On Aug. 28, 1963, one of the most important marches — and moments — of the civil rights era took place in the nation’s capital. On that warm but pleasant day, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and brilliantly described the essence of the colorblind America he sought.
“I have a dream,” King proclaimed to the huge crowd in front of him, “I have a dream that my four little 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.”
There was much more, of course, and any American who hasn’t read or watched tapes of the complete “I have a dream” speech has missed one of the defining events of US history.
But don’t delay in catching up: A new generation of history-erasers, radical revisionists and book-burners aims to eliminate such old thinking. King’s goals, according to the rules of these new revolutionaries, were actually perpetuating a form of white supremacy.
So the self-described woke are turning the great man’s inspired vision on its head by insisting that racial and ethnic identity matters much more than such concepts as objectivity, individualism and even right and wrong.
To the new racialists, the color of your skin is more important than the content of your character. Tragically, one of them runs New York City’s public schools.
But make no mistake: Chancellor Richard Carranza is no mere educator. Teaching kids to read and write and how to think critically is beneath him, which explains why his record in San Francisco, Houston and now New York shows no success at fixing failure factories.
Worse, it looks as if he has given up trying, for Carranza now fancies himself a commander in the far left’s social justice army. He wants educrats, teachers and students to see everything as either black or white.
And he’s putting taxpayer dollars behind his warped vision. He’s spending upward of $23 million on indoctrination programs that aim to rid schools of “toxic whiteness” and “white-supremacy culture,” according to Post reporters Susan Edelman, Selim Algar and Aaron Feis.
Insiders say the sessions and printed materials are light on social science but heavy on advocacy and demands for conformity. One panel dismisses “either/or thinking” and another warns against “worship of the written word.”
Believe in this gibberish or be gone, say some white professionals who claim they were fired or demoted on the basis of their race.
Matt Gonzales, an outsider adviser and advocate for the programs, told reporters that, for whites, the experience “requires discomfort,” saying, “Having to talk about someone’s own whiteness is a requirement for them to become liberated.”
To the chancellor himself, those who resist his re-education sessions prove they are biased. As he told The Post Monday, “I would hope that anybody that feels that somehow that process is not beneficial to them, I would very respectfully say they are the ones that need to reflect even harder upon what they believe.”
We certainly know what Carranza believes. In a counsel of defeat, he has effectively said that black and Latino students cannot possibly match white and Asian students on the single entry test for the city’s top eight high schools.
He and Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow traveler on racial nonsense, have devised a quota system that does away with merit and penalizes many students who do well on the test because of their race.
Yet Carranza repeatedly calls parents who want to keep the current system “racists.” And de Blasio vowed to fight the efforts of philanthropists Ronald Lauder and Richard Parsons to help prepare more students for the test and open more good schools.
Two months ago, on his first anniversary here, Carranza said he was surprised that not all New Yorkers shared his views.
“That’s not the New York I thought I was coming to,” he said. “New York, the blue of the blue, liberal progressive.”
In fact, New York is deep blue, very liberal and very progressive. But, thankfully, outside of City Hall, the city does not see itself as an island nation immune to the realities of work and careers.
Millions of good jobs and opportunities are here for those able and willing to seize them.
But for any chancellor or politician to pretend that extreme racialism and dumbed-down standards are a substitute for merit and a ticket into the world of the future is a damnable fraud.
Carranza is right about one thing: New York is not the city he wants it to be. Perhaps he would be happier elsewhere, some place eager to buy his snake oil.
‘Cloud’ over AP
The Associated Press can’t help itself. Citing the Palestinian prime minister’s comments that any American peace plan that does not create a Palestinian state is doomed, the AP said the comments “cast a cloud” over a conference tentatively scheduled for late June in Bahrain.
Only two problems: The prime minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, is a figurehead with no power.
President Mahmoud Abbas heads the leadership, though he, too, is on shaky ground with his own people over incompetence and corruption.
The second problem with the story is that the Palestinians have been saying the same thing for decades.
Even when Israel has offered them a separate state, they can never bring themselves to say yes.
Otherwise, it was a heckuva story.
False Demsday prophets
This just in: Democracy is at risk. Again.
First it was Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, then it was his firing of James Comey, his criticism of “fake news” and assorted other assaults against liberal orthodoxy. Had he fired Robert Mueller, the whole sky would have fallen, too.
He didn’t, but alarms are going off in all the usual precincts and newsrooms. This time the hysteria is over Trump’s refusal to give House Democrats everything they want about his entire life, on the off chance they can find something impeachable. Or at least something juicy enough to keep them in the headlines.
Relax, democracy is safe. Democrats, however, are another matter. They are in danger of becoming irrelevant because of their decision to keep taking the country on wild goose chases.
They ought to try governing. You know, for a change.
ESPN eye on the ball
ESPN president says fans don’t want us to cover politics
Brilliant, just brilliant. Or fairly obvious, given that viewers subscribed to a sports network.