At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial recently, Georgetown Professor Christopher Metzler talked with some fifth- to eighth-grade students.
“Their knowledge of Dr. King was superficial at best,” he told me. “They said he stopped discrimination from happening. That’s the extent of it, and I find that deeply troubling.”
At least, they didn’t confuse Dr. King with being a medical doctor.
As the memorial gets its official unveiling on Sunday, the 30-foot monument seems to dwarf some bitter realities. Many people, including the young, have less of an understanding of what King stood for than we care to admit. Far worse is that, overall, America’s record, in terms of society’s achieving Dr. King’s dream, puts us nowhere near anyone’s notion of a “Promised Land.”
More than 40 years after his death, we still get the dream part. We just haven’t been able to translate it into a full reality.
“We’re in limbo,” said Metzler, one of the more outspoken voices on the matter, whom some may see as too harsh or critical of where we stand in the wake of the dream.
But Metzler is unapologetic in listing where we have failed, leaving much to be done.
