Oliver Carter, junior, and Elizabeth Fiedler, senior, were both invited to share Martin Luther King, Jr.-inspired essays during the 19th annual National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP - Overland Park, Olathe and Leawood Units) MLK, Jr. Scholarship and Awards Dinner. The event was presided over by Henry Lyons, president, and Jim Terrones, vice president, and attended by over 250 people.
Oliver and Elizabeth represented USD 231 well and elegantly captured the essence of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work!
The essay question and responses can be found below:
What is the responsibility of today's youth in practicing Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of everyone being treated fairly and equally?
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Oliver Carter
As a child, you are affected by your surroundings and absorb everything around you. Children are a big reflection of their family life. And like the reflection in personality, parents can also push beliefs on their children such as racism, inequality and homophobia. It is a basic human right to treat others equally. That's where the children come in.
Children are responsible for the future of this world, and for future generations. It’s seen on all posters, and administrators present a speech once a year about the things you're supposed to do, but children, in general, don’t listen to those messages, or to adults. You can be reckless sometimes as that’s how a teenage brain functions. However, the longer the years progress, the more reckless and irresponsible they seem to get, being influenced by things like social media, and wanting to be like celebrities or content creators they like. They watch others do something dumb and they want to recreate it.
The combination of being impulsive and bullying others makes bad and envious people lose the progress we once made. To people who aren't white, straight men, it’s hard, and if we keep influencing children to think that white men are superior and will dominate the world, that people of color, LGBTQ, and women are weak, it’s not going to change. Even cartoons and streaming shows today tend to cut out the important things children should be learning to be a better person. They could learn more about the world instead of being based on stereotypes.
So what can children do to improve our society? It’s crucial to have a kinder environment. Pointing out bad behavior, and reassessing how to handle it, is better than criticizing and yelling at children. That clearly is not how they should be raised. Teach them to be respectful and responsible, something schools, and even parents, don’t emphasize enough. Hear out children, or peers, when they feel down, because bottling up emotions can lead to being bitter.
Teaching morals can also help. If given everything children want, they won’t think any differently and grow up entitled. It needs to be a balanced amount of love and support with an understanding that you won’t get everything you want. But it’s best done young, as it’s harder to make these changes as an adult. If a child grows up that way, and passes it to theirs, we won’t progress.
If we were a more equal society, like MLK suggested, we could help things like poverty, reduce violence, education, human rights, economy, and justice. Maybe one day we can make people like MLK, Sojourner Truth, James Baldwin, and Marsha P. Johnson, be satisfied in a world where it’s not based on race, gender, sexuality and disability. It has gotten better with the Equality Rights Act and Affirmative Action bills, but it’s still apparent that some won’t accept that times are changing.
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Elizabeth Fiedler (Senior)
Inequality and discrimination have plagued the lives of minorities throughout history and continue to do so today. Martin Luther King fought against this discrimination to better his community and gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in the process of doing so. This didn’t only apply then though. The responsibility of today’s youth in practicing Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech is to organize and fight for the right of everyone to be treated equally, especially as we see discrimination in our local communities.
Without people continuing to fight for and uphold liberty, there can be no equality. Martin Luther King advocated fighting for your community in his “I Have a Dream” speech when he said, “there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted… rights.” It is crucial for young people to remember that when fighting for justice, those responsible for oppression deserve no peace. Young people need to take action to protect their community from discrimination. You can fight against injustice peacefully, but you must still fight. There is no incentive for corrupt authorities to fix injustice without disturbance. Martin Luther King used this by organizing large peaceful protests and boycotts to fight for his community. Young people have both the ability to organize these same movements and a reason to. We must fight to protect our own rights and the rights of others because it is our responsibility to continue the legacy and progress of those that fought before us.
However, it is not only our responsibility to fight but to fight now, protecting minorities is not a cause that can be put off. It is crucial to react swiftly and harshly to injustice. As Martin Luther King said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “We have also come … to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to … take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” Youth have a critical role in responding efficiently to injustice, especially because of the prevalence of social media; allowing younger generations to be aware of injustices almost immediately after it happens. Information on injustices is the first step to responding because you cannot react to something if you are not aware of it. Using social media as a tool to spread information allows us to uphold Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. However, it is important to remember sharing information is not the same as protesting. Information is important but action is crucial to change.
Youth have a critical role in ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and equally. Justice is not something that can be fought for just once, it is something that must be fought for continuously in order to maintain. Youth have a unique ability to spread information and organize efficiently and it is our responsibility to use those skills to progress the standard of equality in our country.
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