'Dream' world
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of great vision.
King had a vision for a world where race would not play a factor.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," King said famously.
Topinabee sophomore Dennis Lennox II said in Friday's edition of Central Michigan Life that "... if Martin Luther King Jr. was a Michigan resident, he would have voted yes on Proposal 2."
Lennox is, quite obviously, dead wrong.
Extreme conservatives sometimes use King's over arching ideology to twist arguments that race doesn't matter.
People should be judged on the "content of their character," right? Isn't that what King was fighting for?
And don't programs such as affirmative action come into direct opposition with that?
These extreme conservatives are forgetting one very important thing: The world King was envisioning is not the world we live in.
Reality check
It's easy to look at King's 1960s-era civil rights work and feel good about how far we've come.
It's a lot harder to realize just how disappointed King would remain to be.
Yes, we don't have separate bathrooms or drinking fountains, or separate sections on busses and in restaurants.
But what about our nation's inner-city school systems that continue to churn out ill-prepared youth?
What about our own university's underfunded and understaffed diversity programs?
What about minorities on our campus, who continue to be underrepresented?
Action needed
The CMU community has been subject to continual lip service from the university on its quest for diversity.
But where are the results?
Even before the ban on affirmative action was approved by Michigan voters in November, CMU was not doing its job.
In light of this ban, a hard job got even harder.
University President Michael Rao addressed diversity in Monday's President's Update. Rao outlined specific criteria for evaluating CMU's performance on diversity.
Are we really still at the point of identifying problems?
How many student forums and pointed questions will it take for there to be identifiable action?
Unlike our administration, King was much more than soundbites.
He was a man of incredible social change - the likes of which we haven't seen since.
The CMU community should take this week and reflect on what King would think of this university's priorities.
Would he be proud?
