I was sitting in my car, waiting to pick Zoë up from school, when a bumper sticker on the car in front of me caught my eye.  On it was a picture of a reverent-looking Martin Luther King, Jr, and above him it said “I HAVE A DREAM”.  Next to that picture was a similarly posed picture of President-elect Barack Obama.  Above him, it said “I AM THAT DREAM”.  Immediately, I wondered “really?!”

Now, I don’t have Dr. King’s speech committed to memory or anything like that, but I’d say his “dream” is best summarized in this famous sentence . . .

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.

Keeping in mind that no bumper sticker and no pithy turn of phrase can fully capture a sound argument, I have to wonder . . . as we now sit on the precipice of seeing our great nation’s first black president inaugurated, is it time to be satisfied (as Americans, and especially as African-Americans)?  Is Barack Obama the very Incarnation of “The Dream”?  I’m gonna say “no”, and if we think that it is, then our interpretation of the dream is far too small and our vision limited.

Not only that, but Senator Obama’s election may be a strong attestation to the fact that we’re not there yet.  Dr. King said that he dreamed of an America in which his children (and, by extension, all black people) would be judged according to their character, not their skin color.  Amen!  But what’s do so many black people say today in their jubilation that Mr. Obama was elected?

He looks like us!

Am I saying that every single black person that voted for BHO did so just because he’s black? No, of course not. What I am saying is that his blackness was certainly a huge factor in his garnering of virtually the entire black vote, and the primary factor in the great black emotional outpouring we’ve seen since Election Day.  Isn’t this yet another way that someone can be “judged by the color of [his] skin” instead of by the content of his character?  Or does black skin, like love, “cover a multitude of wrongs”?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I think that it’s pretty cool that our citizens have finally gotten to a point where, after over 200 years, they’re willing to elect something other than a white guy to the Presidency. But I also think that MLK’s dream is more than that.  And while great strides have been made toward the realization of that dream, Barack Obama ain’t it . . . and I’m willing to bet that we won’t truly see “it” anywhere outside of or before the coming Kingdom of Christ.