Great Words By Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Now since I have read these words, I remember that even I wish for such a world for my daughter, a world where people won’t judge her by the color of her skin and by the things she owns and doesn’t own.

I don’t know how much things have changed in America where Martin Luther King fought against racial discrimination and color-based prejudices, but in India they are more or less the same the way they used to be a few hundred years ago: only their manifestation has altered. We still have great attitudinal differences between the haves and the have-not’s; the skin-color does make a big difference to a majority of people; religious and caste confrontations are as rampant as they were in the past. If you don’t wear trendy and expensive clothes, if you don’t possess a big automobile, if you don’t have a big house furnished with all the comforts money can buy, you’re not up to the mark — you have not arrived.

I know to many people such things don’t matter — they don’t matter to me — but to impressionable minds, the minds who still have to develop their own opinions do get affected by the social and media bombardments of psychological propaganda. Things that I have mentioned above are not harmful per se, they become harmful when people become obsessed with them and stop doing things that they should actually do for the pursuit of these things. What if you can be a great painter, a novelist or an athlete but you get stuck with the wrong occupation just because you need to buy that car and that house and you got to be seen in that restaurant sipping that foul-tasting wine? Won’t that be tragic? I don’t want my daughter to ever feel uncomfortable because of her color; I would rather prefer she focuses all her physical and intellectual energies into developing her skills and passions, and of course her personality and attitude.

There is so much to do in life. Why waste precious moments fighting and nurturing prejudices?