poverty rate was about 10 percent; now it exceeds 12 percent, with the rate for African Americans and Latinos flirting with 25 percent. Shouldn’t some of our celebration of Dr. King include the continuation of his fight against poverty? Somehow poverty isn’t often referenced, the socially blind cruelty simply accepted. We cringe at those who stand on streets begging for money, and moralize that they ought to get work. Yet, we see unemployment data that suggest that there is little work to be had. We don’t connect the dots. We are, in the words of King “socially . . . cruel and blind.”
So even as a statue opens to the public, doors close to too many Americans. Even as people throng to celebrate, there are those who are supportive, but who have had nothing to celebrate in a long time. The debt ceiling has imposed a particular ugliness on the current climate. As cities gird up for fall and winter, they are grappling with the reality that many will be unable to pay for utilities, and have the possibility of freezing this winter. Some were buttressed by federal funds, funds that must be cut. Similarly, there are cities where there is vacant housing and also homelessness. Why not put some of the homeless into vacant homes. Banks are often special villains, chasing profit and repelling the people whose dollars have inflated their bottom line.
Here is what Dr. King said, “We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. . . .You see my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?’
Dr. King spoke to economic restructuring. So does the Tea Party, though from another perspective. Too many have been silent about the economic disparities that define our nation, even as they celebrate Harry Johnson’s amazing accomplishment. While Johnson’s dream has been realized, Dr. King’s dream for economic justice, which means economic restructuring, remains deferred. This is a dichotomy, and also a tragedy.
Julianne Malveaux is an economist and president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C.
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