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Today, as I found myself still lazy from the holiday season and consuming more television than wine at a New Year's party I got a glimpse of an interesting little music video. Part of a soundtrack to a movie soon coming to theaters it featured a very famous line from a speech that has been overused and abused for the past few decades. The speech I am writing about is none other than that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream." Whenever equality or freedom is mentioned in the USA a specific image is almost always conjured up of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the infamous, hook-like line, "I have a dream..." The problem with the public's understanding of this speech is very reflective of how we as a country view equality and freedom.

Dr. King's speech is now, as it was in the 60's, revolutionary. The issue is that out of the entire speech, which very clearly expresses anger, frustration and disappointment, the American public is continuously force fed one single complacent line "I have a dream." Focusing on this one detail paints King and his followers in some ways as victims, people who are acted upon, rather than people who take action or have expectations for others to take action; it allows for the assumption that things will just gradually change for the better. If the media and general public also took a look at the line "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off" the perceived message would change; if the speech was looked at more thoroughly it would inspire believers in equality to take on more responsibility than to allow the status quo to keep on perpetuating. The "I Have a Dream" speech has been improperly used to promote a sense of false unity and to keep citizens from analyzing the institutional issues plaguing our nation in terms of race, sexual orientation, class, gender and a host of other ills.
There is a sense of necessity when it comes to political correctness and espousing the ideals of equality in the USA, but when it comes to recognizing (the lack of) and acting to ensure equality the American people are stuck in a dreamlike state. When we hear about discrimination of any kind, there is always a collective *gasp*, as if to imply "Here? Really? Aren't we over this, yet?" However, when it comes to protesting, writing to congress, voting in elections outside of the presidency, there is a huge notion that what we do not like or approve of will change in time on its own. Afterall, we each are only one person, right?
To understand equality in a free country such as the USA, one must also deconstruct the rampant apathy and individualism that is much more popular than activism. A popular tag line on military paraphernalia is often that 'freedom isn't free'. Regardless of how one feels about the use of this line, or the military, this could not be truer. Yet, in a space where individuals are free to vote, free to say what they want, free to question the government it seems that people are less motivated to exercise those freedoms. Caught up in the trappings of a consumerist society, Americans are taught to dream, rather than to fight for what they believe in.
Flipping through television stations, it would be interesting to count how many times I have heard mention that America is a free nation. It would be even more interesting to count how many times I have heard someone willing to facilitate freedom in comparison. But, alas...just another lazy day watching the television, for me and the characters on it.

Learn more about this author, J Mason.
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