Politics
Obama to stand in Martin Luther King’s shadow – 50 years on
“And the words that he spoke at that particular moment, with so much at stake, and the way in which he captured the hopes and dreams of an entire generation I think is unmatched,” Obama said on the Tom Joyner radio show.
Obama argued that King, who was assassinated in 1968, would have been amazed at some of the progress since his remarks in 1963, including towards equal rights before the law for African Americans.
But he admitted that as King’s March on Washington was about jobs, his fellow Nobel laureate would bemoan deprivation still felt by many African Americans, especially in the inner cities.
“It’s not enough just to have a black President – the question is, can the ordinary person, day-to-day, can they succeed? “And we have not made as much progress as we need to on that, and that is something that I spend all my time thinking about, is how do we give opportunity to everybody so if they work hard they can make it in this country.”
Obama has sought to ensure that though he is the first black president of the United States, his administration should not be defined by race. He argues that he is the president of all Americans. On only a few occasions since taking office has Obama stepped up and addressed his nation’s scarred racial past and sometimes uneasy present.
In his most direct intervention, just weeks ago, he gave an unusually sweeping discourse after a trial into the killing of a black teenager in Florida.
“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” Obama said of the victim, voicing anguish felt in the black community over what many see as racial profiling of many young African American men.
