Requiem for a Dream

That dream that Dr. Martin Luther the King spoke of 48 years ago is alive and showing itself everywhere we look; you just don’t notice it. The “Dream” is an ice cream cone tattooed on your favorite rapper’s face and those ‘Basketball Wives’ behaving like schoolgirls every Sunday night. The “Dream” is also in 12th grade reading on a 3rd level, drinking, smoking weed and having babies with no regard or thought of a job, because dreaming is something kids do, but everyone’s grown.

The “Dream” is shooting at someone they should’ve learned the alphabet next to, but they never quite got that L,M,N,O,P, right. The “Dream” is waiting for everything to be given to them, because working towards it takes too damn long and hope was lost when Daddy stopped coming around, because his dreams ended when Mommy said she was later. The “Dream” is 48-years-old chasing despair with shots of vodka looking at life through their fingers, because shame is not to be worn in public.

The “Dream” is also that little Black girl from Mississippi that became a billionaire or the guy with the funny name that became Leader of the Free World. The “Dream” manifests itself in boardrooms and on college campuses across the country; it travels the world displaying its gift through art, politics, science, entertainment, athletics, literature and medicine on a daily basis. It’s very easy to forget that portion of the “Dream”, because the dregs of the legacy of the struck down on that balcony in Memphis, have created their own warped version of his “Dream”.

Unfortunately, their adaptations easily assuage the guilt of those who’ve created and perpetuated the “American Dream” and simultaneously launched the War on Drugs, which is nothing more than the War on Urban America and have become talking points for politicians and the description that law enforcement swears that I fit. That makes for better copy, higher ratings, comic relief and tragic endings and leaves me scratching my head and asking myself is this is the “Promised Land” that Dr. King saw from that mountaintop?

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