Forty years after MLK’s assassination are we closer to the dream?
I’ve found the media coverage of this anniversary to be extremely interesting — and for once I’m not angered by the media to the point of speechlessness. This is exactly the kind of discourse that I think our nation needs, and I found the article to be wonderfully balanced in that it presented arguments that we have achieved the dream, as well as arguments that we have not — often juxtaposing arguments within the same field, such as comparing perhaps racially equal housing policy with perhaps biased behavior on the part of real estate agents.
Since Obama’s speech, I’ve been trying to be conscientiously more open-minded to the point of view that there’s no longer racism in our society. I completely reject the idea, but I think that the conversation about it is critically important to our society. And in order to have that conversation, the people on my side of the argument have to be able to have a rational discourse without resorting to name-calling and without estranging and polarizing people who merely disagree. MLK was a unifier and his appeal was universal. He wouldn’t have gotten much done otherwise — ultimately the civil rights movement was won through votes cast by white politicians to enact civil rights legislation.
As someone who has felt a lot of racism, I can only imagine how angry the average dark-skinned black person is. But I do believe that a lot of racism comes out of ignorance about how hard it is to be Black (or Hispanic, or a woman, or whatever) moreso than real malice. Sure, the malice exists. But it’s important I think to distinguish between people who are well-intentioned and people who aren’t. We should be able to have the kinds of conversations which are kicked off by that MSN article with the well-intentioned bunch who simply happen to disagree with us, and that’s definitely something that I have to be a little bit better about.