Thursday, March 11, 2010
On April 14Th, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Stanford University. The goal of his speech was to bring the world together as one.
I think that the United States still has similar problems today like the issues Martin Luther King Jr. discussed in his "The Other America Speech." America today is divided. I think that people have made it far from the past, but there is still a fine line between different groups in the country. I think that colorism has taken the place of racism in the country,but there is no excuse why people can't break the barrier held between them. People can only make you feel inferior to them if you allow them to. As African Americans we should rise up and prove the stereotypical things placed on us wrong. It is 2010 and we have no excuse for not fighting against barriers. Slavery is not an excuse any more for us not being able to reach our goals. If our ancestors fought during oppression why can't we fight for what we want we are no longer oppressed.
Area of Speech
But I'd like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the Other America.
And I use this subject because there are literally two Americas. One America is
beautiful for situation. And, in a sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of
prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of
people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and
education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America,
millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America
millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.
But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a
daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the
fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets
daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find
themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are
poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in
the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America is what it does to little children.
Little children in this other America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority
forming every day in their little mental skies. And as we look at this other America,
we see it as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams. Many people of various
backgrounds live in this other America. Some are Mexican-Americans, some are
Puerto Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups. Millions of
them are Appalachian whites. But probably the largest group in this other America in
proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro.
