When Dr. Martin Luther King wrote his historic speech, “I have a Dream” races relations and the plight of the Black man and woman in America were as bleak and downright dismal as they had ever been. When a group of people are educated to believe that their history started with slavery any infinitesimal speckling of progress would be viewed as true progress. To think that 53 years later Kai Wrights’ article in the Nation, “Black America’s Lost Generation Speaks Up” mirrors those same sentiments as Dr. King is extremely disheartening. Despite individual strides in almost every field of study and economic pursuit, as a whole the race has made very little progress collectively. One might think that with the election of America’s first Black
President, black Americans would be content however there are a few flaws in that line of thinking. While writing this paper the words of the old civil rights freedom song, “We Shall Overcome” kept echoing in my head. I thought about the melancholy nature of the song and the implication of Dr. Kings words on future generations. In the article “Black America’s Lost Generation Speaks”, Mr. Wright speaks to the same economic disparities / long standing poverty; poor educational opportunities for urban youth and constant barrage of police violence directed at people of color in America.

More than a half a century has passed and stories like Freddie Grays are common. His death along with the constant barrage of images of countless Black people being murdered at the hands of the police sparked a massive reaction In Baltimore last spring. While the media called the people in my community lawless; “thug”; and “savages” they failed to make the connection between failed legislative and social policies; structural and institutional racism and the violence in all forms that is directed at people of color. The simple truth is that