Editors at Issues and Insights lament the woke movement’s impact on a beloved civil rights activist’s legacy.
A week from Tuesday we will mark the 55th anniversary of the day the murderous James Earl Ray took the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader should be allowed to rest in peace, but he is being slain yet again, this time by a mob of mediocre minds with rock-bottom character that seeks to overturn his life’s works.
In what is widely acknowledged as his greatest speech, King dreamed that his “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,” that “one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
King also damned the “dark and desolate valley” and “manacles” of segregation. He identified us all as “God’s children.”
He couldn’t have been clearer about his vision for a color-blind society. And in the 40 years that followed his death, our country moved in that direction, year by year, heart by heart.
But much has changed. The woke mob, critical race theory, and the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) movement have reopened a once-gaping, raw wound that had almost closed. Consider just a few of the many instances in which our “leaders” and institutional luminaries not only reject King’s teaching but actively try to return this country to an era of segregation and ugly, unapologetic bigotry.
We could start just about anywhere, but we begin with Florida International University, a public institution that mirrors the insurgents’ march through our institutions. Its diversity, equity, and inclusion program “condemns the United States as a system of ‘white supremacy,’” and “segregates scholarships and student programs by race,” says author and filmmaker Christopher Rufo.
