The real MLK

Ground has been broken for the Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is a well-deserved monument but one that may further fetishize King and strip power and urgency away from his incomplete work.\nKing has been widely reduced to his happy dream of an equitable world. At the ground-breaking event Oprah Winfrey said, "I've lived the dream. ... It is because of Dr. King that I stand, that I have a voice to be heard."\nIt's wonderful that Oprah, like many other black people, has "lived the dream." But there is more to memorialize than an unrealized dream. We remember his stirring words as the "I Have a Dream" speech because it's the warm and fuzzy part that makes us feel good about ourselves and our world. But the point of his speech was not to dream, but to call direct attention to injustices that limited opportunities for black Americans and demand action to correct those injustices.\n"We have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition," King said during his famous 1963 oration. The "bank of justice" wrote a bad check to black people, and it was time to "make justice a reality for all God's children." \nYet today, we face the uncomfortable realization that the "shameful conditions" that troubled King more than 40 years ago still persist. For example, according to a report released by the Census Bureau, white household incomes were two-thirds higher than blacks' and 40 percent higher than Hispanics' in 2005. White people are also more likely to have college degrees and own homes and less likely to live in poverty, according to the report. The easy (and uninformed) justification is to attribute the disparities to differences in ability and work ethic. But these continued injustices are largely residual effects of discriminatory policies and programs that consistently placed many white Americans in a privileged position, especially financially.\nAt the ground-breaking ceremony, President George W. Bush acknowledged, "Honoring Dr. King's legacy requires more than building a monument. It requires the ongoing commitment of every American. So we will continue to work for the day when the dignity and humanity of every person is respected and the American promise is denied to no one." \nUnfortunately, not every American is committed to honoring the legacy -- like the more than 2.1 million Michigan voters who opted last week to outlaw affirmative action programs in the state. The cleverly misnamed Michigan Civil Rights Initiative ignores the injustice in judging people on "merit" when major discrepancies exist in opportunity and privilege in the first place.\nAppropriately King will be honored on the National Mall. But let's not simply offer excessive reverence to the great leader as though he magically ushered in an age of civil rights and justice. That monument should remind us that King's vision is still nothing more than a distant dream. \n"Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children"