Tell us what you think about race relations

It is 38 years since The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, but the discrimination he fought against still hasn’t gone away. It’s not as overt as it once was, especially in the South, where segregation once ruled, but, as one racially mixed Sussex County couple recently learned, it’s still there. The couple, who asked not to be identified, was house hunting. They found a home they loved in one of the area’s up-scale lake communities. They made an offer. It was accepted. To celebrate, their real estate agent treated them to dinner at a nearby restaurant. The food was excellent. The service was good. But the glances they got from other patrons were less than friendly. The experience was so unsettling, the couple decided not to buy the house. With Martin Luther King Day being celebrated on Monday, it’s an instructive story. King devoted his life - and ultimately surrendered it - to the cause of racial equality. He was the central figure of the Civil Rights Movement, whose forming moments were the court-ordered desegregation of Little Rock schools in 1954 and the Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott that began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. Federal laws and the courts would overturn the “Jim Crow” laws that had enforced segregation and disenfranchised black voters in the South since Reconstruction after the Civil War. Discrimination in all forms - including housing - were banned. “Black Power” became a rallying cry, and in the late 1960s, race riots consumed American cities. Today, the movement does not dominate domestic news as it once did, but the battle for a nation that truly is color-blind continues. How much remains to be done is a matter of opinion. On the one hand, racially mixed couples are no longer so shocking that they can inspire movies, and anyone of any ethnic description can buy a house anywhere he or she wants. On the other hand, such couples may find the neighbors don’t want them there. To find out what you think, we are conducting an anonymous online poll about race relations in 2007. Do you feel discriminated against because of your skin color? Do you think things are getting better or worse? We will print the results in a future edition.