"You Can't Ride A Man's Back Unless It's Bent"

As we celebrate MLK today, I realize that despite his flaws, he was a highly intelligent man who spoke the truth as it was in his time for black people and that truth is still, sadly, relevant today. Dr, King once said "No nation can suffer any greater tragedy than to cause millions of its citizens to feel that they have no stake in their own society". No truer words have ever been spoken. The U.S. has spent well over a hundred years ensuring that black Americans feel demoralized, de-humanized and un-American. We were treated as property, bought and sold like a piece of meat. We were told by everyone including our Founding Fathers that we were less than a person. The harsh reality is this is still the case. Black Americans have never felt like was there country, despite it being built on their backs. It's this feeling of being inferior and not true Americans that has persisted for hundreds of years and even now plays a part in the cureent de-huminazation of Black Americans. If this country recognized Blacks as equal citizens, the many, many cases of unarmed Black men being killed would not be occuring. This mentality has also led to so many young Blacks not feeling as if they can succeed in life. They have never felt like a part of this society. The blame for this isn't solely that of those that seek to keep them down but they are also victims of their own defeatist mentality. Without a rememdy for both of these things, this country will never be as great as it could be.