Possibilities

When I picked my son up from kindergarten on Friday, he was wide eyed and excited about Martin Luther King day. He told me "Can you believe there used to be 'Whites Only' signs?! Blacks didn't even get paid the same as whites at their jobs. Dr. King fought to help people. Why would someone want to kill him?"

Yikes. I'd honestly been thinking about what to make for dinner, and now this? I struggled to explain a mindset that I don't understand myself. What is an adequate answer to the question "why?"

I can understand my son's bewilderment at descriptions of American life before the civil rights movement. Very young kids are learning everything for the first time without pre-conceived expectations; our fuss over "firsts" don't always make sense to them. In the last presidential election, my kids had fun taking sides in a highly unusual primary race between a woman and an African American man. (My son rooted for Clinton because Grandma liked her. My 2 year old liked Obama because it was fun to say his name.) And then there was that female VP candidate who almost stole the show. A homogeneous government would seem strange and out of place to them now. At the movie "The Princess and the Frog" this weekend, Disney's first African American princess similarly failed to surprise. Growing up in a multicultural community with a high population of immigrants, my kids simply expect diversity in all areas of life.

If dreams are powerful, expectations are even more so. The Wright Brothers' first airplane flight in 1903 only lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. More important than how far they flew that day, they had redefined forever what was possible. There was still far to go before we had the Concord and space travel, and expected commercial airplanes to take us to any corner of the globe we wished to visit, but progress was unstoppable.

Martin Luther King famously had a dream that sparked many "firsts" and changed the country in fundamental ways. I'm sad to see my son's innocence fade as he grows up and learns not just about King's dream but also the work left undone, even today. For now, I emphasize the positive. I tell him if he sees injustice in the world, he has the power to do something about it, and change it. We know what is possible.

See:
2010 MLK Day Technology Challenge at www.serve.gov