OPEN THREAD: As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and legacy, we ask what does King and his dream mean to you today?
OPEN THREAD: As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and legacy, we ask what does King and his dream mean to you today?
My little girl is a very obvious minority in her city magnet school with her white skin. As we looked at her class picture, I asked her if she ever thought about that. Her answer: “no, I’m glad my friends are in school with me because they didn’t used to let the black kids go to school.” I think that would make Dr. King smile–both because she knows of the struggles and, because these children, not caring about their skin color, are friends.
Posted by Katie | 19. Jan, 2009, 9:26 AMMy writing teacher asked me that when I was much younger in a small town where I didn’t perceive any reality of racism from anyone I knew…my answer was–not without compassion–that I thought it was kind of irrelevant. I had never experienced racism and I thought it didn’t exist. If it did, it was met with scathing criticism and rejected point-blank.
Then I moved to STL. I realized that a diverse city which should have been so much more open and aware bred attitudes that shattered my idea that racism was going out with a whimper–and I didn’t understand it at all.
And today we have an African-American president! I see MLK’s dream as the burden I have to share my history with my children, and show them what great steps we HAVE taken, and that we can’t ever take that for granted.
Posted by emily | 20. Jan, 2009, 10:59 PM