NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. travel to the year 2015 as part of its intro.
Dr. King, who had appeared to help a schoolboy with a paper on him, was briefed on, and reacted to current events and race relations in the US. First, King learns that while a lot of streets are named after him, they’re usually in bad areas. Next, he finds out that he does have a holiday, but that it’s usually just used as an excuse to get off work.
King is then informed that the US does have its first black president, although he does think the name Barack Obama “sounds like a Kenyan Muslim.” Although, he does seem pleased that interracial marriage is legal and accepted in the US.
Next, he is told that there’s a movie about him, “Selma,” which he is told is “great, like, historical,” which causes him to erroneously believe that it “will be nominated for a whole lot of Oscars.”
The boy then informs King that “what you did in Selma and stuff is still going on today, there were big protests about police violence just this year, like thousands of people,” although he mistakenly thinks that rapper Macklemore was the leader of the protests, and tells King that he “joined” the protests by tweeting.
The sketch concludes with King seeing some progress in the fact that the white child has all black heroes, even though they’re mostly “rappers and NBA players,” and that he has his own holiday, “while three white presidents share one.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.