Historian Peniel Joseph on one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most misinterpreted lines

and the I Have a Dream is really an inspirational wrapup and the most misunderstood part is the content of our character part where he says you know I want my four little girls to be judged by four little children the content of their character and not the color of their skin he's right about that but he doesn't mean that we're not going to recognize each other's cultural and ethnic differences in a positive way all King is talking about is saying that we're not going to equate race and ethnicity with negative things he's not talking about colorblind racism because we live in an age of colorblind racism where we've declared Racial equality by Fiat and we don't care about inequality in terms of racial outcomes and king would have been appalled by that he would have been appalled by that so the the what's so extraordinary about that speech and the most misunderstood aspect is that king is not just talking about we're going to be colorblind and not notice anything he's saying that we're no longer you know going to attach negative qualities

Channel: JFK Library

Views: 989

Keywords: JFK, Kennedy, Library, museum, history, politics, 1960s, cold, war, camelot, president, presidency, us, john, fitzgerald, jackie

Id: UeYB_nUz9xw

Length: 0min 58sec (58 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024