Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is still a dream, partly because black people are still sleeping.

University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax made a similar statement in the Wall Street Journal and has been called a racist by some.

“Young black children lag significantly in school readiness and expectations before discrimination could have much effect,” she said. Amy Wax was on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday defending herself.

As we celebrate Black History Month, it’s time to realize that there are problems in the black community besides racism.

These problems will not be dealt with if anyone who points them out is demonized and called a racist.

How many blacks know that the man who invented the traffic light was black? How many of them know that same man also invented the gas mask? Not many blacks have heard about Garrett A. Morgan, but I bet that many of them have heard of Ludacris, P. Diddy and Terrell Owens.

That is a problem, because black people need role models such as Morgan to get rid of the defeatism brought upon by racism.

The final battle against racism is a psychological one. There is no doubt that institutional racism and segregation put many blacks in poor communities. However, blaming every problem on racism doesn’t solve anything. It results in a self-defeating attitude that causes many blacks to internalize the roles of them as helpless victims and white people as oppressors. If anything, this attitude perpetuates racism.

Poverty and poor education lead to dysfunctional behavior no matter the color of a person’s skin. Go to poor neighborhoods with whites in them. You would see a lot of gangs, people who can’t write or read, drug dealers and people who believe that they can only make it by being athletes, criminals or musicians.

The fact that blacks were intentionally segregated into poor communities with no social services means that this problem affects blacks more. However, as evidenced by people like Morgan, it is possible to overcome these difficulties.

Amy Wax likened the condition of black people to a man run over by a truck driver. The truck driver must pay for the man’s medical bill, but the man has to work hard rehabbing himself to be able to walk again. What would happen if the man didn’t pay any attention to anyone that told him he needed rehabilitation?

There is a higher percentage of African-Americans in jail, higher percentage of African-Americans with HIV and lower percentage of African-Americans graduating from college. This is a problem that needs to be addressed with the same rigor and intensity by black leaders as other problems.

“Young black children are exposed to much lower levels of cognitive and emotional stimulation than white children, even in families with comparable income, education and IQ. They watch more TV and converse and go on educational outings with their families less often. They are more likely to be raised in homes without fathers, family meal times or fixed routines,” Wax said.

Black leaders need to listen more to people like Amy Wax instead of demonizing her by calling her racist.

Black leaders need to take a more proactive approach to dealing with racism instead of reacting to every alleged case of discrimination.

The bumps on the road to success for black people might be higher, but it is very possible to overcome those roadblocks. Perhaps that is what Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Black people need to take the first step by waking up to the fact that they, regardless of whether they are victims, need to put their future in their own hands.