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When MLK was presented to me in grade school, it was as a man whose “dream�� has been achieved. You see, kids, there was a time in the South when black Americans could not ride at the front of a bus, send their children to school with whites, or eat at lunch counters. (Not really sure why, that's just how things were in the 60s; they didn't have Internet back then either.) Well, one day there was a tired, grumpy old black lady who didn't want to move to the back of the bus, and a nice black preacher helped her, so now we can all sit wherever we want and go home feeling good about ourselves. O beautiful, for spacious skies...

There are numerous issues with the way that the civil rights era is usually represented in schools, but perhaps the biggest, saddest lie of all is the watering down of MLK’s vision. He was an idealist and a radical. Desegregation was but one aspect of his vision to eliminate the "giant triplets" of poverty, racism, and militarism from this earth. Where Do We Go From Here represents a side of MLK that urgently needs to be taught. King's last book makes painfully clear how much work he believed remained for American society in 1967, and it is hard to imagine he would approve of the state of the union in 2015, black president or no.

Although many have invoked the president as a sign that we as a society are integrated, King would point to the fact that the wealth gap between blacks and whites has nearly tripled in the past 25 years. And this is not surprising given how we have ignored his words that "White America must assume the guilt for the black man's inferior status." With the likes of Bill O'Reilly arguing on television that the distribution of wealth today is entirely the result of individual initiative, and denying that the fact that he grew up in government-subsidized, all-white Levittown has any relevance for today, it is clear why the economic picture for the poor of all colors in this country has only gotten bleaker. We have not even reached the first phase of any recovery program: Acceptance. King said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Forty-eight years after this statement, we can safely pronounce ourselves spiritually dead.

King did not simply call for racial and economic equality, for his people to blend in seamlessly with American society as it stands. He called for a total shift in values. It is clear that King saw at the root of poverty, racism, and militarism the evil of our rampant materialism. "We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing'-oriented society to a 'person'-oriented society." The last chapter, in typical MLK rhetorical style, contains an extended metaphor likening our interdependent globe to a big house. We are all saddled on this planet together, and "together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools."

King's unrealistic dream that someday humanity may manage to find its ass with both hands and not all kill ourselves can make this a bit of a depressing read. His visions for the world's future are so beautiful and his suggested program so intelligent and none of it is ever going to happen. However, I do take some comfort in the fact that a mind and spirit like his graced this sad earth, for all too short a time.