From Selma to Chicago, MLK’s legacy is being betrayed by grievance politics

I precocious crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge successful Selma, Alabama, conscionable days agone during my Walk Across America, and I felt the afloat value of its history. That bridge, stained with the humor of civilian rights ft soldiers, stands arsenic a testament to the unyielding courageousness of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and those who fought alongside him for dignity, equality and justice. Now, arsenic Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives, I find myself pondering a haunting question: What would Dr. King deliberation if helium could spot Chicago’s South Side today?

The South Side is not a relic of the past. It is simply a present-day surviving crisis. Gunfire echoes done neighborhoods wherever children should beryllium playing successful the streets. Poverty is disposable everyplace — successful littered streets, breached windows and abandoned buildings. Schools walk connected failing kids. Families are torn isolated not by achromatic supremacy, but by the poison of neglect, fatherlessness and a civilization that embraces dependency implicit escaped will.

Dr. King dreamed of a beloved assemblage wherever character, not color, defined us. He spoke often of the Promised Land, and those words defined his last code earlier helium was assassinated. He marched for opportunity, not handouts. He spent a batch of clip successful Chicago during the 1960s.

WALKING ACROSS AMERICA SHOWED ME WHY FAITH AND FREE THOUGHT CAN STILL WIN

But if helium walked these streets now, I judge helium would weep — not lone astatine the unit and deprivation, but astatine however we person squandered his legacy. He would spot a Black Lives Matter question that exploded onto the country successful 2020 and reaped billions of dollars successful donations — what 1 of its founders brazenly called "white guilt money." Corporations and celebrities poured successful fortunes, virtue-signaling their mode to absolution.

Yet wherever did that wealth go? Not to the South Side’s crumbling schools oregon job-training programs. Not to mentoring programs for at-risk younker oregon harmless havens from the streets. Instead, it lined the pockets of a fewer — backing mansions successful upscale neighborhoods — portion the Black underclass continues to tread astatine the bottom.

I cognize this firsthand. As a pastor who has dedicated his beingness to uplifting his assemblage done Project H.O.O.D. — Helping Others Obtain Destiny — I person seen zero dollars from those windfalls. We are successful the process of gathering our Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center, the archetypal caller gathering successful my vicinity successful much than 50 years. We supply occupation grooming and combat regular battles against despair — without a dime from the grievance industry.

That’s what it is, folks: an industry. A instrumentality that profits disconnected pain, peddling slogans and outrage portion ignoring existent solutions — solutions that are often elemental but necessitate hard enactment and perseverance. Dr. King didn’t march for performative activism oregon luxury homes bought connected the backs of the suffering. He marched for self-reliance, family, religion and the American committedness that hard enactment could assistance anyone.

So what would King accidental astir this? He would telephone it a betrayal. He would punctual america that existent advancement is measured successful transformed lives. He would decry the lowered expectations imposed connected Black communities — the insidious conception that we are perpetual victims, excused from accountability.

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No, Dr. King didn’t dice truthful that America could little its expectations of Black communities. He died truthful we could emergence to the highest expectations — the aforesaid standards to which each Americans are held.

American Civil Rights person Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) speaks astatine a rally held astatine the Robert Taylor Houses successful Chicago successful the 1960s.  ( Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)

The South Side doesn’t request different slogan oregon much bare politics. It needs 1 happening supra each else: development. It needs the improvement of its younker into beardown citizens with the quality to prehend opportunity. It needs improvement that teaches radical however to unrecorded and thrive successful freedom.

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Most of all, it needs the restoration of bully religion to reverse much than 60 years of atrocious religion that has destroyed excessively galore communities.

Martin Luther King Jr. whitethorn beryllium agelong gone, but his imaginativeness of the Promised Land — a onshore of accidental for each — remains wrong reach. We indispensable question it oregon perish.

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