By LINDSEY SCHIBELHUT, Staff Reporter.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It has been almost 52 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed those words on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. this month we need to ask ourselves “Has King’s dream been fulfilled?”
With the recent violent protests over the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO. to Eric Garner’s death from a police officer’s illegal chokehold, it seems as though America has regressed to the racial tensions of the 1960s. The minute a white or black person cross paths in unfortunate ways, everyone is so quick to base it on “racism.” Once the anger ensues, however, it can turn quickly into unnecessary violence; for example the shootings of the police officers in their own vehicles in retaliation to the Brown and Garner cases.
This is why on Martin Luther King, Jr. day, I have a dream as well. I have a dream that all people (regardless of race, religion, etc.) can work together to make our communities better places. I have a dream that we can look past our skin colors and see the content of each other’s character. I have a dream that people can come together and treat each other with respect and dignity, by refusing to let the diatribe of racial rhetoric poison us. We are constantly letting ourselves be divided, sometimes subtly without our awareness. We need to learn to stand together peacefully, much like the protesters did in the Selma marches.
In a world filled with various hatreds, there will always be someone or some group, that wants to bring others down. Hating a person based on the exterior, while never taking the time to get to know who they are on the inside is the height of ignorance. We have all been told “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” Why haven’t we learned that our skin color is just our ‘cover’? It isn’t who we are inside. We all have stories (our lives) just waiting to be ‘read’ by others, no matter the ethnicity. Racial hatred ‘burns the book’ before it ever has the chance to be read, or the person was ever really known, so to speak.
There will always be hateful, evil forces in our world that wish it to remain this way, always. I believe Martin Luther King, Jr. was certainly aware of these forces and the danger to his life that they brought. His dream that men might ‘overcome’ this hatred one day gave him the strength to believe, “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
