On this day to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., have we achieved his dream?
Part of that was, "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."
WWL approached Dr. Michael Cowan, Professor Emeritus and former member of the New Orleans Human Rights Commission to talk about where we are today when it comes to race in our society. Although Cowan said that many people no longer base judgment on the color of people's skin but rather now by the content of their character, he said a lot of what Dr. King was working toward remains to be finished.
"Desegregation is a good thing and desegregation was under way, but there's still a long way to go," Cowan says. "He said 'I worry that we'll do desegregation and then we'll stop, which will leave us short of what we really need and that is integration.'"
In our polarized world, Cowan echoes Dr. King's words saying we need integration to meet the challenges we all must face moving forward.
So while we've worked to dismantle segregation, what have we done beyond that?
"He said 'by integration, I mean people working together in a genuine way across racial lines, for the benefit of all communities.'"
Clearly we've fallen short when it comes to integration and the benefit of all communities, according to Cowan.
"A lot has happened by way of desegregation, some things, important things have happened by way of integration, but that's really what we need at this point," Cowan explains. "We need to stop arguing with each other about what causes racism and how it's defined and so forth and we need to focus together across racial lines."
Cowan focuses on one issue, the re-emergence into the community for people coming out of prison, as an example for the need of integration to find workable solutions to an on-going problem seen in the African American community.
"We need to have some credible program for people who are coming out of state prisons, having completed their sentences or being paroled and we just don't." he states. "And when there's nothing for people to do to put them on a better track, we pretty much know that they're going to be back in prison."
Cowan says we clearly know where we need to go, but we are unable to make any progress at the moment.