"I have a dream" Speech: Revised for Contemporary Situation

In 1963, Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. That was 12 years before my birth, and much has changed since then. The issues that are at work now are issues that are very different from the issues that were at work back then. This is my take on the same theme as adopted for a different time and place:

I have a dream that black people in America can be free of gangs; that they be able to protect their lives, their liberty and their property from rapacious scoundrels, whatever the race of these scoundrels, and that black achievers and not black parasites be seen as the true face of the black race.

I have a dream that young black people look up to Barack Obama or Colin Powell and not Mike Tyson or Snoop Doggy Dogg; that they pursue goals that are positive and beneficial rather than ones that are short-sighted, destructive or impossible; and that they work toward a better future rather than feeling like they don't have any future.

I have a dream that education reaches the people who live in the inner city and provide them the skills and the knowledge they need to advance, instead of schools having to spend more money on security than on academics.

I have a dream that black kids who take studies seriously be treated respectfully rather than being seen as "acting white" or "thinking they're better than everyone else," and that these kids then go on to higher education and better life.

I have a dream that young black girls don't feel like they have to get pregnant at age 15 in order to prove their womanhood, and that young black men don't feel like they have to impregnate girls at that age to prove their manhood or shoot one another in order to prove their strength.

I have a dream that black women can live a life free of rape and brutality and advance in society as far as their intellect, their strength and their character would take them without having to be dogs to brutal misogynistic creeps of any race.

I have a dream that businesses can go into the inner city and provide the black people sustainable employment without having to worry about being shot or being robbed.

I have a dream that more black people own the sports teams for which they now play; that black people advance in business, finance, engineering and science as much as they've advanced in politics and in entertainment; and that more black people be independently wealthy and capable of building prosperity in majority-black neighborhoods.

I have a dream that black people do as well economically as the wealthier white and Jewish people; that they excel in fields such as business, banking and engineering that produce sustainable prosperity; and that black millionaires be as common in America as white or Jewish ones.

I have a dream that there be a powerful incentive in majority-black cultures to achieve sustainable and honest well-being and powerful disincentives in these cultures against rape, pillage and domestic violence.

I have a dream that black people in America achieve everything that has been achieved by white people in America and then spread their know-how to other black people around the world, so that black people in Africa and Latin America too can rise as high as their abilities and willingness to work hard would take them.