Years ago, when the world was full of landlines, I got a call, at home, seeking the views of the head of a minority household. It took a while for me to realize that the person the pollster was looking for was me.
There are all kinds of problems with terms like “head of household” and “race.” But the pollster said it was simple. The census showed three people in the household. Two were African-American. Surely, I didn’t need help figuring out why our home was listed as a minority household. Had we made a mistake on our census form? Was I going to answer the questions or not?
I answered, trying to speak for my family.
I was 12 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated a few miles from my family’s home. My father taught at what is now the University of Memphis for two years. Black people did not live in the neighborhood by the university.
Progress is so uneven in democracies that many people want to put “progress” in quotation marks, particularly in times when hard-earned progress is being energetically undermined.
But people must speak and write of the things that have proven true in their own lives. We have made progress in this country.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an eloquent spokesman for the idea that this country could be far more just than it is today. We should all be talking about that idea. That’s not the agenda of a small group. That’s the agenda.
Dr. King pursued justice, and we can follow his example. If we give up on that idea, we’ve lost our minds.
• Note: For a note on a childhood memory, see “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Jan. 17, 2022.
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