MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2022 - MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

 MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2022 - MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks 

Growing up in eastern Iowa, there were some blacks in Cedar Rapids.  I guess I was a little “colorblind” - my school was fully integrated, I had blacks and whites in my classes.  I heard about the various racial tensions (mostly in the south). I was pretty naive.  My mother (on rare occasions) might refer to blacks as “colored people” - after all the main black organization was the NAACP- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  (She also referred to phone switchboard people as “central” - a throwback to when you had to go through an operator to get a connection).  

Growing older I heard Martin Luther King (by media) described as a communist, a rabble-rouser, a terrorist, and a dynamic leader.  

As I look back from age 74, with a good number of blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, and all sorts of students, I still think I am generally ‘colorblind’.  But, I want to believe I am more open and honest about race.  The battle is not over.

I learned about the Civil War and reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and the “separate but equal” doctrines.  Blacks were second-class citizens in our country.  Hopefully, this is not the case anymore, but I sense that it is.  Currently, a battle (that I don’t understand) is raging about “Critical Race Theory”.

An Opinion/Editorial in the Baltimore Sun caught my eye:

“The protests of summer 2020 may have been not only some of the biggest in the country but also some of the biggest in the world.”

“Millions took to streets to condemn the racism that pervades modern life, as well as decades of past injustice. Protesters called for accountability across the ages. The oppressive policies and practices of this era, as well as those of yore, were tied up together, a continuum and all of them had to be brought down, their perpetrators brought to justice.”

“The lies America had told itself about the degree and severity of its oppression were put on trial. The American narrative was put on trial. And it didn’t farewell.”

“Confederate monuments came down, and social justice monuments went up, sometimes with paint on streets and sometimes in ways that were more permanent.”

“The change was swift. But, predictably, so has been the backlash. The response has particularly taken hold and found a form in the campaign to ban the proper teaching of America’s racial history in schools.”

(Some behind) “Those bills can bang on about how they are banning the teaching of critical race theory, but what they are really banning is the teaching of the horrific history of white supremacy and how it spawned the oppression of non-white people.”

“The truth is that critical race theory is generally not taught in grade school, but that was never the point, in the same way, that in the 2010s conservative lawmakers were never really concerned about what they called the threat of Shariah law in the United States when they introduced bills to ban it in American courts; what they wanted was to advance a racist, Islamophobic agenda.”

<end of Baltimore Sun editorial quote>

*****

I have been blessed by being a white male as a professor.  (And, I am now understanding backlash at me for being a privileged white, well-educated, male and becoming a senior female.  I have used Micah 6:8 many times “What does God expect of you, but to love justice, show mercy and walk humbly with your God”.  (And, being a transgender female is [at times] very humbling!!!)

Our American history hasn’t been perfect.  Originally only white, male landowners could vote. But that was the norm in England and pretty much the rest of the world for centuries.  When plantation owners realized they could make more money if they had cheap labor, they important slaves.  (Oh no, greed - does money drive the world?)  Now, women can vote, blacks can vote, any citizen 18 or older can vote.  And, seemingly some think voting fraud can occur easier with more access.

I was thinking if North American had a 180-degree switch and the West Coast became the East Coast and the East Coast became the West Coast, that the plantation owners might have had Chinese slaves (and in some respects, we did as railroads imported Chinese as “almost” slaves to build the western part of the Intercontinental Railroad). 

My understanding is that in another century or two, humans will be much more homogeneous. With more intermarriage between races, more blending of cultures (America is not the white, mostly Christian country I grew up in anymore.) I mentioned recently that red hair is a regressive trait and in those future centuries will be almost eliminated.  Likewise, racial identities will be merged.  

So, like Martin Luther King, I have a dream.  That we become ‘colorblind’, that we become ‘race blind’, that we become ‘religion blind” (but not abandoning God as the Supreme author, creator, lover, and redeemer - but accepting that not everybody is going to believe like I do).  

I have a dream - that hatred, name-calling, and barrier building - go away and we can live in peace!!!

LOVE WINS!!

Karen

January 17, 2022