Our Differences Will Only Divide Us

The O.J. Simpson verdict, the Million Man March and the effort by French-speaking Quebeckers to split away from English-speaking Canada all bear witness to the fundamental truths so eloquently preached by civil rights visionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. more than 30 years ago.

King stood like a rock in the face of an unrelenting storm of verbal and physical abuse, arrests and government harassment. All to spread his healing message of unity, integration and nonviolence.

King understood that the best remedy for divisiveness is inclusion. The logical cure for disunity is unity. He preached the necessity of Americans of all races, cultures and backgrounds to renounce race-based attitudes and sit down together as fellow citizens united in brotherhood.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize did not preach multiculturalism. Nor did King celebrate ethnic and cultural differences. Instead, King repeatedly referred to the need for all Americans to “join hands” - “all of God’s children, black men, white men, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics.”

King’s reprised plea for Americans to join hands is reminiscent of John Dickinson’s 1768 popular tune, The Liberty Song: “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.” Later, “United we stand, divided we fall,” became a watchword of the American Revolution.

While African-Americans were not included in the “Americans all” reference in Dickinson’s 1768 song, King dreamed of a day when Americans all overlook their differences and celebrate what they share - their humanity, their love of family, their values, their hopes for the future and their country - “when little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.”

The reaction to the O.J. Simpson verdict revealed a racial division in America frightening in its breadth. King’s message of unity and integration has been diverted by the messengers of multiculturalism and political correctness. Differences, not unity, are cherished. Attempts to emphasize shared values must be ridiculed as underhanded efforts to subvert minority cultures by members of the power-mad supremacist dominant culture.

Since King’s death, the shared pride of America as the world’s greatest ethnic and cultural melting pot has been turned on its head by politically correct cultural revisionists.

The melting pot theory has become a deadly plot devised by the cultural elite to accelerate the ethnic genocide of historically underprivileged citizens. And anyone who says otherwise is a racist or a sexist or a sell-out, which is a foolproof method to shut down discussions that might heal differences and foster understanding.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March, for all the good it accomplished, was still a march of exclusion. Blacks only. Men only. True to his message, King’s “Dream” march decades earlier was a march of inclusion. All races. Both men and women. Americans all in unity.

Farrakhan preaches separatism. Black separatism, not integration. He wants white Americans of European descent to pay reparations to African-Americans for the slavery endured by their ancestors. Farrakhan wants an internal separate nation for blacks, which would tear this great nation apart.

In Canada, the French-speaking Quebeckers also spurn unity with the dominant Englishspeaking Canadians. French-speaking Quebeckers have adopted the comforting role of victimhood. They revel in their differences and refight 300-year-old battles.

This good earth is needlessly saturated with blood shed by people who prefer death over differences to life with unity.

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