August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. shared a dream with his fellow Americans.
I have a dream that my four 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.
It has been over 40 years since that speech and Americans are still debating race relations, focusing on the importance of 'diversity' and fighting their way towards a 'colorblind' society.
Dr. King would be disheartened.
See, I don't believe that Dr. King ever promoted colorblindness. He knew he was black and was proud of his heritage and of his personal accomplishments.
And I don't believe that Dr. King would have promoted racial diversity. He believed that people should be judged by who they were, not what they looked like.
What Dr. King promoted was the idea of equality, the idea that as an American citizen a non-white person should be accorded the rights, privileges, opportunities, and responsibilities that a white person would be accorded. The diversity Dr. King promoted was the diversity of thought, not of color.
If Dr. King was right, which I believe he was, then why are so many people today still focused on the racial aspect of diversity? Do those people really think that two med students from wealthy families, one white and one black, would prove to be more diverse than one med student and one inner city kid who were both black?
In August of 2004, on XXBlog, Antigone posted "The African-American Blogging Thing," which was meant to be a satirical post based off of "The Woman Blogging Thing" on BOPNews.com.
The posts were almost identical in language. I believe this was meant to show how many of the reasons women weren't present in the blog-o-sphere were the same for African Americans.
Here I am going to focus mainly on Antigone's post. Antigone wrote:
It’s obviously a whites-only club (with select Blacks who act like in specifically stylized ways allowed). For instance, my style of blogging is very white - I feel like I have to conclude everything, which leaves less room for the more deliberative communication patterns I find among African-Americans.
Please excuse me while I channel a little bit of Julia Sugarbaker.
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