I have a dream: Forty years on

[dArKeR]

Like all great oratory its brilliance was in its simplicity. Like all great political speeches it understood its audience. And like all great performances it owed as much to its delivery as its content. But what made this performance stand out was that it was both timely in its message and timeless in its appeal.

Forty years on, Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" is still a great speech. Still pertinent, even though many of its immediate demands have been met. Still relevant, beyond America's borders and the racial context that it addressed. So universal in its humanism that it spoke to Catholics in Northern Ireland during the 60s, black South Africans in the townships during the 70s and 80s and speaks to the Roma in eastern Europe today.

Yet, if President John F Kennedy had had his way, it would never have been delivered. And if King had been left to his own devices it would probably never have been remembered.

It was June 22 1963, when Kennedy met with the nation's civil rights leaders. Just one month before, segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama had turned hoses and dogs on black teenagers. Only a few days later the president went to Germany where he slammed Soviet repression at the Berlin Wall, calling for freedom abroad...

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=19367

If you look at what's happened in the world since then; white race countries have progressed the most; brown raced countries very poor to terrible but in the middle; black race countries the same or moved backwards; WHY?

http://darkerxdarker.tripod.com/