Monday is MLK day...most schools and many businesses close for the special day. Yet, I can't help but think that Dr. King's day has become a little commercialized...his words have become less passionate and moving...and his dream a thing of the past.
I personally still get moved to the point of tears when I read his speeches and letters. They hit to the very core of my being...especially his letter from a Birmigham jail:
"We have waited .for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience...But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists..."
(there is so much more to this letter, but i figured none of you would read the whole thing so i just put a small part in it. i suggest if you have time to read the whole thing though.)
I was talking to a little girl the other day at work and she told me her sister doesn't like white people. I asked why and she didn't answer me then I looked at her cousin and asked her if she liked white people. The other girl looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, "why Shasta? You aren't white, you are light-skinned." Then it hit me. White and Black has become less about the color of one's skin and more about the "sterotypes" people have been taught their whole lives. When she looks at me she doesn't see me as a white person because then everything she has been taught about 'white people' will be wrong. Although it warms my heart to know that she doesn't sterotype me in this way, it breaks my heart that she is being taught things about 'whites' and other children are being taught things about 'blacks' that are so untrue in most cases. Yes, there are some people who fit the 'black' or 'white' sterotypes taught by many people but who am i and who is anyone to be judged by another person's actions and beliefs?
So, as I sit here today, I think...have we really come that far in obtaining Dr. MLK's dreams? Yes, people today can sit, go, eat, sleep anywhere they want, regardless of the color of their skin, thank God. But, I think he wanted so much more than that. I think about the bitterness towards blacks so many whites have. I think about the bitterness towards whites so many blacks have. I feel it sometimes as I walk around my neighborhood...I see the stares and hear the comments. And, I look at people and want to shout, look beyond the color of my skin and look at the content of my character! Dr. King said that by the way. It all makes me wonder, with all the plays, rememberances, and other things we have in Dr. King's honor...does it stir up any emotions? Do we ever sit back and think about the racism that still goes on today?
I'm sure I will stir up a lot of feelings when people read this. Maybe some will even comment...i'd love for you to. But, honestly, I really just want people to look at themselves, at their neighborhoods, at their schools, and ask the question...how far have we, not as a society or government, but we as human beings...as neighborhoods as families, come from the days when MLK preached and spoke about freedom and justice?
God bless you all, and taking Dr. King's words...your's for the cause of peace and brother(sister)hood, Shasta.
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