If Critical Race Theory means anything, it’s an inquiry into the persistence of racial inequality despite laws which guarantee equal treatment. This was on the mind of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he wrote his final book, Where Do We Go From Here? While the 1789 Constitution counted enslaved African Americans as three-fifths of a person, “today, another curious formula seems to declare he is approximately 50 percent of a person. Of the good things in life he has approximately one-half that of whites; of the bad he has twice those of whites,” Dr. King wrote.
After citing a series of facts about unequal housing, education and employment, he said, “These brief facts disclose the magnitude of the gap between existing realities and the goal of equality.” While acknowledging that not all white Americans are racists, Dr. King states racism had been part of the nation’s “dominant ideology” since its founding. From the earliest days, under the leadership of aristocrats, leading clergy and intellectuals, “the doctrine of white supremacy was imbedded (sic) in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit,” he wrote. “It became a structural part of our culture.” “The racism of today is real,” Dr. King wrote in 1967, “but the democratic spirit that has always faced it is equally real. The value in pulling racism our of its obscurity and stripping it of its rationalizations lies in the confidence that it can be changed.” More than five decades later, Dr. King still speaks the truth.
Arnie Alpert
Canterbury