This weekend, many of Polimom’s online friends wrote timely, eloquent pieces about the life, death, and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. I wanted desperately to emulate them — to give voice to my thoughts — but Polimom had wandered a bit too deeply into the corridors of my mind.
Shaun Mullen’s beautiful post about his family and memories, for instance, was a poignant reminder that the struggle has affected this country for generations — but I never knew the America of separate drinking fountains, lunch counters, or segregated schools. Although I vaguely remember hearing about the busing riots in Boston, that violent, angry world seemed far away from the cocoon of my childhood.
In the end, although I spent many hours thinking about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement and trying to translate those thoughts to words, I didn’t post. Instead, since the kids were out of school, I took AC and one of her friends to see a movie. The Pursuit of Happyness has been on our agenda for weeks — not just because we enjoy Will Smith (we do) or that AC thinks he’s good looking (she does), but also because the previews indicated a powerful, inspirational story.
And it was.
The story of Chris Gardner’s personal struggle for success, and his ultimate triumph, was a many-layered social statement. It’s a testimony to the strength of personal will, the complexities and challenges of single parenting, the uncritical love of a child, and the American dream — and all of those would have been true regardless of Gardner’s race or ethnicity.
In fact, the broader social implications were so universal that AC and I talked about whether the movie would have been different if the protagonist had instead been white… and the answer for us was both yes and no.
AC — who lives in tomorrow’s America, saw an inspirational man who happened to be black, while Polimom (who’d been pondering MLK all weekend) saw a black man who was inspirational — and both of us saw hope.
And so, after all was said and done on this three day weekend, it was Ed T’s optimistic Martin Luther King Day post that I thought of.
Today’s struggle is different from that of my parents or grandparents, and it’s not nearly as different as it will be in AC’s tomorrow, because above all else, the movie was about a man who believed in the content of his character, and was ultimately judged — and succeeded — on the basis of that belief.
Is that not what was at the very heart of Dr. King’s Dream?