Black Americans Say King's Dream Fulfilled

A new CNN poll finds almost 7 out of 10 black Americans saying that America has lived out the true meaning of its creed, the dream laid out by Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963:

More than two-thirds of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision for race relations has been fulfilled, a CNN poll found - a figure up sharply from a survey in early 2008.

The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey was released Monday, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader and a day before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the first black U.S. president.

The poll found 69 percent of blacks said King's vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 "I have a dream" speech - roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March.

But whites remain less optimistic, the survey found.

"Whites don't feel the same way -- a majority of them say that the country has not yet fulfilled King's vision," CNN polling director Keating Holland said. However, the number of whites saying the dream has been fulfilled has also gone up since March, from 35 percent to 46 percent.

In the 1963 speech, delivered to a civil rights rally on the Mall in Washington, King said: "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."

Has that dream been fulfilled? With the election of Barack Obama, two thirds of African-Americans believe it has," CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said.

"Most blacks and whites went to bed on election night saying, 'I never thought I'd live to see the day.' That's what the nation is celebrating on this King holiday: We have lived to see the day," Schneider said.

What explains the gap between black and white on the responses? Here's Captain Ed on that:

Glenn Reynolds says the difference between responses from whites and blacks comes from a guilt to which whites cling. I’m not certain that’s it entirely, although I think some on the hard Left like to use it as a crutch to justify their somewhat totalitarian policy demands. Without having American society to decry for its racist/imperialist bent, their policies of confiscation and elite control make no sense at all, to the extent they ever did. Acknowledging that a free-market, democratic nation can make that kind of progress knocks the legs out from under the International ANSWER/World Can’t Wait crowd.

And notice how the figure for saying we've achieved the dream has doubled since the poll asked these questions in March. Here's how DBP at Althouse's page responds to that:

Wow! Just since March, look at all the progress we have made as a nation! By this Summer we should be up to 100% ...