Martin Luther King day

Every year on this memorial to Martin Luther King, I listen to his "I Have a Dream" speech.  It moved me again this year as it has done for many years.  You can watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

His great line about dreaming of a day when people will be judged "NOT by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" is still in front of us as a dream to be fulfilled.  Things have improved in many ways, but there is still a lot of work left to do to overcome the bias, the fear and the inequalities that still plague our nation.  I ran into a man this past year who told me that he used to like the Boston Celtics basketball team because "they were all white boys."  

There is not just one solution that will solve these problems.  Liberals want the government to throw more money at the issue.  Conservatives want blacks to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  But what is needed is a careful combination of public and private initiatives that especially focuses on increasing employment of black youth, on motivating black men and women of integrity to get involved in being realistic role models, on finding ways to make higher education more of a common expectation in the black community, etc.  Through owning Resurrection Books, I met a number of black men and women who told me they were the first member of their families to ever attend college. 

I am very grateful to look around at our society and see that more and more people, especially those under 30, have good friends who are from different ethnic backgrounds.   This is a great advance over my generation.  Despite the challenges that blacks still face, there have been many gains in housing, employment and educational opportunities. 

And some of this would not have happened without the remarkable leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Dr. King was not perfect.  He had flaws like the rest of us do.  But he was a flawed person who changed the course of our nation's history by holding up a high standard of justice and unity and was willing to go to jail and eventually to his death in order to advance what he believed (and I believe) to be God's vision for this country. 

I am profoundly grateful to Dr. King.