M.L.K. in the Voting Booth

If the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King were alive today and he had to endorse a candidate for president of the United States, who would that be? M.L.K. believed there were three evils that would destroy America: war, racism, and poverty. Let’s unpack poverty for a moment.

In Dr. King’s last speech before his assassination, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” he established a prophetic analogy from Scripture to his life. Moses, who leads his people to the Promised Land, will not get there himself. Instead, the day before he dies, Moses hands the reins over to Joshua, who leads the Israelites to the Jordan River, where God, just like He did for Moses at the Red Sea, splits the river for His chosen people to cross over into the Promised Land. To this day, 12 large stones from the bottom of the Jordan River are clustered together at its shore to create for future generations a point of reference, encouragement, and blessing for what God had done for their families that day. 

In the same way, King led us, black and white people, through the greatest Christian movement in America. Because only an act of God could move the heart of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who privately called the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts “the nigger bills,” to sign them into law. 

It’s been over 50 years since our Red Sea moment, with no stones to show for our future generations. Black churches are still burning. The black prison population is bigger than the total prison population of nine developed countries combined. Black unemployment is double that of whites, and once employed, blacks earn a third less than whites for the same job. 

Meanwhile, we have a sitting black president governing a nation more racially divided than during the Rodney King beating, the O.J. Simpson not-guilty verdict, and the Beltway sniper attacks put together. 

Poverty in Black America today is at a record high. Disguised as a domestic program to fight social and racial injustice, Johnson’s Great Society in 1966 destroyed the black family and the inner city through a policy that promoted government dependency for single moms and offered no hand up for poor two-parent households, further entrenching the multigenerational curse of poverty. 

This is a catastrophe. Because when King said he saw the Promised Land with regard to poverty in his 1967 speech to the National Conference for New Politics, he saw black people controlling their own destiny and setting up their own means for generating wealth, not being taken advantage of by the same political party for 50 years. He saw black people working, feeding their families, and children growing up in two-parent households, not 70 percent of black children being born into homes where they will be raised by single mothers — and this is two times more prevalent with black families than with those of any other race.

Black churches that were once the moral leaders of the community are nothing but a shell of what they used to be, and instead are enraptured by false teachers promoting a prosperity gospel, seeding congregants whose salvation comes by works, not faith, hence a form of godliness, but no power that prospers the community as the soul prospers. To be clear, I’m not talking about the local churches but a national epidemic that took hold in the 1980s. Dr. King would be livid today. 

As of 2014, only a small number, about 6 percent, of black families leave a family legacy for their future generations. In 1955 it was 52 percent. Black folks, we should take full responsibility for this, take full ownership of our mistakes, properly end all demonic strongholds and curses over our families, and stop coddling our young people and teach them about working hard and playing hard — and building character while doing it. 

White folks, not really your fault, per se, but you are not off the hook. Example: Black professional organizations are not racist. They are organized to mentor, encourage, and network, because we have been marginalized from specialized, high-paying career opportunities as a result of racial discrimination. Stop creating moral equivalency by justifying things like the establishment of a white student union because there’s a black student union. And having a black president doesn’t mean racism in America is gone. Very corny. Instead, I suggest adding Tim Wise’s “Colorblind” to your book club’s reading list. 

So, let’s not be phony and pretend to honor M.L.K. by asking each other whether we are living “the Dream” yet. Instead, we have a presidential election this year and can start honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King by electing a candidate to the Oval Office whose vision and moral (not perfect) leadership will directly or inadvertently edify and restore the black family. By doing so, our next president would save taxpayers $2.4 billion in federal assistance payments over eight years, increase tax revenue by $1 billion a year, decrease crime exponentially, and narrow the wage, unemployment, and wealth gaps.

This candidate should be keen on winning businesses back to the U.S., especially manufacturing jobs, and while doing so protecting those jobs from illegal immigrants by at the very least enforcing the laws already on the books. Because in a free market, capitalist society, everybody wins (relatively, and if you make your dreams bigger and achieve them, so much the better). 

Or, you can vote for the candidate who is just using you and creating divisions in the country to get into office to “make history,” only to make government even bigger, make the dream even harder to attain, and make the American people even more dependent on government. Who will you choose?

Daniel Earl Evans grew up in East Hampton and graduated from East Hampton High School. He is the C.E.O. of Earldom L.L.C., a financial planning company in Garden City.