Transcript

MLK day · Chuck Douglas

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Speaker 1: Martin Luther King day. This is with some not going
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Speaker 1: to be a popular opinion, I know, But as a
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Speaker 1: person who is constantly hearkening back, you know me, I'm
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Speaker 1: always I love the old movies, I love the old music,
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Speaker 1: I love the old television shows. I think about days
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Speaker 1: like this in their context. You know, why do we
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Speaker 1: have this day? What was it that brought about this
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Speaker 1: observance of the birth date of this man? The civil
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Speaker 1: rights movement in the United States of America spanning basically
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Speaker 1: the mid sixties into the early seventies, and a great
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Speaker 1: deal is done. It was rights not only for people
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Speaker 1: with brown skin or black skin, but also women in
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Speaker 1: the mix, as the women's liberation movement began and to
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Speaker 1: kind of kick in there in the early nineteen seventies,
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Speaker 1: and as I think about the world as I remember
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Speaker 1: it to be as a youngster, just observing, and I've
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Speaker 1: always been very observed. Even as a kid, even even
1:14
Speaker 1: as a little fat boy, I paid a lot of
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Speaker 1: attention to the world around me. I did, and I
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Speaker 1: stand by this. People will tell me all the time
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Speaker 1: that I idealize the past, and they want to tell
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Speaker 1: me everything that was wrong with the country. We well
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Speaker 1: black people couldn't this, and women couldn't that, And we
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Speaker 1: as a country may not have been better in many ways,
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Speaker 1: but we as a people in this country were better
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Speaker 1: than we are now. Period. We were better then. Democrats
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Speaker 1: Republic against black, white, male, female didn't matter as a group,
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Speaker 1: and as a general rule, we as Americans were just
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Speaker 1: better people. Even with our problems, our challenges, our political issues,
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Speaker 1: our social issues, Vietnam going on, Even with all of that,
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Speaker 1: I believe we were better as human beings. Remember that
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Speaker 1: was the era when the man that we honored today
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Speaker 1: said that he had a dream about a world where
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Speaker 1: his children were judged by the content of their character
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Speaker 1: as opposed to the color of their skin. And today,
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, all these years later, the color of
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Speaker 1: your skin seems to mean everything. You are allowed to
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Speaker 1: get away with all kinds of stuff. You are blameless,
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Speaker 1: to be held completely unaccountable for all kinds of stuff
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Speaker 1: if your skin is the right color. All these years later,
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Speaker 1: we are still talking about the disadvantages of color. After
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Speaker 1: having a black president, a real win, I'm not talking
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Speaker 1: about Bill Clinton. After having a black president, we are
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Speaker 1: still hearing the rhetoric, usually from very rich white people
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Speaker 1: about how black people can't get anywhere in this country.
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Speaker 1: When a black person does some heinous crime, there are
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Speaker 1: protests and go fundmes. There was a time when they
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Speaker 1: were held accountable, more so by their own society than
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Speaker 1: by society overall. When fellow black people would say no,
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Speaker 1: you can't do that, they would stand against you, they
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Speaker 1: would turn you in because they wanted to be good citizens,
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Speaker 1: the same thing that we ask of everyone else. And
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Speaker 1: people don't seem to grasp anymore. If you come here,
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Speaker 1: in your case, perhaps not voluntarily, but if you come here,
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Speaker 1: what we're asking is that we are that great American
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Speaker 1: melting pot. That's ideally what we are, where all of
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Speaker 1: our cultures come together and continue to add to what
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Speaker 1: is America. The United States of America essentially is the borg.
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Speaker 1: We assimilate your culture, your food, your traditions into American culture.
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Speaker 1: And for many years that was the goal, that was
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Speaker 1: just the understood goal of coming to America, living in America.
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Speaker 1: Being in America. Today, we don't have the melting pod.
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Speaker 1: Everybody wants to come and be their own, their own thing,
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Speaker 1: and that's not what this country was built on. People
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Speaker 1: who want to say this country was built on immigration.
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Speaker 1: Well yeah, I'm not going to argue with that, but
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Speaker 1: it was immigration with a different vision in mind. People
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Speaker 1: coming here to be Americans to flee something, to flee something,
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Speaker 1: to escape something, escape something, to come to our shores
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Speaker 1: to then recreate what it was you fled and escape
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Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. And we, as the people of this country,
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Speaker 1: of all ILKs, all colors, all creeds, we understood that
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Speaker 1: more sixty years ago than we seemed to understand it today.
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Speaker 1: That was an era sixty years ago when a president,
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Speaker 1: a Democrat president, an iconic Democrat president, said ask not
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Speaker 1: what your country can do for you, ask what you
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Speaker 1: can do for your country. And it was cheered. It
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Speaker 1: was cheered by Republicans and Democrats alike, by conservatives and
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Speaker 1: liberals alike. It was cheered, and that was recognized as
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Speaker 1: one of the greatest moments in Democrat politics in this country.
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Speaker 1: And to say something like that today makes you an elitist,
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Speaker 1: right wing lunatic. Only a Republican would say something like that,
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Speaker 1: and then they would be chastised and vilified for it.
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Speaker 1: I say that on this day when we celebrate a
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Speaker 1: man who pushed, pushed so very hard to the point
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Speaker 1: where he surrendered his own life for equality of all
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Speaker 1: people in this country. That we return to the vision,
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Speaker 1: the desire, the want, the expectance. We return to equality
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Speaker 1: and forget about equity. It's not about equity. Equality and
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Speaker 1: equity are not the same thing. What doctor King wanted
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Speaker 1: was for everyone to have a fair shot at the
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Speaker 1: American dream, an equal opportunity to achieve to have. He
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Speaker 1: didn't want you to get it just because somebody else
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Speaker 1: had it. See that's the difference. Equality means you've got
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Speaker 1: the same shot at it as anybody else. Equity means
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Speaker 1: if somebody else gets it, some government program comes along
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Speaker 1: and gives the same thing to you just because you
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Speaker 1: should have it. And that's wrong. That's wrong, that direction,
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Speaker 1: that inclination, that's wrong. And that is why I contend
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Speaker 1: we were better as the people of the United States
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Speaker 1: of America when the dream was for equality, not when
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Speaker 1: the pursuit was for equity, When we all understood right
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Speaker 1: and wrong and good and bad, when we all believed
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Speaker 1: that criminals should be punished regardless of the color of
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Speaker 1: their skin. We were better as the people of this
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Speaker 1: country then, far more so than now.