Martin Luther King

It’s been another anniversary – the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King delivering the ‘I have a dream’ speech.  I must admit, I hadn’t really heard it – I mean, I’d heard a few bits, but I’d never watched the whole thing until the BBC pointed out that an anniversary was coming up.  Now I have.

The speech is a brilliant bit of oratory, and still echoes with all its power to this day.  To my ears, it’s not merely an appeal for a liberation from the oppression of people of one colour by those of another, but an appeal for colour-blindness.  For the boys and girls of the speech to hold hands together, black and white, seems to me the best ambition for a world, in which our children are raised entirely oblivious to the idea of race, not because they are oblivious to its divisiveness, but because it simply isn’t an issue that divides.

Fifty years on, and – I say this as a middle class white girl in a predominantly white society – I don’t think King’s dreams have yet been achieved.  Certainly huge strides have been made, but the simple fact that the debate continues seems to me, a failure.  Debates about race and gender are important – it is important that we discuss these ideas, it is important that debates progress society’s ideas.  But it seems to me that the ultimate ambition is to reach a stage where there isn’t anything to talk about, because at the end of the day, there isn’t.  True equality doesn’t need debates; it doesn’t need anxiety and protest, marches and speeches.  True equality is the moment we forget that some people have different colour skin from others, and battle for equality becomes a lesson from history that we remember but do not relive.  True equality is the day our children go, as Martin Luther King put it, hand-in-hand together, with a child’s innocence that doesn’t conceive, cannot imagine that the skin of their friends is even worth noticing, since they are equals together and companions through life.

However, until that day, it seems to me right and proper that we do celebrate Martin Luther King, and we do listen again to his speeches and remember the dream that so many fight for – not just in America, but across the world.  And we hope that one day his speech will be heard again as a beautiful piece of oratory, and a roadmap for a thing that we now take for granted, instead of the battle-cry of a struggle still being fought.