Martin Luther King Jr. will never mean the same thing to me that he means to my brother-in-law Reggie, nor will he have the same impact on me as on my nieces and nephew.
Close as we are, I can’t even claim Reverend King’s impact to the same degree as my sister.
I’m just a liberal white boy, full of liberal white-boy guilt, who tries real hard to do the right thing and tries too hard to say the right thing (and who ends saying too much of the right thing, and trying too hard, and just… embarrassing himself). I’m the one who thinks, deep down, no matter what I do, I’m somehow part of the problem.
But if nothing else, I can see the dinosaurs of our past dying out, year by year; replaced by children who are better than the generations past. Better than me. It is a glacially slow change, but likewise inexorable, and it gives me hope.
And when I read too much of today’s news, and hear too many quotes from too many stupid, scared, old white men, and my faith in the glacier starts to fade, I look at pictures like this…
… and I think that maybe I can see the change happening. Maybe I even do a (very) small amount to help.
And I am very, very lucky that this is so.
“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
