news-record.com

I am always excited to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. The civil rights icon made such a contribution that his birthday represents the first national holiday named after an African American. To be sure, this naming was not without controversy. Indeed, it represents a grass-roots victory, with politicians, artists and others involved in the effort to commemorate Dr. King's effort.

In 2000, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the parent organization of the AmeriCorps volunteer effort, declared Dr. King's birthday a national day of service. Describing it as "A Day On, Not A Day Off," the corporation raises consciousness about ways we can all serve. Reflecting Dr. King's statement that "Everybody can be great because anybody can serve," the corporation leads thousands in offering their time and talents to their communities through building, tutoring, food banking and related projects.

While Dr. King embraced both civil rights and service, I am most drawn to his economic message. Many will remember him for the 1963 "I Have A Dream" speech in which he 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."

In the same speech, he said, "We have come to our nation's capital to cash a check ... a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' " He articulated a dream but also issued a demand.

People remember the dream, not the demand.

The demand for economic justice assumes you can't have racial equality without economic justice. Suppose that every time someone said "I Have A Dream," others replied, "Cash the Check." Cash the check by dealing with the differential employment rates that exist between whites and African Americans. While 4.4 percent of whites experienced unemployment in December 2007, 6.3 percent of Hispanics did, 9 percent of African Americans. We can cash the check by looking at subprime loans and predatory lending, the results of which may reduce African American wealth by 40 percent, according to the Massachusetts-based Center for a Fair Economy. We can cash the check by dealing with issues of educational access, work life at the bottom, simple poverty.

Dr. King once roared that "the curse of poverty has no justification in any age. It is as socially cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization." He eloquently laid out an economic program when he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize and said, "I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, peace and freedom for their spirits." The economic program is straightforward, simple — food, clothing, shelter, learning, peace. The genius of the King Nobel Peace Prize statement, though, is its audacity, its nerve, its utter boldness in the face of an economic status quo that is rarely challenged.

We have accepted the fact that people earn low wages because they can't do any better. Why can't our system do any better? We accept the fact that we have homelessness and hunger because we think that people have such deficiencies that homelessness and hunger are the inevitable consequences of "personal inefficiency." We have blamed the home mortgage meltdown on free-market flaws, when the fact is that we developed regulations that have sanctioned the insanity of bankruptcies and foreclosures.

Dr. King had the "audacity" to call for economic restructuring when he said, "We are called upon to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice that is producing beggars needs restructuring."

We in North Carolina have challenges that mirror those that plague the nation. We have seen the demise of the low-wage tobacco and textile manufacturing industries, and the opportunities that have come from the growth of technology. We see the uneven distribution of economic development, and we are reminded that economic development is not the same thing as economic justice. We are called to caucus regionally, but we have development conversations that transcend race and class.

We have to ask who will benefit from the economic development in our region. Who will work for Skybus and for our burgeoning biotech industries or the furniture market? Will there be economic development without economic justice? Will growth be evenly and fairly distributed?

Will Triad leaders seek to provide our young people with the educational opportunities that will allow them to benefit from our new economic development? Will every high school graduate have a clear path to a productive future? How will we deploy the resources to capture every brain that can contribute to our competitiveness?

From a global perspective, other countries are investing in education in ways we are not. What can we do to mirror those countries and give education a higher priority?

Dr. King tried to cash a check in 1963. Forty-five years later, the check is still marked "insufficient funds." We had better not celebrate Dr. King's birthday without understanding that the dream remains unfulfilled.

Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College and an economist.