Public Employee Press

The March 1963-2013
The unfulfilled dream
By GREGORY N. HEIRES

One of the greatest orations in American history, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, is remembered for its idealism and its powerful spirit of hope for an end to racism in the United States.

Over the 50 years since King delivered the speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the African American community has made tremendous gains in legal rights, politics and education. The election of President Barack Obama is a potent symbol of the gains of the civil rights movement that King led.

But in an oft forgotten - or ignored - part of his speech, King spoke darkly about poverty and the economic struggle of African Americans. Were he alive today, he could repeat his indictment of America's economic apartheid.

King opened his speech by saying that 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, "the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

As far as African Americans are concerned, King said, the country had "defaulted" on the "promissory note" of the Declaration of Independence that says all Americans have the "unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." He charged that "America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' '' And today, the United States largely continues to default on that promissory note:

• Over the past quarter century, the wealth gap between blacks and whites has nearly tripled, from $85,000 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009, according to a study by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University. In 2009, the median net worth of white families was $265,000, while black families had only $23,500.
• During the past 50 years, the black unemployment rate has continued to be twice as high as that of whites. In 1963, 5 percent of white Americans were out of work, compared with 10.9 percent of black Americans. Today, the rate is 6.6 percent for whites and 12.6 percent for blacks.
• Today, the difference between the income of blacks and whites is 59 percent, slightly higher than the 55 percent gap in 1967, according to U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center.
• The homeownership rate of African Americans is 28 percent lower than that of whites.
• Historically, the public sector has served as a springboard into the middle class for minorities and women. Blacks are about a third more likely to work as public employees than other workers, with one African American worker in five employed in the government sector. But their prominence in public service work made African Americans more vulnerable in the government downsizing that followed the 2008 financial crisis.