*In his famous 1963 speech “I Have a Dream,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in part: “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”
Topically, when most Black people talk about reparations, they think in terms of dollars, and nonsense: How much money; how do we determine who’s going to get what; and how do we split it up? Reparations for the culture of slavery cannot be determined based on money, as was the case for Sioux Indian Tribes for illegal seizure of tribal lands, or of the victims of the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, the only two groups that were ever paid reparations from the federal government. Why? Because of contiguous tribal and familial roots.
During slavery, Black families were torn apart, and the “Willie Lynch” letter (purported to be a hoax) that pitted slaves against each other, so permeated the Black race that a lot of the contempt amongst them still exists even today, whether a hoax or not. Why is it that most Blacks would rather do business with non-Blacks than with other Blacks? Unsubstantiated reports have long held that a dollar circulates in Jewish, Asian, and White communities much longer than in Black communities. If that be the case, then if reparations were paid out in money only, what benefit would that be to Black communities?
Dr. King went on to say, “So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is not the time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
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Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”
Christian churches of America, now is the time to speak out and promote “the solid rock of brotherhood.” Now is the time to live out the challenge, “What would Jesus do?”
Now is not the time to preach one thing in the pulpit and say another thing at home, where your kids are in earshot, absorbing hypocrisy and traditional ideology that continues to divide us rather than unite us.
Dr. King died for truth and justice. Are you willing to lay down your own life (old ways/nature) and pick up your cross? Jesus came to give us all a life of abundance and died for us all, that we all may have eternal life.
Larry Buford is a contributing writer. Author of “Things Are Gettin’ Outta Hand” and “Book To The Future” (Amazon). Email: [email protected]
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