As we reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and passion for humanity forty years after his tragic assassination, it is important to recall and be grateful for his truly heroic efforts and invaluable contribution to the civil rights movement in this country, not only for blacks but for all people. While legal and social progress has certainly improved the lives of many over the past forty years, thanks in part to the early civil rights movement, we should not lose sight of the work that still needs to be done to reach the “promised land” Dr. King so passionately spoke of.
On a broad scale, we have begun to address the ailments of racism and discrimination that threaten the ideals upon which American society prides itself. In the twenty-first century, the United States is more than ever a multi-cultural patch quilt of racial and ethnic backgrounds, religions, orientations, values, ideas, and experiences. Many Americans today would acknowledge this is as being a good thing and one of our nation’s greatest assets. As evidence, shifting mentalities have brought our country to a point where we can realistically look forward to electing a black man or a woman as our president—a tremendous milestone in the long struggle for civil rights and equal opportunity.
Yet while the United States has indeed come a long way since the1960s, there is reason to question whether we have only hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of ensuring real equity, opportunity, and prosperity for all groups. Our educational system and workplaces are good areas to apply our analysis of how far we still need to go to achieve true equality and fairness. The present challenge is to identify and understand the more subtle forms of bias and hidden barriers around us—These are perhaps less visible from the surface, but they are no less insidious than the overt forms of discrimination Dr. King fought against, and they continue to marginalize underprivileged groups in very real ways.
Giving Notice challenges all of us to dive deep into this discussion of inequities and how we can create innovative approaches to mitigating them effectively. Our ability to reframe and refresh our understanding of the issues at hand and the work that needs to be done is ever more vital, especially as the playing field inevitably becomes increasingly diverse and globalized.
