Has MLK Jr.'s Dream Been Realized?

John McWhorter says we're pretty darn close:

John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute: "The Rev. Martin Luther King, resurrected, would be prouder of black America than many of its leaders and thinkers. Economic disparities remain, but in 1960 nine in 10 blacks were poor, whereas today three of four blacks are not. Tracing the remaining disparities to racism becomes trickier by the year. The 'institutional racism' many trace these statistics to is something black people of King's time would have considered a much more workable adversary than open bigotry and segregation. Some holdouts remain bigots, but not enough to keep Barack Obama out of the White House, and overall, racism is considered as socially embarrassing as pedophilia. King could never have predicted that this would happen so quickly. Is America 'post-racial'? Afraid not. But is the treatment of black people in America still so transparently and grievously unjust as to make a mockery of our democratic ideals and require redress with all deliberate speed? Afraid not, again, and Dr. King would rejoice, as we should with him."

Another opinion from the same link from the head of the NAACP:

Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP president: "These are the best of times and these are the worst of times. We have our first black president. We have our first black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Oprah Winfrey owns her own TV network. Tyler Perry owns his own movie studio. And every major city has its resident black millionaires. And we are proud of all of them. And yet at the same time, poverty is at Depression-era levels. Homeownership is down. Foreclosures are up. HIV rates among black and brown youth are way too high … and high school graduation rates are way too low."

And you can blame many of the problems in the last couple of sentences on federal government programs, which Jealous wants more of, that have effectively destroyed the black family unit by replacing fathers with government checks.  70% of black children are born to unwed mothers, and only 35% of black kids grow up in two-parent homes.  Those numbers weren't near that bad 40 years ago before the "War on Poverty" became a war on black families.