Play One on TV

My son will be celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by staying home from school today and playing X-Box. I suppose it was inevitable. For kids his age, the legacy of Dr. King has been relegated to another semi-anonymous holiday along with President’s Day and Memorial Day.

Despite the cultural disconnect, my son’s attitude gives me hope for the future of our country. To my parent’s generation, Martin Luther King Jr. was either an impassioned visionary or a pain-in-the-butt rabble rouser, depending on what side of the civil rights issue you stood. To my generation, he was a man before his time, without whom the civil rights movement would barely have registered on the political scales of the South.

To my son’s generation, he’s “that guy who made the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.” Kind of like how Lincoln is “that guy who wrote the Gettysburg Address” and Washington is “that guy on the one dollar bill.” While my son’s historical knowledge needs some shoring up, I’m encouraged by the fact that he doesn’t see Dr. King as anything unusual — he’s just another famous guy who did what needed to be done. In the same manner, his friends aren’t black, or white, or Asian, or Hispanic, or anything else; they’re just “the guys.”

My parents grew up with racism. I grew up dreaming of the death of racism. Perhaps his is the first generation that will grow up wondering what all the fuss was about.