I’m not sayin Luke don’t deserve some of the animosity, but he ain’t on my hate list. Really surprised by the younger guys who don’t realize how he paved the way, but that’s also illustrative of the larger community as well. Not realizing pioneers contribution.
The following excerpt was written in 2013 by a journalist I disagree with quite a bit, but I think he nailed it.
...All of this is equally true about racial progress. There is a sense today that we have reached a post-racial America, a sense that Barack Obama's presidency symbolizes an arrival of a more harmonious era of racial equality as we move forward.
This naive belief defies the principles of sustained progress. This naive belief misidentifies the people responsible for President Obama's ascension, Oprah's success and Michael Wilbon's pardonable interruption of Tony Kornheiser.
This current in-our-prime generation -- the people 55 and below -- is not responsible for the freedom, power and wealth enjoyed by a handful of African-Americans. This progress was won 50 years ago by a segregated self-sufficient generation that was willing to invest in our future by making the ultimate sacrifice. They gave their lives. They endured and fought indignities so that we didn't have to. Their investments matured, and we have reaped the benefits.
We pay lip service to comprehending this fact. But we have practiced virtually none of the principles and concepts they employed so that Obama could seek the White House, Kobe Bryant could land a $50 million contract well past his prime and Tyler Perry could get rich making bad movies.
We have lived self-indulgently in the opportunities and progress MLK's generation won. We did not double down on their investments. Nor did we attempt to perfect the flawed ideas they saw as solutions. Integration is a worthy aspiration, a luxury item. It is not a necessity. It is not self-sufficiency.
You can assign blame wherever you choose. And I certainly point a finger at the civil rights opponents who concocted a drug war and mass incarceration as backlash for the sweeping changes brought on by Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedys, Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks. But the history of the world stipulates there will always be opponents of advancement. Progress is won through unrelenting diligence to a cause.
The HBCU-educated generation that stared down racist cops, attack dogs and fire hoses so that their grandkids could be educated anywhere they chose has been replaced by a generation that disavows education and argues it has redefined the N-word.
People who were taught our unique African-American history by people who comprehend it and are passionate about it have been replaced by the integration and incarceration generation. That's why you have the blind following the dysfunctional.
