Wren Abbott
Rev. Al Sharpton gets a standing ovation
Rev. Al Sharpton moved a packed crowd in the house chambers Friday with a rousing speech encouraging people to fight for equal rights without succumbing to a victim mentality.
Sharpton argued that issues related to immigration should be handled by the federal government, excoriating those who make reference to Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream" speech without acknowledging that he stood for a strong central government.
"You cannot celebrate King without dealing with Kingism," Sharpton said. " We love to quote his speech 'I have a dream," but read the whole speech...he talked about a strong national government. He talked about, we cannot have states where governor's lips drip with the words of interposition and nullification. You cannot come in Dr. King's name and talk about weak national government. You can't come in Dr King's name and nullify federal immigration laws and act as though we can deal with the problem of immigration with racial profiling and deal with race on who people look like, or their surname. They become suspects rather than the American citizens that many of them are, and that is not the American way."
Although he also touched on economic insecurity, Sharpton suggested that educational inequality is the most critical current civil rights issue, and spoke out against accepting low achievement as an inevitable consequence of poor opportunities.
"If there is a civil rights issue today, and if there is a bias today, I would say that the racism of the 21st century is low expectations," Sharpton said. "We have designated large groups of our children as throwaways who can't learn, and can't be something. I say to young people today, 'Don't let anybody tell you what you can and cannot do.'"
Sharpton made several arguments in favor of the power of individual initiative to overcome difficult circumstances.
"I didn't even know I was underprivileged until I got to college...The reason I didn't know I was underprivileged is my single parent welfare mother didn't raise me as to what I wasn't," Sharpton said. "She raised me, and my pastor raised me, that I was expected to be something and I was expected to achieve something. We must stop telling these young people that they're not expected to achieve. You are not responsible for the life you were born into, you didn't choose your parents, you didn't choose your environment, you didn't choose your economic and social status. But you can choose what you do."
Members of the press sitting in the print media gallery exchanged shocked expressions when Sharpton dismissed the significance of people who don't take an active role in making social change.
"[Preachers] can tell you, the hardest job of a minister is to preach the funeral of an irrelevant person," Sharpton said. "That's a hard job. They roll the body down the aisle, stretch it out in front of the altar, the family's sitting in the front row crying. And we're suppose to get up and hallucinate a life you never lived."
After some laughter and applause, he continued.
"Most folks shouldn't even have a funeral. Most folks should go straight from the morgue to the cemetery 'cause most folks never did anything we can talk about. You should think about every day that you get up and if by chance of fate or God this is my last day, what can they say about me? What did I stand for? What difference did I make? And if you are not happy with your own assessment, you need to go to work today."
