As a young black person, I find white apathy is the biggest hurdle to fighting racism

“The Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride towards freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” – Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, 16 April 1963

The unarmed shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014 by the police in Ferguson, Missouri, compelled people from across the United States to lead protests and demonstrations and have a national conversation about race. As the student body president at the University of Missouri, I witnessed students organise from all different backgrounds to demand much-needed change on our campus.

As student protestors, we faced indifference, anonymous threats of violence and intimidation as we called for the simple acknowledgement of the issues that were creating a hostile environment for students of colour at our university. However, as the elected student voice, the most significant issue that faced my presidency was a complacent administration in the midst of countless concerns of racism on campus.

Since graduating, I engage with student leaders across the US as a speaker, and I find that young people of colour are most concerned about the complacency and the unwillingness of their white peers to engage in conversations about race and marginalised identities.

The lack of empathy and understanding in addition to the lack of spaces for dialogue is having a detrimental effect on our policies, our leadership and our values as a nation. Hate is fuelled by ignorance, and ignorance is a result of inadequate education.

We must challenge each other and our educational institutions to fight indifference and complacency with a curriculum that promotes empathy in a diverse and global society.

America cannot afford to maintain business as usual.

With a government administration that continues to show no regard for the concerns of marginalised people, there has to be a fundamental shift in how we advocate. We have to create genuine face-to-face dialogues that go beyond the divisive dialogue on social media.

When Dr King was organising in Birmingham, Alabama, he was arrested for organising a boycott of white businesses to resist the brutal treatment of blacks. He wrote about his disappointment with white people who were more dedicated to “order than to justice” in his Letter From Birmingham Jail. People of colour have been speaking out for far too long, met with dissension, indifference and silence from their white counterparts in the midst of injustice.

Now more than ever, white people who know and understand injustice must speak out when they see it and work to dismantle the power structures that continue to oppress.

Moving forward, the United States must reconcile with our hateful and harmful past so that our future does not continue to recreate and strengthen this destructive cycle. We’ve seen the evolution of slavery to oppressive Black Codes, Jim Crow segregation laws, the wrongful mass incarceration of black bodies, and ethnic cleansing in our communities with the constant gentrification of America’s inner cities.

A proper understanding and reconciliation with our past can help us outline the road towards a more equitable future.

Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 50 years ago tomorrow (4 April). While he is venerated for his dream for America and the world, the progress he initiated did not come easily or rapidly and has yet to be fully recognised.

Progress came with people selflessly mobilising to fight for a better tomorrow, even if that meant that they would not reap the full benefits of their labour in their lifetimes. Students, much like the ones I speak to every day and the ones I worked with at the University of Missouri, are dedicating their time on and off campus to foster these dialogues that will lead to a better understanding of what it means to be an American and a citizen of our world.

If we do not take action, we continue to leave this work for our children and their children. It has been 50 years since the assassination of one of the world’s greatest racial justice activists and 50 years later the conversation in many ways remains the same.

While these may be challenging times, I believe that it is important to reflect on the fact that MLK’s values didn’t die with him on 4 April 1968.

Students continue to push America forward, but they cannot do it alone. Order at the expense of justice cannot continue to be the way in which we progress. We must fight for all citizens to be recognised in their full humanity to make Dr King’s dream a reality.