MLK Jr. Day

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I always wonder what he'd think of race relations in the United States today. This year, I can't help but draw parallels to some highs and lows around the world.

Barack Obama was sworn in as our president a year ago this month. Despite those who opposed his election to the high office, I think it was a proud time in our country's history. Seeing his black face in contrast to the white stone buildings in the Capitol and the predominantly white faces of politicians surrounding him made my heart swell with pride. I cried as I listened to his speech on CNN at work while I was supposed to be writing on deadline.

Obama has had a steep uphill climb, battling the worst economic recession in decades and trying to pass an ambitious health care overhaul through Congress. Still, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time that he was trying to determine the appropriate number of additional troops to send to Afghanistan based on the international community's conviction that he will be the president to bring our soldiers home from Afghanistan and Iraq sooner rather than later. If only all of us in his home country had the same faith in our own president.

That hope stands in stark contrast to the turmoil mounting in Haiti after a devastating earthquake brought down most homes and businesses in that country's capitol city of Port-au-Prince. The vast majority of the people living and now struggling to stay alive in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, are black.

While the status of African-Americans has improved in the four decades since Dr. Kong's death, most of the black men, women and children in Haiti still live destitute lives. Many of them had nothing before and I wonder how much different their lives really are now, given the 80 percent poverty rate in Haiti. There may have been United Nations forces helping to keep the peace there before the massive earthquake last week, but most of the world turned a blind eye to Haiti's plight until the unimaginable occurred.

Surely, King's dreams of equality reached beyond U.S. borders to the rest of the world, seeing as how he modeled his strategy of peaceful resistance after the words of India's Mahatma Ghandi. Hopefully, the latest tragedy in Haiti will give the world reason enough to help the island nation's poor lift themselves up out of the rubble surrounding them and rebuild their lives with their heads held high with hope for the better future that King saw for all the world's people.