King's dream has come true ... but only for some

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As another Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday arrives, our nation has much to celebrate as we strive toward the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a colorblind society.

Since King's assassination in 1968, America has elected and re-elected its first African American president. We've also recently sworn in our first African American female associate Supreme Court justice, who joins fellow African American Justice Clarence Thomas on the nation's highest court.

There are now African American entrepreneur billionaires and African Americans (male and female) who have reached the pinnacle of the business world as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

The substantial progress many African Americans have made since the 1960s civil rights era is genuinely momentous and should be celebrated.

Unfortunately, not every member of the African American community has experienced the upward mobility many of their Black brothers and sisters have enjoyed.

The bipartisan Joint Economic Committee, which consists of Republicans and Democrats from the U.S. Senate and House, released a study in 2020 titled "The Economic State of Black America in 2020." The study found some troubling statistics.

African Americans have traditionally been the constituency that the Democratic Party has relied upon for consistent and loyal votes, typically voting 90% or more for the Democratic choice. But we witnessed a significant change in that pattern starting with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Trump received a whopping 20% of the African American male vote in 2020, and he also increased his vote percentage with African American females. Other Republican officeholders also made gains.

The Associated Press' AP VoteCast performed an extensive national survey of the electorate after the 2020 midterms, and what it found should be cause for alarm for the Democratic Party.

AP found that Republican candidates were backed by 14% of African American voters. In the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans only won 8% of the Black vote.

There are two reasons for the exodus of African American voters from the Democratic Party. One is inadequate schools. The other is the rising crime rate, disproportionately affecting inner-city communities.

As ABC News reported: "Census shows the proportion of Black families home schooling recently quintupled. Home schooling, once a relatively niche form of education that has been growing steadily in the past decades, has seen a big uptick due to the COVID-19 pandemic with Black families adopting the practice at a notably high rate."

Violent crime is at levels we haven't seen since the 1970s.

Education and crime are universal concerns that appeal to every voter regardless of race, color, creed, religion or ethnicity. Most voters don't want to be pandered to with insulting, shopworn campaign tactics supposedly geared toward them. The political party or movement that understands this and plans accordingly will make further inroads with voting blocs with whom they have traditionally not done well.