[02:27.51]5 African Americans have more difficulty obtaining business loans,buying homes,getting hired.
[02:35.53]Schools and housing patterns are still largely separate and unequal.Women still face glass ceilings in corporate offices.
[02:45.85]Ninety-seven percent of the corporate CEOs of the Fortune 500 are white men.
[02:52.75]That does not result from talent being concentrated among males with pale skin.
[02:58.94]6 Today,Dr.King's legacy--the commitment to take affirmative actions to open doors and opportunity--is under political assault.
[03:08.97]Dr.King worked against terrible odds in a hopeful time.America was experiencing two decades of remarkable economic growth
[03:19.29]and prosperity.It was assumed,as the Kerner Commission made clear,that the"growth dividend"
[03:27.91]would enable us to reduce poverty and open opportunity relatively painlessly.
[03:34.88]But the war on poverty was never fought;instead,the dividend and the growth were squandered in the jungles of Vietnam.
[03:44.13]7 Three decades later,the country is more prosperous but the times are less hopeful.
[03:50.53]Real wages for working people have been declining for 20 years.
[03:56.15]People are scared for good reason,as layoffs rise to record levels even in the midst of a recovery.
[04:04.30]8 In this context,prejudice flourishes,feeding on old hates,keeping alive old fears.
[04:12.50]What else could explain the remarkably dishonest assault on affirmative-action programs
[04:19.47]that seek to remedy stubborn patterns of discrimination?
[04:23.89]9 House Speaker Newt Gingrich,a history professor,sets the tone by simply erasing history.The Washington Post reported:
[04:33.48]"Gingrich dismissed the argument that those who benefit from affirmative action,commonly African Americans,
[04:41.60]have been subjected to discrimination over a period of centuries.That is true of virtually every American,
[04:50.56]Gingrich said,nothing that the Irish were discriminated against by the English,for example."
[04:57.48]10 As Roger Wilkins writes in a thoughtful essay in the Nation magazine,
[05:03.36]this is breathtakingly dishonest for a history professor.Blacks have been on the North American continent for nearly 375 years
[05:13.98]For 245 of those,the country practiced slavery.For another 100 or so,
[05:21.50]segregation was enforced throughout the South and much of the North,often pliced by home-grown terrorists.
[05:29.76]We've had only 30 years of something else,largely the legacy of the struggle led by Dr.King.
[05:37.07]11 The media plays up the "guilt"African Americans supposedly suffer about affirmative action.I can tell you this.
[05:46.27]Dr.King felt no guilt when special laws gave us the right to vote.
[05:51.81]He felt no guilt about laws requiring that African Americans have the opportunity to go to schools,to enter universities,
[06:01.55]to compete for jobs and contraces.This supposed guilt is at best a luvurious anxiety of those
[06:10.67]who now have the opportunity to succeed or fail.
[06:15.39]12 If Dr.King were alive today,he would be 66,younger than Senator Bob Dole who suggests that discrimination ended
[06:25.14]"before we were born." Unlike Dole,Dr.King would be working to bring people together,not drive them apart.
[06:34.65]13 Modern-day conservatives haven't a clue about what to do with an economy
[06:40.18]that is generating greater inequality and reducing the security and living standards of more and more Americans.
[06:48.39]So they seek to distract and divide.
[06:52.38]14 As Dole reaffirmed his abandonment of affirmative action,
[06:57.63]fellow Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas called for more cuts from the poor.
[07:04.30]15 As we head into this troubling time,we would do well to remember Dr.King's legacy.No matter how desperate things were,
[07:13.41]no matter how grave the crisis,no matter how many times his dreams were shattered,Dr.King rufused to grow bitter.
[07:22.45](4)Men and women,he taught,"have the capacity to do right as well as wrong,and[our]history is a path upward,
[07:31.80]not downward.It's only when it is truly dark that you can see the stars."
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