I was pleasantly surprised when I went to the Martin Luther King
Jr. panel discussion earlier today. There was a huge diversity in not only the
speakers but throughout the audience as well. The diversity piece of the
discussion is what really stood out to me. One of the first speakers talked
about how she attended a play in China about Martin Luther King Jr. I was
actually shocked that people in China had not only heard about him, but cared
enough to put on a play about him. She described how the play company had to
negotiate with the communist Chinese government in order to be allowed to perform
the play. I was surprised that people in other countries cared this much about
race equality in America, especially countries like China that are predominantly
only one race. Her speech reminded me of my trip to South Africa a couple years
ago, my family went to an Apartheid museum and before the trip I had never even
heard of it before. I learned the basics about MLK in elementary school, but I
never learned about other countries racial equality. I did briefly learn about
the caste system in India but not even close to enough about it to perform a
play about it. At least one if not two of the panelists where from foreign
countries and I was surprised at the vast knowledge they had about Martin
Luther King Jr. I don’t know if they learned about him when they came to the
United States but today I definitely was enlightened by the fact that many
other countries know a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. It got me thinking
about how many global heroes there are that I probably don’t know about. How
had I not heard of the Apartheid before a few years ago, why is that injustice
not something we learn about in school. I don’t know if it goes back to what we
talked about in class, The United States is egocentric and we tend to only learn
about ourselves, but I think it is a shame I haven’t learned more about other
heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., especially in a country so rich with other
cultures.
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