Random Rambles: Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream. As soon as Martin Luther King, Jr. started his speech everyone knew it was something to be remembered. The hundreds of thousands of people at the crowded Lincoln memorial had gathered for the civil rights movement. Almost everyone in America knows how important King was to this country. So why am I talking about it? Because today is a day of remembrance and we owe it to the legacy King created. Today we remember all of King's accomplishments and we remember the civil rights movement. Indubitably, the world would've never been the same if it weren't for this man.

King was an ordinary person. But then, he became remembered forever in history for his legacy and the trail he blazed. He was one of the most important leaders in the civil rights movement and the equality we value today comes from this man. He became the most important person involved in the civil rights movement and was remembered along with Dizzy Gillepsie and Rosa Parks for being so influential. People rallied to his cause as he shed light upon this apparent disparity in their society. Many white people realized the errors of their prejudice because of him. His nonviolent movement paralleled that of Gandhi which made his movement successful in the long run. King realized that the only way for the segregation to end is for a person to come and actively protest against it.

What intrigues many of us today is the idea of having African Americans inferior to us. It may shock us today that these people were being discriminated against and schools have been sure to not allow history to repeat by showing students his speech and the civil rights movement. The whole conflict that resulted from the division is perhaps the darkest moment in American history. Slaves and segregation were never anything new but having such a system in the supposedly modern society seemed like a step backward from all of our accomplishments. As humans we tend to feel as though other people are inferior. We associate ourselves with certain groups and shun people who are different from them. All of the misconceptions construed against the Africans were made in Europe and existed for a long time. People believed African Americans were inferior by nature.

Equality is such a hard thing to obtain in our society. True equality will never exist yet we still strive for equality. When King spearheaded the movement, he believed that America would eventually learn to judge each other based on character, not something as insipid as skin color. So how is society now? We've made huge steps forward in this movement yet prejudice still exists. In a sense, Afrian Americans are still discriminated against despite the having full civil rights at this point in time. The misconceptions many people have only show how our society is still not ready to accept them. African Americans are still left in poorer conditions than most people and they tend to be "brutish" in many people's eyes. So why has this happened? African Americans are finally emerging with civil rights yet they still aren't exactly recognized as entirely equal because of the stereotypes surrounding them. Is it because of the past? Is it because of the environment they grow up in? No one knows, yet we still recognize that the civil rights movement isn't over.

What does the future hold for us then? The civil rights movement proved that change can occur. Already, we have multiple movements for equality like the gay rights movement among others. We are taking small steps toward the future to ensure divisions don't come between us based on our genetic composition. The gay rights movement only proves that we still have a long way to go and the changes we make are ongoing. People may feel as though the whole segregation situation was stupid and feel as though everyone back then should've been more aware of the disparity. But people today also stereotype and shun people based on certain characteristics. Mental capabilities, sexualities, and skin color are still determining factors for attitude toward others. Before we know it, a rift may form between two groups and we may face another situation in which our children are raised to be brain-washed into prejudiced thinking.

Equality will never exist. So why do we strive for it? Well, even though people still have bias, we want to make sure that the prejudice is kept to a minimum so that every group of people co-exist. The idea of having all humans united and equal is idealistic yet we want that goal because equality holds so much for us. We can ensure that equality is more stable and hopefully we can avoid having a situation like the segregation between blacks and whites.