Send this story Print this story

Adjust text size

Guest opinion: Would Dr. King be proud of his dream?

(From a speech Mr. Marks planned to deliver Monday at a Martin Luther King birthday celebration.)

By Jym Marks

Early this morning I envisioned the days and signs of times, with racial temperaments still well and alive in the 21st century, as we hold the truth that all men are created equally.

Black Americans are still living in an institutionalized state of necessity. It reveals to us that we need a dream, perhaps the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared with us, to become a reality.

This dream necessity is a stronger reality for the black male, who is in roots of black American's greatest struggle for survival. The mission of survival has been a journey of constant struggle. A struggle from mama's breast milk to absent fathers.

We have had a chorus of bravery and a hymn of courage. We are from a surviving culture. The Black American culture.

We have crossed the sea of misery, skimmed the waters from Africa, and talked with our distant cousins through pretentious ambitions that many times have gone unnoticed.

We've seen the eyes of our skeleton past and the coming of the light. That light has illuminated so brightly that it has lit up over four hundred years of struggle; however, the obstacle and pediment has kept us strong.

Would Dr. King be proud of his dream?

We elected the first black president, Barack Obama. We appointed the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court.

We can no longer conceal the disgustingly insane ambushing, and self-destruction, of many of our young never-to-reach-their-21st birthday black males, who are aiding the new slave master in putting down the ball and chain and replacing it with crack cocaine. Instead of being programmed for Yale, several may be programmed for jail. Sadly and willingly being faithfully directed back to, forty acres and a mule. (One problem, there will be no mules.)

Too many young black men have guns in their hands and chips in their pockets. However, when they are hauled off to prison the guns will be removed. Then when they return to the free world, cement will be placed around their feet. They will be weighed down like hammers, driving nails in city streets.

The streets will render darkness into a life of success, because they're cool on the outside and messed up on the inside.

My brothers you're no longer paralyzed from the dusty bones of the so-called founding pilgrims of America.

You are paralyzed by self-destructive behavior. You are paralyzed from robbing too many banks of failure. You are paralyzed if you remain dumb, numb and uninformed, loaded down with do-nothingism.

You are pointing at your wives, pointing at your parents, pointing at those who try to help. You need to pay attention to your thumb

Would Dr. King be proud of his dream?

Jym Marks is a poet, motivational speaker and barber who owns and operates a hair salon, Markstyle, on Willow Road in Menlo Park.