Each year, on this day, I consider it the very least that I can do to spend some time thinking about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — the civil rights leader whose birthday (January 15) we celebrate on or about the exact date by taking a day off from work or from school. Civil rights is my one “hot button” issue, and Dr. King one of my heroes. This year, as a new father, I started wondering about the day in the not too distant future on which I will need to explain to my daughters, Abigail and Fiona, about who Dr. King was and why he was so important. I struggled with the thought a bit; Dr. King may be a hero, but the civil rights era manifested both the best and the worst of America. Learning about that chapter of our history — unlike so many others, which are convenient enough to (literally) whitewash in perpetuity — is quite possibly the unavoidable point at which we begin to lose our innocence (or at least our naivete) as children, and begin to see the world around us in a more complex way. It is a sometimes exhilarating, sometimes heartbreaking society in which we live. We have come a long way as a country since Dr. King’s time, but we still have miles to go. My kids will grow up in a world where racism (at least within our own national borders) is, by and large, viewed as a cultural psychosis, a disease that we’re desperately trying to cure ourselves of; but it still flares up, and the legacy of the civil rights era (and the great injustices that preceded it) will still attend us well after my children have grown. It’s inevitable that the history lesson I teach my daughters will have present day examples from which to draw, making it all the more necessary.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 06:55:47 +0000
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