MLK à la française

Today is a special day : it's MLK day back in the US. As a kid, this was a special day that included discussions about peace and equality, the civil rights movement and reflection on what it means to be a good person.

Today is my second to last lesson in Suzanne's class. and it's MLK day. So what do you think I plan to talk to the kids about...Yeah, see my problem? This is a class of French 1st graders. A group of kids who don't know about segregation, who grow up in a country where slavery wasn't institutionalized, where ethnicity isn't part of your official identity, there are no censure counting the number of minorities, there is no positive discrimination, there is no history of Jim Crow...

So I've been thinking about the question for 2 weeks: how can I talk to these kids about MLK without them saying, et alors? (so what?) While talking my husband's ear(s) off about this topic, I've realized how different it was growing up in the US in the 80's, in a very multicultural town where I was bussed to the other side of town for school, where my music teacher (an African American woman named Ms. Chisholm) taught us songs like "Amazing Grace" and "We Shall Overcome", where MLK day meant a school assembly about Black History Month. In France, none of that exists. When talking with my husband, I realized that institutional racism never existed in France (I'm by no means saying racism didn't or doesn't exist!). There was no segregation so these concepts are way beyond their comprehension. If I tell them that black and white kids couldn't go to school together, they couldn't drink from the same water fountain, they couldn't get married...do the French kids care? Does it mean anything to them?

These are the questions I've been grappling with, for both my daughter's class and for both of my kids. I realize they will probably never know (and maybe it's a good thing!) about positive discrimination or political correctness in the same way I did growing up because France doesn't have THAT baggage (I'm not talking about France's baggage).

So when I show a picture of MLK to the kids this afternoon, how many of them are going to tell me it's Obama? Will they realize the importance that this man had on the country, on the world? Will they care about Rosa Parks' resistance on that bus? Will they care about marching on Washington or "I have a dream"?

I'm scared to face them this afternoon...but I hope they will go home and ask questions and make their French parents think about the things I grew up learning about. And I hope that tonight, when I sit down with my kids to watch Obama's inauguration speech, they will grasp some of the importance of the day...