By excluding white people from day one of its upcoming forum on racial relations next month, the Alaska Humanities Forum has signaled its allegiance to the poisonous and divisive theories that underpin critical race theory.
The idea that we must segregate the races in order to create “safe spaces” – free of whites – for those who identify as black, indigenous or people of color smacks of deeply ingrained racism, whereby people are judged solely on the color of their skin.
Nothing about this misguided forum comports with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.” The Alaska Humanities Forum, which prides itself in conserving history and culture, would do well to go back and read a few of these lines from that powerful address, given 59 years ago.
‘I HAVE A DREAM’
“The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.
And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone…
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…
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…
I have a dream that … one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers…
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together…
And when this happens … we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
By dividing whites from blacks, the Alaska Humanities Forum has rejected this inspiring dream for an old and deeply destructive nightmare.
