There probably aren't many here who lived through the civil rights era. I was a little kid when MLK was killed, but his legacy loomed large in my childhood, when integration was still very new and very controversial.
I look back and remember when racism was pervasive, systemic, overt and ubiquitous. I remember when most black folks lived in impoverished neighborhood full of ramshackle houses, and relatively few went to college. I remember when there were few black business owners and those mostly had a business the "the hood", and blacks in positions of authority were rare.
I look around now, and I see such tremendous, incredible progress since I was a kid: black judges, congressmen, senators, presidents, millionaires. I go to the state college I attended and half the students are black, and more females than males. I see high-$$ subdivisions with big houses and manicured lawns and almost as many black folks as white.
It's hard for someone my age to see so much progress and not think "What the hell are you complaining about? You made it. You won. You're there, where MLK wanted you to be... all you have to do is reach out and take it."
I'm not saying there aren't still a few problems that need addressed... hell there always are for everybody, aren't there. But the comparison to an era I still remember is, you won the war, why are you acting like you lost and its still 1964?
That's my perspective as best I can explain it. If you want to hate me for it, knock yourself out.
I was under ten when I moved from a rural Ontario farmhouse without running water or TV to the edges of Buffalo, where the south and southeast of the city housed poor white and black families. It was referred to as "the jungle" either a reference to or from the book "The Blackboard Jungle".
If you were hip at all, you hung with your color. I didn't know that and got beat up a lot.
We were 'woke'. You kept your head up and your eyes open and you avoided anything with a uniform. You got seen talking to a Poleeese, you were in for at least some shoving and pushing. There were NO colored Poleeese, they were all white and hated kids.
That was our bond. When you knew the rules of the jungle, you were in even when you were out. You could be the 'wrong' color, if you were white and your tribe was mostly colored. But you were not "them", the people of authority who used that authority in every possible way every second!
I wasn't a tough kid. My safety was with the colored kids, they liked me because I could whistle through my nose and I could shoot a hockey puck. I was also superior at stealing apples and other food from local shops.
As I grew I discovered two books, both tossed in the garbage (it was how I got money, caging dumpsters). The first was the story of Amelia Earhart who inspired me to be more than I was, and this preacher guy who talked about Jesus as though he was standing right there! All I'd ever had was nuns beating Chatechism into me, I didn't know anything about Jesus other than he died hard.
It was Dr. King. My library and education were formed around two characters, a woman pilot and a black preacher, and one other person: Bobby Orr.
We have indeed come a long way. With so, so many miles still to go.........................
The book "A testament of Hope" a collection of King's writings and sermons sits on my desk. I like to let it fall open and see what inspiration leaps of the page. He and Amelia sure changed my life. Bobby Orr? Not so much.