This Black History Month, I am reminded of one of my Uncle the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous quotes. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he declared that he had a dream. He said, “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”
For many, that creed reflects the very principles this country was built upon and enshrined in our founding documents. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream embraces life, liberty, and the pursuit of property for all people. His dream includes equal rights, equality under the law, opportunity, and dignity for all Americans as the one blood, one human race, regardless of skin color.
Even as some attempt to deny it, we saw the American Dream reignited with our 45th president at the helm. Under Donald J. Trump, the African American community wasn’t pandered to or offered handouts. Under President Trump, African Americans were not pushed to embrace pro-abortion and anti-family policies. Instead, our African American communities experienced breakthroughs, human dignity, and new opportunities to dream and succeed in life.
Policies like Opportunity Zones, tax and regulation cuts, school choice, a secure border and global stability helped the Black community.
Sadly, this progress was interrupted when President Biden took office. Under Bidenomics, positive initiatives such as school choice, sanctity of life, religious freedom and public safety have been driven from the public square. Furthermore, the Department of Justice has been weaponized against people of faith.
Many of America’s leaders have either gone silent or abandoned old-fashioned common sense and morals. They embrace a formula of pandering and neglect, while the problems faced by the Black community get worse and worse. In abandoning the solutions that work, the current administration has been more interested in using the administrative state to push anti-family and anti-life policies on the Black community.
As we review President Trump’s efforts in advancing the American Dream for African Americans, an honest review will give him credit for increasing economic mobility. My Uncle understood the power of equality and economic mobility in the Black community. He fought for it with dignity and he paid the ultimate sacrifice.
Because of this, I am disappointed in a curveball attack on my uncle’s dream from a surprising corridor of the conservative movement.
My Uncle M.L. said, “America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked insufficient funds.” But my uncle also said he “refused to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”
When Donald Trump asked African Americans, what do we have to lose? He was very much addressing this blank check that has been given to Black Americans for the last 40 years by the Democratic party. The current policies in Washington are sending bad checks to the Black community once again. We have seen the achievements that can be made when our leaders put America First policies into action.
The dream is not dead. It's a dream we can achieve once again, in every generation, and decade, on every platform—if only we occupy our hearts and minds with prayer, trust God and demand change from our political leaders in Washington and across the nation.