Student View: Martin Luther King Jr.

January 18, 2015

January 19th. This date has some significance. January 19th was the day an individual that impacted society greatly was born. This individual stood his ground and fought for African American’s rights. He brought some change which led to a decrease in racism and discrimination against the black race. Although some might argue with this statement that America has become less racist from when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I have a dream speech.
[heading size=”15″ margin=”10″]BearingNews asked students: In what ways has America become less racist since Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream speech” or in what ways do we still need progress? [/heading]

“I feel like segregation among the public, like separation and separate education, now that we have been more emerged together as races and more built upon each other, but there is still definitely racism. Racism can’t just be excluded to whites and blacks. It is everywhere and I feel like Martin Luther King made a change with that, but I feel like if he was still alive, it could have gone further and it might have worked out for the best.”—Senior Nick Roland

“Well, integration of schools that can go to school with white people and they can go to school with me and it’s okay. I think that’s a great thing that races can coexist and go to school together but something that we need to work on is probably racial identifying like saying ‘Oh he is black, he must be trouble’ or ‘Oh she is white, she must be preppy’ or something like that. I think that everybody is different and you can’t stereotype someone just because of their race.”—Sophomore Ojurere Shonekan

“We need progress because even though the law says that discrimination is terrible, people in their hearts, that is where there needs to be change. Even though the law says everybody love everybody, people still don’t love everybody. We all say that everybody needs to love everybody, but people don’t love other people and that is a problem. I think that is something that can’t be fixed with laws but it needs to be fixed with incoming generations and teaching them that people are people, no matter what.”—Senior Emily Vu

“In some ways that we definitely need progress is to diminish just racial inequalities from people, try to teach the people that there is no difference between things such as skin color. One thing that we have definitely done well is implementing affirmative action, allowing people to be able to get into college, even if they are minorities as well as No-Child-Left-Behind so that every child can be in school.”—Freshman Hannah Potter

“Well, America has become less racist not based on necessarily someone who had a tendency to plagiarize his speeches and also cheat on his wife. I think it is mostly become better with the deduction of racism through a legislative act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the acts that followed that act that basically instilled within the citizens not to be racist. I think those things have basically influenced us more so than Martin Luther King did. Of course, I will not disregard the mass popularity that is Martin Luther King but I would like for us to have a more favorable opinion upon our American legislation for basically constructing these walls to prevent racism.”—Junior Anthony Robinson

Written and Photos by Devesh Kumar

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Allie Pigg • Jan 18, 2016 at 1:41 pm

I really enjoyed reading this because as I knew some about the MLK Jr. Day, most of my celebration for the day was because of being away from school, rather than remembering a very important man in American history. It’s nice to read views from students of different races, backgrounds, and experience.


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