Last year when I wrote about the 41st Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, I highlighted some of the things that had happened in the first few months of President Obama's administration that related to race, and I was none too happy about any of it. I didn't think Dr. King would be happy about it either.

Here we are a year later, and I have to say that I think Dr. King would be more disappointed on what's happened in the past year than those first few months of last year.

First, he'd be upset that his kids are always fighting in public over his legacy, and of course over money. Dr. King didn't have much money through all those years he was fighting for the cause, until he won the Nobel Prize. Seems his kids believe they have entitlement to everything, which is fine, but when they fight amongst themselves for ownership and leadership, it tarnishes his memory to no end; shame on them.

Second, it seems that the issue of race was a big one when it came to the health care bill that was recently passed, no matter how much conservatives and Republicans want to say it wasn't. A Republican congressman called him a liar during a public address; that's never happened before, and it wouldn't have happened if he'd been white. Yeah, I said it. These Tea Bagger people have used some vile language against him and other black politicians, and even went after a Ph.D. professor with Parkinson's disease. People have made up placards of President Obama as Hitler; I guess we're supposed to be happy that racist caricatures of him have ceased for now. A statistic came out on Friday saying that out of the people opposed to the health care bill, 94% of them are white; I'm just saying...

Third, the two buzzwords for last year were tasers and nooses. A host of youths were killed last year by tasers, and more than 80% of them were black. Many schools had someone put up nooses, including one school where someone went so far as to tell all black students to leave or else they'd be killed. Let's toss in some death row stats while we're talking about criminality. In Texas, where 71% of the state is white, 70% of the people on death row are minorities. In Connecticut, where 87% of the population is white, 70% of the people on death row are minorities.

Fourth, the Republican party elected Michael Steele as its first black head of the Republican National Committee, and this man, who headed the affirmative action program of Maryland when he was lieutenant governor there, immediately launched into his verbal castigation of President Obama and his "racial policies", of which there weren't any (the protest by the Minority Caucus against the President because they felt he hadn't done enough should have pretty much shut that argument down), and has become an embarrassment to pretty much black people and Republicans for some very questionable behavior.

There's a lot more, but I think I kind of make my point here; Dr. King would not be pleased. Every time I think about it, I think about the cartoon The Boondocks, which did an episode on what would the world have been like if Dr. King hadn't actually been assassinated on that day and had lived into at least 2007. Not a pretty picture, but probably pretty accurate. This country has lost its way as it pertains to race; we can't even talk about it with each other. If we can't talk about it, we'll never be able to overcome some of these disparities and disagreements.

And on Easter, no less.