Of course, everyone has learned about Martin Luther King Jr. in school. Growing up, I remember reading his I Have a Dream speech in part with my third grade classmates and believing to my little self that racism didn’t exist anymore, and that we weren’t in the times that Dr. King was in during the 60s. Well, although it’s true that we are not in the times we once were in, what’s not true is that racism doesn’t exist. But as I spent the weekend reading this speech and making sure I was getting an understanding of what Dr. King was trying to communicate through, I realized that I had never read this speech, or any other speech, of his in its entirety before. So this year, I wanted to be intentional about getting into Dr. King’s legendary and very impactful fight for the civil rights of black people in the late 50s and early 60s. I know I wasn’t born yet, obviously, but I believe this speech should be something I carry with me throughout the remainder of my days and that I reflect on when it comes to race and character.
“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 taken me a long time to even start to digest that a person’s race is not all they are. Dr. King wants his children and fellow black people to be seen by their character, which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a collection of differentiating attributes; something that marks a person as different. I have perceived thoughts and notions against people of every race, and this has stopped me from really knowing who that person is despite their physical. We, as human beings, love to judge and look at just the outside of a person, which isn’t a lot of who that person is. We often don’t take time to get to know the real; this being their character, personality, dreams and goals, etc. What my ancestors went through communicated that since black people were not like white people that they didn’t deserve to be treated like humans. Because of this, they were murdered viciously and without hesitation, kidnapped, ostracized and dehumanized. The seeds of poor treatment and unchecked motives toward black people from police officers (and a lot of self-hatred from blacks toward other blacks) have resulted in a world were we put image over everything, including skin color. In Dr. King’s dream, he wants his children to be judged by what they can do and who they have decided to be–not by something they had no choice at all in controlling.
As I reflect on Dr. King’s words on this late evening, I can’t help but wonder the tremendous pressure this man must have went through in order to let black people know that they were not subject and identified only by their skin color. Oh how many people I know now in these times who need to hear that. Hopefully, as time goes on, we are able to reflect on Dr. King’s words and what he wanted us to know in this beautiful speech.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright © Shanedogs 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Shanedra Writes Too Much 