Sunday night’s Mad Men was an incredibly poignant look at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and now I wonder if his dream has meant anything.

The show, which is my personal favorite, covered it from all perspectives just as it covered the JFK assassination back in its third season and now I wonder if anyone cares.

The episode looked at his slaying from varying points of view: The media buyer worried about the lost revenue from the news bulletin interruptions; the perspective of the newly hired black employees from the fifth season; the perspective of those living in fear from the riots and protests in the aftermath to the innocent viewpoint of children and what it meant to them.

I still wonder if it all matters.

If I seem just a tad jaded this morning I am.

The final moments of the episode — as was the entire episode — Sunday were a celebration, a commemoration and a memorial to the work of Dr. King in the civil rights movement.

The scene, where protagonist Don Draper takes his son Bobby to the movies on the evening of the assassination, was moving to the point of tears.

After watching Planet of the Apes with his father, Bobby simply asks the black usher if he has seen the movie yet. No was the response. Do you get to see movies free? Yes.

Bobby, sensing the sadness of the usher who has apparently heard of the news of the King assassination, then simply says, “Everyone likes to go to the movies when they’re sad.”

I thought about this episode all day Monday and again this morning when I saw a comment posted to the website that made me think have we come that far after Dr. King or have we regressed to a time before the movement began?

The comment, which had to be edited to take out an expletive, bothered me like no other comment that has been posted to this website before.

Posted by a person calling herself Angry Black Woman, it said: “Happy to see someone other than a black get arrested for this dumb (expletive deleted). Whites get away with so much more. A black would have been on at least $10,000 bond.”

After being inspired Sunday night, I was let down this morning after reading this comment and began wondering is that all the dream has meant?

This comment made me think the dream was a mere sham, that no one really listened or at least that generations, regardless of their race, are still teaching to their children that one race is good while the other is bad.

I suppose it’s Pollyanna to have thought this kind of thinking would stop after seeing milestone upon milestone reached in the civil rights movement.

To me, however, it remains distressing that people still feel this way and instead of dwelling on race when crime stories are posted here we look at the crime itself and what we do to prevent it.

As much as it shames to me to say it, I know a thing or two about racism because I often heard my father profusely use the N-word and it pained me then. I don’t excuse it to the times. I didn’t excuse it all and would challenge him on it.

I recently talked to my mother about this and I can’t say we came to any conclusions because there were a strong number of black people at my father’s funeral. All I know was I didn’t like it when he used that word and I don’t like it now when it is used as a so-called badge of honor between black people. Regardless of who’s saying it, the word remains an epithet.

What bothers me and what causes me pain is there are people of both races who remain close-minded and bigoted, who can’t move away from their own ignorance because it’s simply the way things have been and the way things will be.

Like or hate Dr. King and the others behind the civil rights movement, no one can take away from victories made but it seems to me there are still many hearts and minds that need to be opened for us to realize this dream he had was not just for one but for all — Lance Martin

Lance Martin is editor and publisher of rrspin.com