Community Corner

Remembering the 'Dream': San Diego and MLK Jr.'s Vision

It's been 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Has the dream been fulfilled?

It's the line that everyone knows.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," Martin Luther King Jr. saidfrom the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.

It's been 50 years and many wonder whether this particular dream, or the others King mentioned—girls and boys of different races joining hands, equality, brotherhood—have actually come true.

A look at a racial dot map of Rancho Bernardo shows some division between where most whites and some Asians live in the community. Earlier this month, a Reuters poll found that about 40 percent of white Americans and about one in four non-white Americans don't have friends outside of their own race.

Still, other measures indicate that the lives of people of color—particularly black people—have moved in the direction of King's dream. His I Have a Dream speech, delivered at the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" also touched on the need for better economic opportunities for everyone as a condition of true freedom. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the black poverty rate has fallen to 27.6 percent from 41.8 percent in 1966—the closest year to the speech for which there is data. The median income of black families also has edged closer, with yet a ways to go, to matching that of American families overall.

Now, 50 years after King's speech, the nation's first black president is set to deliver his own speech in honor of the anniversary.

"The March on Washington capped off a summer of discontent, a time when the clarion call for civil rights was met with imprisonment, bomb threats, and base brutality," President Barack Obama stated in a proclamation declaring the 50th anniversary of the march. 

"Let us guard against prejudice—whether at the polls or in the workplace, whether on our streets or in our hearts—and let us pledge that, in the words of Dr. King, 'we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' "

Tell us: Do you think King's dream has been fulfilled in Rancho Bernardo? Why or why not?


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