AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2008 > March > 31
Monday, March 31, 2008
What has changed since King’s death?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When the passage of time can be marked in decades it’s always good to assess how things are going, even when the event being looked at represents a dark time.
This spring it will have been 40 years since civil rights trailblazer Dr, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by an assassin’s bullet. Four decades later I look around and wonder are we better off. If so, by how much?
There are some obvious things that have changed for the better. We don’t see separate water fountains or restrooms for blacks and whites. Movie theaters don’t have segregated seating. Seeing African-Americans seated at a lunch counter no longer brings the police and an angry mob.
Watching the news we no longer see big-bellied redneck sheriffs turning loose vicious dogs on peaceful demonstrators. We don’t people being knocked down by the spray from a fire hose, then police in riot gear moving in and busting heads.
The obvious signs, for the most part, are gone. But are things truly better, or did we just move our distrust of each other under the surface?
For years every time Sandy Springs residents wanted a say in whether we should have our own city there were accusations that it was racially motivated. The rich white people out here didn’t want to be part of Fulton County.
Likewise the locals complained loudly how Sandy Springs was a cash cow for county services that seemed to end up in the south portion of Fulton, where “they” lived. The polite term was “reverse discrimination.”
And there aren’t too many times in this blog where at least one person doesn’t play the race card in the comments section - no matter what the topic. For some it always boils down to blaming someone with a different skin color or a different religion or the opposite gender.
Is this as good as its going to get? We live together, work together, shop together, worship together, eat together, etc. - but when something hits the fan we close ranks by race and deny we might have played a role.
If that’s the case, then the answer to my first question is no, things have not progressed much in 40 years. We did away with the overt racism, only to let it slink just beneath the surface where it continues to percolate.
Which leads to a more relevant question. At what point do we - all of us - get a belly full and cry “enough!”
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