Inauguration on MLK Day

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/Obama-s-2nd-inauguration-on-MLK-Day/-/1719386/18216612/-/ecyh94/-/index.html

We are not meeting this week so I wanted to discuss the MLK speech that was recommended reading. This was a fascinating and very humbling piece. I wanted to comment on the following excerpts:   

Miller: Dr. King, another question, do you feel it is socially just to place a colored person in a high
position because of his color, bypassing in the same act many white men who have priority because of
their seniority?

Dr. King: So the first thing I'm concerned about is full employment for everybody. Now the Negro has sufferedmore because of automation than whites because the Negro, with limited educational opportunities and having been denied apprenticeship training in so many instances and outright discrimination, has been
limited to unskilled and semi‐skilled labor. In the day of automation, these are the jobs that are passing
away so the Negro gets a double for outright discrimination and automation doing away with certain
jobs. I'm concerned about full employment.

On the other hand, I think we must honestly face a fact if one gets behind in a race, he must eternally
remain behind or run faster than the man in front. You've got to give him the equipment to catch up.
Now the fact is that the Negro has had 244 years of slavery in America and working without wages and
then he's had a hundred years of segregation and mistreatment in generally. Now, he's faced with a very
serious problem and that is that he is required to be as productive as people who have not had these
conditions and the only thing that a society can do for individuals who have been deprived of something
is to give them a little special treatment. Now you don't put anybody out of a job, but you just make it
possible for the individuals who are behind to catch up...

I think this is all we're saying that we have been deprived of something as a people and we have been
crippled because of this. We feel that America ought to give us a crutch until we can come to the point
of walking on our own rights...

And also:


Miller : Dr. Martin Luther King, we thank you for your presentation. The audience has indicated its
enthusiastic reception of your remarks. I might say here before I read the first question that Western
Michigan University gained the name of University de jure in 1957. What is much more difficult an
accomplishment is to get it de facto. Certainly, one aspect of it is to have a faculty and to have a student
body that can look at one another and see men and women and only men and women and not a social
class, or an economic class or a race or a creed or a national origin. This is what we seek. This is what a
university means. I like to think that we are making significant headway in that direction. I wouldn't say
we've reached the millennium but this is the goal and this is a proper goal of a university, the only goal
that it can seek in this respect.

The presidential inauguration falling on MLK day this year served as a vivid reminder of how far this nation has come in moving toward King's dream. For the second time, a black man was sworn in as president--a day many of our ancestors may have never believed would come. Does President Obama's second term indicate that African Americans have "caught up" so to speak? What about other marginalized groups? 

Furthermore, if African Americans have caught up, then what is the role of higher education in providing services for underrepresented students, students of color and low-income students? Is the goal of a university as WMU President Miller suggested, "to look at one another and see men and women and only men and women and not a social class, or an economic class or a race or a creed or a national origin"? What end does this type of color-blind rhetoric hope to reach, and what role are to we to play in reaching it?