On this holiday which honors Martin Luther King, jr., I realize that we still have a long way to go to see Dr. King’s dream come true, but it is nice to have a day which we can reflect on the progress made.
I often wonder if the fact that Dr. King was killed in the midst of his peaceful protests moved us forward faster. King’s passion for civil rights moved us on a trajectory of change.
As I learned at Mosaic, the #1 definition for “passion” in Webster’s Dictionary is “the death and sufferings of Jesus Christ.” In essence, “passion” really refers to the cause or issue for which “we are willing to suffer and die.”
King’s willingness to die for the cause needs to be remembered. May we all have more passion in our lives, a passion to accomplish great things and bring justice – even if it costs us our lives.
What progress do you think we have made?
I think the biggest progress is that there is a strong sentiment against racism in our country. People have become more accepting of cross-racial interaction in all aspects of life.
One overlooked aspect of King’s work is that at the time of his death he was organizing a movement that would span African-Americans, Latinos, poor people, etc. Furthermore, other minority groups took some cues from King in their civil rights movements too. Therefore, in that regard, I say that as a result of widespread collaboration with each other and with whites, important progress has been made in that access to services/education/housing/employment have grown tremendously since 1968.
This is not to say that challenges no longer exist (there’s still a question of people trying to preserve dominance; and there’s still a strong sentiment to avoid deep engagement of racial issues), but progress nonetheless.