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If I Never Hear “…Content of Their Character” Again, it Will be too Soon
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s words “…that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” used to represent a sentiment that genuinely well-meaning people understood.
In the aspirational era of Civil Rights in the 1960s, frustrated blacks knew exactly how significant those words were. Despite our characters, talents, learning, and whatever other God-given goods we possessed, all white people saw was the brown skin they so devalued. The same people who repeated “You can’t judge a book by its cover” ad nauseum, never bothered to remove volumes with brown jackets from the shelf. They had no compunction, however, about removing those “brown jackets” from life.
Every fake-inclusive speaker, but sincere racist, has hijacked the saying, twisted it like a washrag, robbed it of all spirit, and presented it, not as a promise of opportunity redeemed, but as a veiled, yet still shameless, plea for continued skin privilege.
Poor Me and My Disrespected White Pelt!
“Poor me, and my disrespected white pelt. I am being judged by the color of my skin. I get blamed for the evils my ancestors committed (if, indeed, they committed any) my innocent children are made to feel like villains, putrid blood is being poured over my, heretofore, spotless, history, and black people with crazy hair think they’re my equal.”
All of that from “…the content of their character?” Yep.
Hypocrites, you ain’t fooling nobody, least of all, yourselves.
Black people, but not black people alone, know what you’re doing. We’ve been gazing through that two-way mirror for a long time, and we know the difference between sincerity and mockery.
Now here’s my beef. For all of you who love to quote Dr. King, can you quote any of his utterances other than this and the sentence, “I have a dream?” No Googling allowed. The lives and struggles of Dr…
