Martin Luther King Jr. still helping people

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I don’t know what to think about on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I get the obvious stuff: MLK was a great guy, he did a lot of great things, fought for civil rights and on and on.

I’m not trying to diminish the man’s accomplishments (not that I could).

I don’t know what to think. I didn’t live through any of it. I don’t know what it’s like to live under Jim Crow in the south. I’ve been discriminated against, but rarely is it institutionalized.
Dr. King’s relevance to me stems mostly from his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” because it practically is required reading in every philosophy class I’ve taken.

It isn’t that I am naïve about what happened then, but it is hard to imagine a time and place — an atmosphere, I should say — where something like the civil rights movement could manifest. The civil rights struggles of today — most notably gay rights — are being fought at the ballot box and in the courts.

Even though there are acts of violence and plenty of hateful rhetoric, the marches, sit-ins, the police dogs and mass imprisonments seem to be a thing of the past.

So, as I reflect on MLK day I wonder if the lessons of history are lost on me. I know of what has come before, but I’m not sure if I understand.

I don’t know whether my ignorance is symptomatic of a culture that shies away from introspection or if it is because of the lasting effects of Dr. King’s — and so many others’ — struggle.

For example, I am aware I’m black. It’s one of those things that kind of sticks with a person. My blackness is not my defining characteristic; it is not the lens through which I view all things.
I am aware of my skin color in the same way I am aware of the shoes I’m wearing.

Given that, it is difficult for me to imagine the place where it is necessary for someone to say, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

In the world I live in, judging by content is self-evident. In the world I live in, I have the luxury of wondering whether I was discriminated against. It becomes a matter of forensic inspection, tying motives, language and posture together to decide whether I was mistreated because of my skin.

In Dr. King’s day, there was no question: it was skin color. It wasn’t that someone was discriminated against because they were black; it was that blackness was a justification for discrimination.

Blackness was the thing that defined the black people and justification in itself.

I cannot imagine that world where Dr. King’s struggle was necessary, this I can admit. But I don’t think I am worse off because of it.

Instead I have the chance to reflect on other things without first viewing in terms of skin color. When I think about who I am, it doesn’t start with black.

That, I suspect, is what Dr. King’s struggle was about. Yes, it was about race, class, human rights and equality, but it also was about freedom of self.

Nothing was possible as long as black people were only black. For me to be able to define my life outside of my skin color, someone in the past had to transcend what it meant to be black.

I don’t know what Dr. King struggled against, I never was meant to.
What I do know is that his struggle gave me the opportunity to define myself any way I choose.

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