Today, as we commemorate and celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is important to contemplate the impact that his life and leadership had on each of us. I consider my generation to be fairly enlightened in terms of race relations, certainly more enlightened than my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. I have close friends, colleagues, neighbors – even a president – of races different from my own. These relationships never seemed unusual or surprising. In fact, I have always taken race relations for granted. As the son of a United States Naval officer, I grew up seeing leaders of color as a normal and expected thing.