Teaching MLK in Taiwan

There are some things you just gotta do. So even though MLK day was in January, I had this moment last week where i just felt I would be remiss if I didn't teach my Taiwanese students about the American civil rights movement. I'm here as a sort of ambassador, right? And I think it's an important part of American history to know.

So this week we had a whole lesson on Dr. King. My students had never heard of him. So I explained how it used to be in the American South. "If I want to go to the movies with you, or eat dinner with you, or ride the bus with you, we can't sit together," I explained. We showed them pics of segregated bathrooms and waiting rooms. My co-teacher even asked my students whether they thought they were "white" or "colored." "We're yellow!" they said.

"But Teacher Brett, you are Jewish. Are you white or colored?" one student asked me. "Well people used to think we were colored, but today we are white," was my answer.

We played clips of Dr. King speeches, including "I May Not Get There With You," given hours before his assassination, where he uses the imagery of Moses seeing the promised land but knowing he won't make it there.

It's a fitting image, as next week I'm going to Israel for Passover with my family. While I'm gone they gonna show a movie: "Remember the Titans."

The students really seemed to get it. They were shocked when I told them how Dr. King's house was bombed, set on fire, shot at. They asked about the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. And just to put it in context, I told em what Jay-Z said: "Rosa Parks sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so that we can fly."