Fifty years.
Fifty years since a turning point in the 1960s Civil
Rights Movement: the historic March on Washington, D.C., where the late Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shared his dream for a new America.
This 50th anniversary has struck a particular
chord with me, perhaps because I’ve now reached that half-century mark myself. In some ways, it’s hard for me to grasp just
how much has happened in fifty years: The desegregation of public school
systems, colleges and universities means that students of color need no longer
be escorted into classrooms by federal marshals, or fear government officials barring
their entry. Employers can no longer patently refuse to hire employees on the
basis of race. Business establishments cannot openly refuse to admit or serve
persons of color.
So much has happened in fifty years.
I and many other persons of color have come of age in a
post-Brown v. Board of Education/post-Civil Rights Act of 1964/post-Voting
Rights Act of 1964 world that has allowed us all to take much for granted. For
us, schools have always been desegregated, Holiday Inns have always been
hospitable places to stay during family vacations and no stores or restaurants
have ever been off-limits. But before
there were laws that would come to shake our nation’s conscience and make it
possible for us to have those experiences, there were many “dreamers,” black
and white, men and women, Christian and Jewish, who marched, protested, endured
beatings and jail, and gave their lives, all because they dared to believe that
all people should enjoy the legal freedom and protections that before had only
been available to some. Those “dreamers”
and their sacrifices made it possible for me and for many others to know a
world in which there were far more opportunities and far fewer barriers.
Fifty years later, our nation has many achievements to
celebrate, but as we do so, we should be mindful to honestly acknowledge our
struggles. Too many of our nation’s urban public schools are still segregated –
now, filled with students of color. Too
many families of color live in poverty.
Too many young people of color, lured by empty promises of money and status,
become trapped in the criminal justice system.
The lives of too many persons of color – especially young men – are lost
to violence.
Yes, we’ve come a long way.
But we still have a long way to go, to eradicate our fear
of those who are “different” – in race, ethnicity, gender or religion – and to
overcome our struggle to see ourselves in our neighbors.
Laws can mandate that access to schools cannot be denied
to persons on the basis of race or ethnicity. But laws alone cannot eliminate cliques, taunting,
intimidation, bullying and acts of violence committed against those who are “different”
in those schools.
Laws can mandate that jobs cannot be denied to persons on
the basis of race, ethnicity or gender. But laws alone cannot break glass
ceilings to allow women and persons of color to occupy coveted positions of leadership.
Laws can mandate that access to public accommodations
cannot be denied to persons of color. But laws alone cannot prevent racial and
ethnic profiling and targeting that reduce persons of color to second-class
citizens once they are admitted to those places of accommodation.
Laws can only mandate so much.
And where the letter of the law stops, I believe that the
work of all of God’s people must continue – in transforming hearts and lives –
so that we, like the dreamers before us, can envision a world in which we meet those
whose skin is a different color without suspicion, in which we greet our
neighbors whose native tongues differ from our own without fear, and in which we
encounter those whose religious beliefs differ from our own without apprehension.
My great-grandfather – a man born into slavery, a man who
could neither read nor write – began a school on his Homestead so that his
descendants would have educational opportunities that had not been available to
him. As one who dared to stand up to the establishment of the late 1800s and
demand to be counted as a man, I am certain that he would be cheering proudly
now at the world in which his descendants live.
And, no doubt, he would remind us that, as a nation, we’ve
come too far in the past fifty years to stop dreaming now.
