I have a dream

We've come a long way but not there yet. On this very date in 1963, during the civil rights march in Washington DC, young minister and civil rights activist, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. made his "I have a dream" speech. Tonight, democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, makes his acceptance speech as the Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

As a child I spent many a summer vacation in the Carolinas and Alabama where my dad was born, and can still remember the segregated rest rooms that were still in use. Even in my home state of New York there was racial tension still evident at my high school as people were dealing with their own anger and fear when Julian Bond came to speak.

During college I spent summers working for a local fruit farmer and remember the housing provided for the black Haitian migrant workers there to pick the apples. I thought they were on the scale not much better than the barn the farmer kept his cows in but was told by one of them that these were far better than most.

After college my first job was at a university in Mississippi, the DEEP south. Quite the contrast from the upstate farming community of New York State. Still I saw discrepancies in treatment and a lingering master/servant attitude among many even into the late '70's and early '80's.

The civil rights movement didn't stop inequality and prejudice but what it did do is make us as a nation have to admit to it officially and make the statement through legislation that admitted it was deplorable and moreover it moved us toward better equal rights for all. Not just black Americans, but all of us. The work and sacrifice of Reverend King and many others has helped all to gain more rights with regard to employment as well as our social status in this country. Whether a disabled employee or a woman. A male head of household or a single parent, many of the benefits that we take for granted from our employer and our government, no matter what our color or religion, were initiated with the work of that civil rights work in the '60's.

We still have a lot of work to do however and we can never consider it to be complete as all of us have our own prejudices and biases due to our experiences and left over experiences from our parents. Prejudice even extends to our lack of family and personal experiences leading us to be wary of someone who is a little different and with whom we've had no personal contact to know their actual character.

Even here in Brazil. Indiana, where much of the population is homogeneous, we still have to be aware of our tendencies to treat some differently than others due to our lack of knowledge about the individual personally, so we treat them as they have been stereotyped by others. We are not as homogeneous as it would seem if we think about it. Sure our percentage of black people in the local population is smaller than other parts of the state, but not only do we have to think about black people, but consider those of other religions, economic level, and ethnicity, and yes even sexual orientation. All of these people are due their civil rights and respect just as we are. Yes most of the county's population are Protestant Christians, but we can't take it for granted that all are and not use interdenominational prayers in public forums. Yes most of us are heterosexual, but we now know that some of us were made a little differently and not by some arbitrary choice. Yes, most of us live in stable, law abiding, family households, but we still have trouble treating the child of a lawbreaker like the criminal himself just because of the family he was born into, not even giving him a chance to develop into something else. Christ didn't say to prejudge these people or force our beliefs onto them. He said to love your neighbor and show others by our example what a Christian is. Period. Not just the one who goes to the same church you do, or looks like you, or has not had family living here for 4 generations.

So tonight when I watch Senator Obama on TV it will be with thanks to Reverend King and all those other civil rights workers on both a national and personal level that we have reached this far, but I will not forget how much more we as a country, as a local community, and I personally have to continually work on to continually try to reach even higher.