I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. That was how Martin Luther King, Jr., began his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, over 60 years ago.
King knew how to capture the American public’s attention with his commanding voice and peaceful protests.
This is just the opposite of what we are witnessing today from angry mobs, full of hate, centered in Minneapolis, Minn.
Of course, the most famous line from King’s speech was, “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.”
For the most part, I believe that dream is coming true.
Let’s look at history for some background. First of all, slavery did not start with white Anglo-Saxon Europeans in America. We were the only ones to fight a civil war to stop it.
Since the dawn of civilization, those in power have enslaved others. Usually, enslaved people were taken when one country or tribe conquered another. In the bible, Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians, Muslims have enslaved Christians, and visa versa. Germany used slave labor to advance its war effort.
Ancient Greece, Athens and Roman civilizations were all dependent on slavery.
As historian David Eltis explains, “almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories.”
According to Wikipedia, some Native American tribes held war captives as slaves prior to and during European colonization. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, a small number of tribes adopted the practice of keeping slaves as chattel property, holding increasing numbers of African-American slaves.
On the flip side, the Indians were enslaved by the Spanish.
There are also records of early free Africans in America who acquired hundreds of acres of land and owned African slaves themselves.
Slavery was prevalent in Africa even before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Most of the Africans brought to America on slave ships were captured in the African interior by African traders.
Before you jump to conclusions, I am not defending slavery and its evils.
In Medieval Europe, you may not have been a slave, but you were close to it. In their “feudal society,” only the landowners had any wealth or power, and they were very few indeed.
Even without slavery or feudalism, some cultures demonstrate a hierarchical class structure in their society through “hierarchical language.” This is still used in the Korean language where you speak differently to those above you in the social hierarchy — through the use of various determined linguistic techniques — than you do your family.
Be thankful you are living today. Throughout history, the vast majority of humans who have ever lived were in abject poverty or enslaved. One thing that helped change that was capitalism and democracy.
Both Britain and the United States were instrumental in developing the idea of the sovereignty of the individual and incorporating it into their political systems — viewing people as individuals first and as part of a collective or group second.
This has given us freedom and democracy, which has spread throughout the world.
Currently, the radical left-liberal culture wants to place us all into groups or categories to define us, precisely what King was against. This is what socialism does — pitting one group against another.
It is a shame, but today, as a white father of three, I have to have the same hope and dream that one day, my children, and now grandchildren, will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Because today, with the social justice movement, many judge all white Caucasians as racist, and with the broad paintbrush of “white privilege.”
King wanted each person to be judged by their character, not the color of their skin, because using skin color to determine value is what it means to be racist.
The U.S. census now estimates that 19 percent of all newlyweds in 2025 had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity — up from 3 percent in 1967. Maybe one day there will no longer be a black, Hispanic, Asian, or white race. They will be eliminated by the children of interracial marriages.
Then, it will be as it should be, only the human race.
