How to Realize Dr. King鈥檚 Dream, 60 Years Later - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism

Aug 30, 2023

It鈥檚 been since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic 鈥淚 Have a Dream鈥� speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. King that Black Americans live 鈥渙n a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.鈥�

While there have been gains made since 1963 on the question of closing the racial wealth gap, there is still a long way to go. A new report released jointly by the Institute for Policy Studies and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition finds that without policy interventions, it could take African Americans more than 500 more years to achieve economic parity with whites.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, chief of race, wealth and community for the , spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on Rising Up With Sonali about persistent economic inequality along racial lines. Asante-Muhammad is also the lead author of a new report, 鈥�.鈥�

The views expressed here and on Rising Up With Sonali do not necessarily reflect the opinion of YES! 麻豆社事件.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent 麻豆社事件 Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.