I know.
And I know that Shelby Steele is one of the Good Guys. He gets it.
But the article says he was not "born free" and this bothers me. A lot. Over half a million Americans were casualties in a huge war that freed the slaves over 150 years ago.
Shelby Steele was born free. There may be other things to talks about ("I remember segregated drinking fountains ...") but it bothers me when someone says "I was not born free". This is America. You were born free. You have a responsibility to make something of yourself. Shelby Steele has made something of himself. But a lot of others have not -- because "the Man" is keeping them down. It's a stupid way of thinking.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
And so on . . . For Steele, whose parents met while working for CORE, these words must have a force and veracity near that of holy writ. And, to be fair, the truth of King's premise cannot be denied, that black Americans were denied their rightful full measure of freedom until they won the balance through the civil rights movement and its triumph in the 1960s.