Holding onto the dream

50 years after his death, it is still hard not to be moved by Martin Luther King's  " I have a dream," speech.
I listened to it on the radio this week, different parts of it read by different people.

Famous human rights activists,  famous politicians, nobel prize winners, poets,  popstars.
They came from all over the world, the readers, chosen because each of them has played a part in trying to make King's dream come true.
 But the voice that moved me the most was that of a mum: Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, murdered 20 years ago in South East London 
He was 18 years old, waiting for a bus, killed in a racist attack.

Stephen Lawrence

Since then his mum's voice has become familiar as a campaigner for justice and equality.
But in the end, she is a mum, who has lost her son because of the colour of his skin in a world that was meant to be colour-blind.
50 years on we are still struggling with Martin Luther King's dream.
50 years on every day, people are killed or injured because of their race or their religion or their gender.
50 years on- all over the world, ethnic groups battle to gain power and authority over each other.
50 years on if you are from an ethnic minority, you are still less likely to succeed and more likely to live in poverty or be in prison.
50 years on one man's dream has not been enough to change human nature.

It is not that nothing has changed.  
We have come a long, long way from segregation and apartheid.
Walking through the streets of London or New York, melting pots of culture and ethnic diversity.
Hopeful, that what matters now is not the colour of your skin nor your religious beliefs.
but that what matters now is who you are and what you bring to the world.
And it's ok that everyone looks different and speaks different languages and wears different clothes.
It's ok that everyone believes different things and dreams different dreams and hopes different hopes.
What's not ok is to believe that you are right and everyone else is wrong or that the colour of your skin makes you more important than or superior to someone with a different coloured skin.
" I'm worried that my 4 year old daughter is racist ," one of my friends said to me the other day." She always points at people with different coloured skin and says,"look they have brown skin," or" look, their skin is black."
" It's just a description," I say, comfortingly, "she's telling you what she sees. Just like she will tell you that a  flower is purple or a bus is red."
For a while my friend is silent.
" It's not just that," she says at last, " sometimes she says -they have black skin and that makes them ugly. Or they have brown skin, they don't come from our country. She's only 4. Where can she have heard that? Do you think racism can be innate? Do you think children can be born racist?"
 I  laugh and shake my head.
" I don't believe children can be born with  pre-conditioned prejudice," I say. "Their entrance into a cold, un-umbiblical chorded world must be shocking enough, without having to take on a whole new value system as they exit the uterus.  Prejudice is definitely something we  learn."
" But who has taught it to her?" sighs my friend, tears stinging her eyes " you know it isn't us."
"I know it isn't," I say, hugging her.
But inside my heart is sinking.
I don't believe that racism is innate, but I do believe it can be heard and learnt so early in our lives from friends or family or peers that, without knowing how, it becomes an integral part of what we believe.
And that is why, 50 years on, Martin Luther King's words still drift unanchored and unfulfilled through our imperfect world.
Because for his dream to come true it must be shared by everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Dreams do not come true while we sleep but only through what we do while we are awake. 
Doreen Lawrence showed us that when she turned her tears of loss into words of passion Nelson Mandela showed us that when he turned years of imprisonment into the end of apartheid.
Malala Yousafzai showed us that when she turned a bullet in the head into a fight for equality.

Malala Yousafzai

And I know I'm not as brave as they are.
And I know that what I do will never make the difference they have.
But I will always, always , always have a dream.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23855375