What is most noteworthy is the fact that in the three most respected professional fields – law, medicine and business – women are treated most abysmally. Despite the stringent manners of admissions into professional schools that awards degrees in these coveted areas of expertise, and the accompanying social status that identifies virtues of honesty and integrity with these specializations, it so appears – from the latest US Department of Labour statistics – that the most esteemed professional fields are also the most exploitative ones as well. At least so far as gender inequality is concerned.

In legal occupations, American women earn 56 cents per dollar that the men earn. Legal professions include the jobs of lawyers, judges, magistrates, other judicial workers, paralegals, legal assistants, and miscellaneous legal support workers. Likewise, in the medical profession, among the physicians and surgeons, women earn 64 cents per dollar the men earn. Third highest hall of shame is reserved for business management executives. Female financial managers earn 66 cents per dollar their male counterparts earn and women human resources managers earn 69 cents per dollar.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women still lag far behind men in almost all the industries. The inequality exists most clearly for instance among physicians and surgeons (women $1,228, men $1,914), loan counsellors (women $754, men $1,118), purchasing managers (women earn $1,029 weekly, men earn $1,383), claims adjusters, investigators (women $845, men $1,128), computer programmers (women $1,182, men $1,267), lawyers (women $1,449, men $1,934), postsecondary teachers (women $1,030, men $1,342), retail salespersons (women $443, men $624), real estate brokers (women $745, men $939), inspectors, testers (women $513, men $754), financial services sales agents (women $798, men $1,237), etc.

Among several hundreds of jobs that were surveyed, women were found to be earning slightly more than the men only in the fields of bartending and baking.

As we begin the Women’s History Month, the above serve as timely reminders as to how the history needs to be revisited and radical feminist movements be reintroduced.

Obama administration must be commended for its newly announced support for the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182). This bill – a much needed update to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 – would take steps toward finally closing the wage gap between men and women by closing loopholes in the current law and strengthening weak remedies. Passage of the bill is one of the recommendations made by the administration’s Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.
 
The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide workers with the tools they need to ensure equal compensation, including fair remedies, additional enforcement tools and technical assistance and training for both employers and employees. Last year, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Paycheck Fairness Act; the bill currently has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate and is poised for passage.

Here is the statement by the President –

In America today, women make up half of the workforce, and two-thirds of American families with children rely on a woman’s wages as a significant portion of their families’ income.
Yet, even in 2010, women make only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. The gap is even more significant for working women of color, and it affects women across all education levels. As Vice President Biden and the Middle Class Task Force will discuss today, this is not just a question of fairness for hard-working women. Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.
My Administration has already begun to address this problem. In my first week in office, I signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women who face wage discrimination recover their lost wages, and in my State of the Union Address, I promised to crack down on violations of equal pay laws. Today the Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force will present its recommendations, which include ways to better coordinate among enforcement agencies and inform employees about their rights. These steps support women, and they also support businesses that are doing the right thing and paying their employees what they deserve.
We cannot do this work alone. So today, I thank the House for its work on this issue and encourage the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve. Passing this bill is one of the Task Force’s key recommendations, and I hope Congress will act swiftly so that I can sign it into law.

Nine out of 10 LGBT students report that they experience harassment at their school. Three-fifths feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and one-third report that they have skipped a day of school almost every month because they feel unsafe.

ACLU brings to light three incidents that demand we need to protect our LGBT students across the country – a need more pressing than ever-

A female student in a northern California school faced daily anti-gay harassment and discrimination from teachers and school staff and was required to participate in a school-sponsored “counseling” group designed to discourage students from being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

A male freshman at a high school in Tennessee was sent home from school for wearing a T-shirt that said, “I [Love] Lady Gay Gay.” Before that, he had long been subjected to daily anti-gay harassment at school, including threats of physical violence. He was not only unable to get help from the school, he was told by school employees that he had “brought it on himself by coming out.”

A female student in a public high school in Orange County, California was repeatedly singled out for discipline (including a one-week suspension), had her sexual orientation revealed to her family without her permission by school officials, and was forced to transfer to another school in the middle of the second semester. The student, who previously had straight-A grades and a spotless disciplinary record, was punished for occasionally showing affection towards her girlfriend, even though heterosexual students were routinely allowed to hold hands, hug and kiss on campus.

Despite his constant denial of race dynamics necessary to dissect American political roadmap, Barack Obama is going to be the first American President to be judged, also by his color. During his first year, several cartoons, news articles, political mentions – both innocent and deliberate – have brought up the issue of race, associating with him. Senator Majority leader Democrat Harry Reid’s reference to Obama as a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one” is the latest in the series, rejuvenating the race debate towards the end of Obama’s first year at White House.

What has remained a constant, however, is the manner in which Obama has classically ignored the racists. For him, they really do not exist. For his one-God-one-freedomland-America, people simply cannot be racists, let alone him being a potential victim. When he did candidly refer to a despicable law and order situation in the country and called the Cambridge cops “stupid” for having arrested African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates, he immediately had to apologize through a beer party hosted in honor of the white police officer. Despite this, Fox News’ Glenn Beck threw racial slurs at the president. Rupert Murdoch came out to support Beck. Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh threw racial slurs at Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. New York Post came up with a cartoon depicting the author of the stimulus bill as a rabid chimpanzee, largely perceived by Americans as an ugly portrayal of Obama. Congressman Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” to the President on his face inside the Congress, deeply reminiscent of “you lie, boy” usually used to shout down slaves. Yet, the President nonchalantly kept thundering silence over all the racial uproars.

The president preferred to stand by the media image of “post-racial America” he projected to have wooed, and replaced the reality of race relations with it. In Obama’s first year at office, his worldview dictated that it was not the United States which had the systemic problems of socio-economic patterns, it was the world outside. And to address the world outside, he stormed into Afghanistan in an unforeseen ferocity, ordered bombings at Pakistan, allowed for escalations in the Middle-East. America’s ecological concerns continued remaining as indecisive as its official stand on Gitmo detainees. In Africa, Obama continued to blame black people for their own plights, clearly absolving neocolonialism’s roles. Most of Latin America remained Obama’s NAFTA scapegoat.

On the domestic front, Obama offered 12 trillion dollars to the Wall Street and promised another 12 trillion for bailouts of the very companies that caused the gravest American economic crisis. He addressed the middle class, made the poor invisible, mocked at the Special Olympics, hired tax-evading disgraced bailout mastermind Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary, promoted several Goldman Sachs lobbyists to oversee the Treasury, and hired Citigroup’s failed billionaire Robert Rubin and a pronounced sexist Larry Summers as his economic advisors. Several of his nominees and appointees including Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Killefer withdrew from power after their tax evasions were exposed. Under the President’s watchful eyes, America’s official unemployment rate reached double digits while the rich class became richer than ever before.

During Obama’s first year, the anti-war movement has almost disappeared into oblivion. Democratic Party that most profited from peacenik fundraising events has already closed down protests. Right-wingers could not be happier under any other administration. Anti-war sentiments and protests against Afghanistan invasion are scarce, with successful public relations campaign launched by “Brand of the Year”. While keeping his friends at Human Rights Campaign in gay spirits, Obama has continued flip-flopping on same-sex marriage rights. States are reversing legal rights and Mr President is vocally anti-marriage. His doublespeak on gay rights have confused all, but the liberal media. Liberal press are certain if there ever was a champion of equality rights, it is Mr Obama. Media sycophancy has reached a new height, with Obama taking stock. All his failures are declared as “inherited legacies”. All his abuses are declared as goof-ups. All his leadership struggles are covered in the name of hostile colleagues. So, if there is no sight for a universal healthcare, media depict the “struggle” of the president to convince others of the good. The fact that Obama never had a plan for it, the fact that he really wanted a small “public option” affecting 5% of Americans that would remain to “compete” with private insurance giants, is totally lost on the informed press.

Just as Obama was not bothered by a racist society that does not spare even an elected head, he was not moved by the onslaughts of capitalism. His single greatest achievement during the first year at White House has been his Audacity of Hope: a hope that everything will emerge brighter from the corridors of American power. A power that he fervently desires, and with “all the president’s men” around him, certainly deserves.

It is true that MLK was a religious preacher and a nonviolent civil rights leader who had aimed for gradual shifts in political empowerment towards American equality. This narrative has worked brilliantly for those in power longing to project MLK’s legacy as one of peaceful reconciliation with power structure. He has been heralded as an intense pacifist preaching moral values of peace, and as an idealist whose dream must globally aspire for racial harmony. A revered clergyman choosing dialogue over struggle; a nationalist for the country than a revolutionary for the oppressed; a believer in scriptures than a rabble-rouser; a composed champion of civil rights, not a class war agitator. Dr King has been labelled as the facilitator for Obama’s White House glory – an example that must end questions on racial and class inequities. A dreamer whose dreams have been fulfilled. A Congressional Gold Medal. A National Holiday. Several hundreds streets and avenues. A quintessential patriotic American.

The American power finds this moralist preacher unfailing – an inimitable icon that must eclipse his own evolution into an internationalist. What is left untold about MLK’s life is his story of imperfections, of his constant progressive evolutions, of his critical reflections as an astute revolutionary. Of his victimization as a recipient of ruling class narratives of equality and justice. And despite that, of his profound love and humane eagerness making allowance for endless possibilities. And most importantly, his eventual rejection of fundamental approaches bequeathed to him; of his experiments with truths that started with hopeful pacifications only to end with call for political-economic revolutions.

A celebration around Dr. King's death is evident on this 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott mugshot, held with Alabama Police.

More than anyone else, Dr King was acutely aware of the possibility of a retaliation at his call not for domestic reform, but for international revolution. Therefore, he addressed the system on April 4, 1967 in New York: “Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: ‘Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?’ ‘Why are you joining the voices of dissent?’ ‘Peace and civil rights do not mix,’ they say. ‘Are you not hurting the cause of your people?’ they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling.”

Dr King’s commitments were indeed not understood, nay, refused to be understood. The ruling power was more keen in establishing him as a mediator, than admit him as an agitator. He had to be christened a believer in peaceful progression, not recognized as an organizer in quest of radical replacement. MLK cleared the air in 1967, just few months before he was assassinated: “The white liberal must rid himself of the notion that there can be a tensionless transition from the old order of injustice to the new order to justice…It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension…We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it.”

Revolution is never tensionless, Dr King warned the white power. And the American crisis was not simply race, it was capitalism, he concluded – a declaration that is still considered too dangerous to be taught through history textbooks. Dr King thundered: “…(we) demand a restructuring of the architecture of American society…When you look at it, (integrating public places) did not cost the nation one penny. It didn’t cost businessmen one penny. In fact, it helped businessmen out. Even the right to vote didn’t cost the nation anything to guarantee…Now what I want you to see is that we are now making demands that will cost the nation something. You can’t talk about solving economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You are really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folks then. You are messing Wall Street. You are messing with captains of industry..in other words, we are dealing with class issues….something is wrong with the economic system of our nation…It means that something is wrong with capitalism.”

Dr King not only had dreams. He also had revolutionary economic plans to fulfill them. And his plans certainly did not include presiding over capitalism from inside the White House.