all along. many who have not been in the ditch with us and in the trenches with us don t understand the necessity of the warning and degree to which we say to america we ve been the bellwether and benchmark. we ve been the measure and magnitude of american democracy. what black people have done with this country, what we ve done with resources has not only made our culture better but our country better and so now people who are not used to seeing black people be the index, the measure of who we are as a nation feel a schizophrenia on the one hand, they think we lost our minds and on the other hand, they know they lost theirs. the truth about american democracy is it s only as good as we re willing to fight for. it is only ever been what we ve made it to be. this may be an exaggerated point, a kind of serious inflection point but the truth is martin luther king junior when fighting conner was