Stone of hope

Before Tuesday, many Americans believed that they would never live to witness the day this country would swear in a black president. There's only one black legislator sitting in the Senate today. Struggling urban school districts predominantly serve minority communities. African-Americans are overrepresented in prison populations. Racism has evolved into a de facto state of society-yet the civil rights movement is no longer as important as it once used to be.

In the midst of all of this, on Tuesday it seemed that the activism of the 1960s had returned. Two million gathered in D.C. Millions more watched from their homes. The pageantry was infused with a sense of hope, and not just a hope in what President Barack Obama may achieve, but what each one of us can do. So many children interviewed on television commented that Obama made them feel hopeful about their own futures, about what they could accomplish. It's a hope that must be vigilantly guarded because, in poor neighborhoods, like those in New York, Los Angeles and D.C., this hope, driven by youth, is under constant assault by the realities of poverty. We must use this hope to change the way we live, something Martin Luther King Jr., spoke of in his day:

"If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful! If you want to be great-WONDERFUL! But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve! You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant."

It's fitting that Obama was sworn in just a day after the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday-not because of the similar colors of their skin, but because our past must inform our future. We need to kindle the flame of service, hold the torch up high and proclaim to the world that America's best days are yet to come. But those days must come for everyone, and there may be no better place to start than in our segregated public schools.

Jonathan Kozol has worked for over 40 years with inner-city schools. In his book, "The Shame of the Nation," he makes a strong case that the problems with public education stem from our failure to socially integrate. Can we ever really be one people if we are not willing to send our children to the same schools? If separate can never be equal, then why do we still live separately?

We are well overdue for an upgrade to our national service programs, but those programs must be targeted at the very root of the problem. There should never be a child in this country who thinks she cannot realize her dreams because she was born poor, or black or female. There should never be a moment when this country becomes satisfied with the social progress it has made in promoting equality of opportunity, because we don't all have the same chances yet. You may not need a high school diploma to serve, but it would certainly help.

I haven't been to any mountaintop, but I've listened to someone who has. I've listened to someone who looked over to the other side of that mountain and saw the Promised Land. I've listened to a man so convinced of the power of that land that he felt satisfied, even if he could not come into that land with us. Forty years later, we have yet to finish our journey through the wilderness, but that vision of the Promised Land has been strengthened for us all.

Most importantly, our children are starting to see that land, but we can't stop before we get there. We can't stop when the racial achievement gap is already significant by the fourth grade. We can't stop when 70 percent of eighth graders are not proficient readers. But the new hope is real. That's why the time has never been more right to invest in our youth. When King told the world about his dream, he shouted, "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." We've got the stone. Now, let's get to the other side of this mountain.