Posthumous invocations of King’s dream sustain national innocence and mask ongoing black suffering.

Evidence

It was a prophetic beckoning. She wanted him to give voice to the power of the imagination: that one day black people, in this country, could be the human beings God called us to be. This was not a vision consonant with the white fantasy of ridding the nation of the problem of black people by making us invisible. It was something much more. King wanted us to become a democracy released from the burdens of white supremacy. Sadly, for so many now and in the hands of a certain few like Reagan and Clinton, Dr. King’s words have become an instrument of the tragedy of America. Like vultures (and African Americans have joined in the feast) we have picked clean his bones, such that his powerful dream confirms the illusion of our national innocence and keeps us sleepwalking while black America withers. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 322

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School’s analysis of how culture is transformed into ideology that papers over injustice.