Ruffled Branch*

I see in the newspaper that MTV a cable television station once dedicated to showing music videos has announced their intention of showing all their special programming today in black and white to honor the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, and invite conversations about race and equality, causes for which he gave his life.

Conversations are certainly important, but they don't really seem to be accomplishing a lot. The Civil Rights Act was passed under Lyndon Johnson yet people are still fighting for the right to vote in the South and elsewhere. Young black men are disenfranchised by poverty and lack of education, and make up 80% of our growing prison population. Young black women are having babies because they see nothing else in their future. 

We have a black president, yet race relations between the nation's police and the citizens have reached a low ebb. People are demonstrating in  cities throughout the nation, yet poverty and lack of education are epidemic. 

I think it is time to stop talking about it and do something, as individuals, as cities and states and as a nation. We seem to be confronted with issues that have grown so big and so complicated, that nobody really knows where to start. I certainly don't have any answers, but I think that id they are to emerge, they will have to come from the hearts and minds and consciences of individuals.

*Sometimes I feel a bit like this bracket fungus--a well nourished, decorative parasite feeding on an outdated, dying branch. Yet they are edible and capable of feeding others.