Speech Publication: A Paradigm Shift

The read their speeches during the annual celebration of life at the

junior David Kirkman's speech is published here -- with the permission of his parents.

If Dr. King were here today, one might say he would have an interesting day. He would see how far we have come as a nation over the past 43 years. He would see how much racism and discrimination have been reduced. Dr. King would also see, reasonably, a few flaws. Not necessarily in the government, but in the people.

It seems that part of my generation has been seduced into a drunken condition of immediate pleasures. The pleasures of playing now, having sex now, and then living off of grandma’s paycheck for the rest of their lives. Maybe the cause is the unwillingness to work hard toward success. Did we get so relaxed that we have lost our desire to be truly successful? Or have we simply given in to the contemporary peer pressures of our time?

Or could it be that the lack of economic empowerment is one of the major causes of living in poverty. Certainly, the lack of a quality education, unequal access to job opportunities, the lack of access to equal financial services definitely lead to poverty. In spite of our progress as a race, African-Americans have unequal access to quality education, jobs, and wealth; and this unequal access keeps them from gaining economic empowerment. Any one of these reasons alone can lead to economic troubles, but when faced with unequal opportunity, they can be devastating. It’s the reason why, from 1957 to his death, he would speak 2,500 times: to empower a broken economy. If no one in my generation aspires to become that next inventor or that next doctor or that next president, who will? Maybe this is something Dr. King would scrutinize if he were here.

Statistics predict that one-third of people of color, born today, will likely spend some part of their lives behind bars, and, since this is so, the government is building jail houses accordingly. Because many youth are in impoverished communities, opportunities are limited as a result many have turned to criminal behavior; and the dropout rates prove that there is a strong relationship between the dropout rate and criminal behavior. As a result, there are more African-Americans in prison than in college. What has happened to the youth? The inventors, doctors, and presidents that Dr. King worked so hard to see come into fruition, would all be absent in the near future because of someone’s failure to dream in their youth.

What must happen to my generation? We have to shift our paradigm—our way of thinking. “I’m the victor, not the victim” is what we’ll have to decree everyday. We’ll have to be like Dr. King, “I [do] have a dream …” and there’s not one person on the planet that can keep me from obtaining it. We’ll have to like St. Paul and shift our paradigm from, “I’m weak and that dream is way too big for me” to what he said in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” When someone tries to deter what that dream is, rub it off because now you realize that we’re all going up together, and it’s going to take a lot more than one ignorant person’s opinion to stop that progress. The truth of the matter is that people of color don’t have equal access to job opportunities and financial services. Some of the mindsets our ancestors have over 40 years ago have somehow lingered their way into our current time, thus affecting the way we behave, interact with different ethnicities, and the way we think.

So let’s shift our paradigm so that we can begin to dream again and shift our economy. Maybe, that’s what Dr. King would say.