What Has Happened to the Dream?

Race and Wealth in the 21^st Century

 

Melvin L. Oliver

Sara Miller McCune and Sage

Endowed Dean of Social Sciences

and

Professor of Sociology

University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Abstract for Dr. Martin Luther King Day Lecture

Ball State University

Muncie, Indiana

January 20, 2008

As we celebrate the life and spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, it is also time to make a sober assessment of what has happened to the glorious Dream that he challenged America to fulfill. To often that Dream has been interpreted as erasing race from American life. We are told that we have achieved the Dream because we are now judged "by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin." Notwithstanding the Barack Obama's of this world, race is still a determining factor in our lives. More specifically, the part of the Dream that we have forgotten, or we do not want to face, is the slow progress that we have made in reducing racial economic inequality in our nation. Today, 40 years since Martin Luther King marched for economic justice in Memphis, we are still economically unequal. The racial legacy of economic inequality rooted in a history of slavery, Jim Crow, institutionalized racism, and racialized policy has produced racial wealth inequality that has cemented African Americans to the bottom of the economic hierarchy. African Americans today own only ten cents for every dollar that whites own; we are in the midst of an unprecedented stripping of African American wealth in the subprime mortgage crisis; our middle class children are unable to reproduce the middle class status of their parents; and a generation of African Americans have been ensnared in prison retarding their ability to have productive economic lives for themselves and their families. It is the Dream of economic justice that we need to turn our attention to as a fitting tribute to Dr. King.

Biographical Information of Dr. Melvin Oliver