What's the Deal with MLK Day?

I was born in 1970.  Yeah, I'm putting that out there.  To many who read this I will seem old, and to some of you, young and maybe still needing to learn a lot about the world.  I didn't live through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.  I never saw riots on the news.  I never saw a black person made to use a different restroom, use a different water fountain or go to a different school than me.  I grew up with the results of the Civil Rights Movement, and I am thankful that I did.

In first grade I had my first little friend who was brown.  I didn't know that black people were actually brown until then.  Sure, I had seen black folks out and about, but not up close.  I had never had a conversation with a black kid or played on the playground with them.   I was fascinated by Benita's skin.  It was so smooth and soft, the shade of brown so lovely, and I thought she was so lucky to get to wear all those cool beads in her hair.  My mama would have never taken the time to do my hair like that!  Then there was the boy named Talfred who was quiet but smiled a lot.  One day he had an accident on the playground and my teacher had  me walk him inside to change his clothes.  He was embarrassed, but I put my arm around him and said, "It's okay.  I won't tell anyone." And then we walked arm in arm back to the playground smiling and chanting some silly song about being friends, and we were friends from that day forward.  Benita was in my class almost every year in elementary school.  I don't know what happened to her after that, but I've never forgotten her.

I grew up feeling quite comfortable around my classmates of color.  I saw no difference really between me and them.  However, as I matured and listened more closely to the adult chatter around me, I kept getting the feeling that there was something bad about black people.  It was never anything bluntly spoken, but it was alluded to in those "you know what I mean" comments that adults would banter about in my presence.  I grew up in the South, South Carolina to be exact, where slavery was fought for and where basic human rights were considered only for the white util just a few short years before my birth.  The laws had changed by 1970, but attitudes had not.

I remember my dad and my pastor making comments about Martin Luther King Jr.  He was called a heretic, a troublemaker, a bad man.  Imagine my confusion in third grade when my teacher played the "I Have a Dream" speech for us at school.  I thought it was beautiful.  I thought we had already made that dream come true.  After all, there I was in my classroom with Benita.  There was a fourth grade teacher in our school who was black.  Black people used the same bathrooms and water fountains and rode the same busses as us.  My simple mind thought everything was fixed.

When I got to Junior High I got an awakening. The N word  was thrown about liberally by older kids, especially the redneck boys.  If it was found out a black person was dating a white person, they would be harassed, bullied, humiliated.  I had a black friend named Terrance.  He was such a sweet boy, intelligent, funny, fun to be around.  Some would tease me that I had a crush on him, and maybe I did but I was always too afraid for him and for me to say so.

I realized we had not come far at all in the hearts and minds of people and I struggled with the dissonance I felt between my own knowledge and experience and what I was being told by my church--my parents even.

In seventh grade I got head lice.  Gross, I know.  I shared a gym locker with a girl who had it and then I got it.  She was white.  My older sister went to the Community Drug store in Liberty to get something to get rid of the head lice for me.  The pharmacist showed her where the products for head lice were and as they chatted she said in a whisper, "We never saw this much head lice until they started letting the blacks in our schools."  Later I found out that black people rarely get head lice.  It's mostly a white people problem.  White people were so desperate to hold on to their belief in being a superior race that they were blaming anything and everything on "those blacks" or worse, "niggers."

It makes my skin crawl to hear that word--even to type it.  But we have all heard it before.  Some of us have said it in not so flattering moments.  Most of us, as children, heard it bandied about like an insult, even used as a put-down when other white people didn't live up to some lofty standard of "whiteness".  We should all be ashamed, we should be ashamed of every time we have sunken to that level of less than humanity, and we should be ashamed for every time we didn't speak up and tell someone else that it's not okay to speak that way about other human beings.

All my life in the presence of white people I have seen the eye roll, the downcast shaking head, the "oh please!" laugh at the mention of Dr. King's name.  No one ever expands on their gestures, expecting I suppose, that I agree with their unspoken attitudes just because I'm white,  too.  In fact, at work a week or so ago, I reminded my seniors that the center would be closed today in observance of MLK day.  One or two of them responded by, "Ugh," and a disgusted head shake.  Not knowing what to say, I said, "We are going more by the school calendar for holidays this year."  That was true, but I should have said  more.

I should have said, "We have people of color in this group.  They are every much of value as each white person here, maybe more since they not only show up here, but they do so much work in the community helping others.  We have a responsibility to them to show them that we support, accept and love them.  They have the right to know that we respect the leader who worked to give us the privilege to come together as a group here every day without excluding anyone."

But I didn't say that and I feel bad that I didn't.  I didn't do my part in dispelling this unspoken attitude among white people that Dr. King was a bad man who did bad things to the world.

I've been thinking about this a lot, trying to decipher those eye rolls I've become accustomed to seeing at the mention of MLK day.  I think I know what they are saying to me when they do that.  They are saying they don't think black people deserve basic human rights.  They don't think black people are as human as white people.  They don't think Dr. King did a good job, they think he ruined things for them by creating change that made it possible for me to have Benita as a friend in first grade.  They see him as a man who sowed discord and caused riots and civil unrest.  I see him as a man who did what he had to do to change the world, and there are too few of us who are as brave as him, who would take on the cause of the underdog and stay true to the death to that cause.

I am happy my employer decided to give us this day to observe Dr. King's legacy.  I'm grateful that the doors of our schools, playgrounds and community centers are open to ALL.  I want to do better.  Today, I vow to to better by my fellow human beings by standing up for Dr. King and all the great activists who made it possible for me and my children to share our world with all kinds of people; not just other white people.  I want every white friend and family member I have to be so uncomfortable with their racism around me that they don't even dare make a vaguely racist comment in my presence.  I am a tolerant person, but I have a growing intolerance for ignorance and hate, even among the elderly population I serve.  I simply cannot stand by and let the comments be said without my rebuttal.  It's my duty as a human being to stand up for other human beings--no matter their race, religion, gender.  No matter what differences we have, we are all one in the eyes of God.

I graduated high school in 1988.  I remember walking out of the Gym at Liberty High, in alphabetical order.  James Cheeks was in line ahead of me.  We sat next to each other in homeroom all through high school and in every other class we had together where we were seated in alphabetical order.  He was the first person I saw as I stood there feeling kind of lost and bewildered at the thought of never coming to school again with these people I had grown up with.  He looked at me, smiled and embraced me, the hug of a friend that was so comforting I've never forgotten it.  I didn't think for a second about the color of his skin.  To me he wasn't a just some black guy.  He was the guy who sat in front of me, laughed at my silly drawings and was a great football player.  He was a friend.

If the Civil Rights movement did nothing else, it gave me wonderful opportunities to cultivate friendships with people that without it, I would have never known.  It taught me that human life is human life, people are people, love is love.  And now as we embark on a time period in America where those hard-fought for rights are being threatened again, I realize I have to take a stand for the people I love.  For women, for gay people, and for my friends of color I have to be brave enough to speak up.  Maybe it's not too late to keep making changes happen.


I will hope.