The 1950s

Today is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

The America I knew growing up is the one that opened doors for me — Head Start, Chapter 1, Upward Bound, the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program. Programs built on the belief that talent exists everywhere, even when opportunity does not.

The America we’re seeing now has me unemployed and without health insurance. This didn’t happen overnight. It’s the America that’s been under construction for 28 years — the same 28 years I worked in television news.

In America’s newsrooms, the hallways really are plastic, and the $80,000 and six-figure jobs are reserved for white people, mostly white men.

Dr. King warned us that progress without justice is an illusion. On his birthday, I’m thinking about what we gained, what we’re losing, and who is being quietly shut out again.