Talking with some friends the other day, it suddenly occurred to me in a visceral way that most people don’t grow up in urban megalopolises, where people from all manner of backgrounds intermingle. Obviously this ought to be no great revelation, but meeting people who through no fault of their own lived in more homogenous areas brought it home. In Flatbush in the 1980s, homogeneity didn’t last more than a few blocks. When my father moved to Bay Ridge in the early 1990s I remember being surprised at how uniform it was, and even Bay Ridge’s heavily Italian character had a significant Puerto Rican and Arab element.

Clearly we took it for granted. It was normal. Everyone had the same childhood and teenage horrors, dishing out and taking in the petty miseries and tribunals of growing up, but we did it in different accents. Not always peacefully — one memorable junior-high schoolyard fight involved an American-born black kid against a Carribean-born black kid; one memorable high school schoolyard fight involved rival Korean and Pakistani crews battling for control of the Harris Field marijuana market — but far more peacefully than an earlier generation would have expected.

And we have Dr. King and his allies to thank for that. Read this Center for American Progress report for a sense of how far America still needs to go on anti-poverty measures. King understood that these struggles do not end, anymore than the American experience ends. Social justice is an ideal to animate us, not a destination we reach and we all go home.

One thing I feel confident in asserting about King is that he would have wanted you to help alleviate the suffering in Haiti. If you’re in Washington DC, two options tonight are the Wale/Tabi Bonney show at the 930 Club tonight; and another fundraiser at the Eighteenth Street Lounge Public Bar, where I’ll be, catching up with some old friends who happen to be in town. If you can, come out, say hi, and help.