Former VA Gov. L. Douglas Wilder Says Black People Have not Yet "Arrived"

L. Douglas Wilder, the first black governor of the state of Virginia, told an audience at an event in Martha's Vineyard that black people have not yet "arrived in this nation." That's despite blacks making significant political inroads. Here's an excerpt of his speech:

So, have we “arrived?”

I don’t think we will ever find the answer to that question by looking at political leadership data points.

The health and advancement of a community of people can’t be judged by whether any particular man or woman holds a single seat in a boardroom in New York or even an oval room in Washington. To do so is too easy, too lazy, and leaves too many people behind.

Our view needs to be more layered and more complex than that.

I do not minimize or denigrate the important electoral and governmental mile markers that note the advancement of black people in America, and truly the nation as a whole. It would be silly of me to do that, because it would minimize the great thing done by my close friends and neighbors in Virginia, not to mention by voters nationally two decades later.

But I do challenge citizens to take a broader view of how to judge where we as a country are on the road to providing full equality.

As slavery ended, the enunciation of the Emancipation Proclamation served as the ringing of a big bell. The sound of that bell announced to enslaved Americans in rebelling states that they were finally to be given what should be a natural right for all men and women, freedom. Source

So, do you think we have arrived? Or are we going backwards, as Rep. Allen West would have you believe?