On the third Monday of this month, our community will celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dinners will be held, marches will commence, and lofty decrees will be proclaimed in his name and on behalf of his cause — racial equality.

It will all be a farce.

America’s current crop of local and national “racial equality” social justice warriors – white, black or otherwise – do not give a tinker’s damn about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Mind if I demonstrate?

An ignored legacy -

In noting the sincerity of America’s racial equality movement, one is reminded of a beautifully frocked priest giving communion and conducting mass shortly after sexually molesting a 10-year-old choirboy.

There is nothing about BLM, the NAACP, or related organizations that have even remote connection to uplifting anyone beyond the sociopaths, political opportunists, race profiters and angry victim scripted entitlement addicts dominating the movement.

I don’t believe these people represent the majority of today’s black Americans, nor that their actions have anything to do with carrying on MLK’s legacy.

Were he alive today, he would weep at how his nurturing vision has been denigrated into a lie of epic proportions.

Asheville’s education system says it all -

My political memory has about a 30-year shelf life.

Every one of those years I have witnessed a parade of tormented voices lamenting the education performance gap between Asheville’s black and white students.

Programs, money, blame and hand-wringing pronouncements have been tossed about with abandon, but nothing has changed. The gap has grown.

MLK offers a hint on why —  “Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

Character is not a priority in our school system – either in our efforts to educate our children or in the behavior of the people in charge.

Case in point?

Several years back an earth-shaking meeting on “academic achievement” was held between Asheville’s City Council, Asheville’s City School Board of Education, and other community organizations.

There was a two-day notice of the meeting. No media attended and almost everyone who did was employed by or economically engaged in some fashion with city government, the school system or their network of nonprofit partners.

The reality — that Asheville has ample teaching resources, spends twice the average on local funding per student and still has the fifth largest achievement gap for black students in the nation — was not mentioned.

What was mentioned were the usual lamentations – housing costs, historical and present racism, stellar efforts by the system and the inflated belief that progress was just around the corner.

It was all a self-congratulating public relations lie. An echo that’s undercut progress for decades.

MLK’s racial equality message was relentlessly dedicated to maturity, responsibility, independence and character. Today’s equality message is relentlessly devoted to entitlement, anger, deflection and victimization.

We are abysmally failing to education our community’s black children to a life of hope and potential.

MLK would note the error – and that in repeating that error we have mocked his dream.

What was MLK about?

Let him speak for himself:

• “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

• “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.”

• “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.”

• “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”

• “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

• “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

• “The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that a dreamer has his eyes closed and a visionary has his eyes open.”

You don’t honor the man by subverting the man’s message.

His voice calls us out, too -

In terms of smarts, courage and character applied to racial equality, an MLK peer —  Malcolm-X —  tops my list.

Close to the time of his assassination in 1965 he renounced anger, violence, reverse-racism, and Islam itself. His vision had evolved into a call for unity, maturity, personal responsibility, and “we’re in this together” realism.

Both of these gentlemen took the hard road and got it right.

Today’s racial justice warriors are lazy, naive and self-serving in comparison and the proof is in their pudding.

While they walk and talk an angry and entitled permanent victim script that benefits no one but the one’s stirring the pot, our culture and our children continue in equality gaps that will never be breached by hearts of darkness.

If you’re one who truly wants to celebrate MLK and his legacy, quit sowing division, stepping over real problems, ignoring character and selling deceptions that postpone his vision.