Professor Elam

Monday January 20 214

Here is an interesting article on the commercialization of MLK Day.  Like the day after Thanksgiving, retailers are seizing on the notion that with markets, the post office, banks, and schools closed, most folks will not be parading but just sitting around, hey time for a bargain sale!   This of course was not what the organizers of MLK Day had in mind. Here is my alternative suggestion, instead of closing schools, who struggle to make a dent in education when they are open, how about keeping schools open for a day of reflection.

MLK Day should be a a day of inclusion, not just about the Black Experience but about all those that King wrote and talked about.

Schools could offer this as a day of reflection not for where we were but for where we have come. I am old enough to remember segrated water fountains. Today black entertainers and athletes are everywhere. Samuel Johnson is the most successful actor on the planet to my knowledge.

We could also devote time to the journey of other immigrants.

The battle over the influx of the Irish is examined in \Gangs of New York movie. How have they fared since?

No one came up shorter than Native Americans, how are they using casino gambling improve living doncitions on the Reservation.

NAFTA and the new President of Mexico are turning things around. Mexico is replacing Brazil and the Country of the Future in the Aericas, let's take a look.

Asian Americans were imported to work on the railroads just as Africans came to the plantations. How has that work ethic positioned them in the high tech culture?

And it took lots of effort to make all this happen. I gave a talk in the Faculty Lecture Series  on the careers of black entertainters and how they were affected by social mood during Black History Month. It is an interesting journey from Bill Cosby to Flip Wilson to Tony Dorsett to Richard Pryor to The Jeffersons to Eddie Murphy to Magic Johnson and back to Bill Cosby.

Our business deaprtment is an interesting mix from Argentina to Bangladesh to South Texas to Taiwan and Mexico.

That is a journey worth examining. Your take?