Eric Holder as the first black US attorney general, King’s vision of an America ‘where his children will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’ has finally come to fruition. To this group of people, there is nothing left to prove that a black man and every other race of American descent cannot be who he wants to become. Others however, see this opinion as total balderdash, most especially at time when racial profiling hit an unprecedented high recently, causing provocation and ill feelings in many parts of the country. They cited the example of the recent brutal killing in Florida of a teenage black boy, Trayvon Martins by neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman and the latter’s subsequent acquittal. Such issue, they claim, makes nonsense of the so called ‘non-existing colour bar’ or ‘unity in diversity’ America peddles around the world. The question on the mind of this writer goes beyond the opinion of the two schools of thought above. In as much as we subscribe to the fact that Barack Obama is today’s American president who surprisingly won a second term in office over a year ago, which to many around the world is a significant progress on the part of most African Americans, the seeming query here is about what the average contemporary African American has done in ensuring a steady rise to personal upliftment?"
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 07:00:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015