Those readers outside the U.S. might not be aware that today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a holiday (a “bank holiday,” to use the British term). So I’ve been enjoying a long weekend — I took Friday off as well.
It is worth remembering why we have this holiday. My daughter came home from school able to quote the “I Have A Dream” speech, this bit in particular:
one day… little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
Oddly enough, she did not come home equipped with knowledge of the word “racism,” so we had to explain it to her over dinner. It was an alien concept for both my children — because of course, these days and at their ages, racism must be taught.
I spent much of my youth (from 3rd grade until my junior year in high school) outside of the United States. It was not a racism-free life. I recall my mother telling me stories of how racist slurs would be tossed around in Greenfield, MA, when I was little kid — we were a partly Hispanic family in what was then a completely white area.
Once in Peru, I recall being taught with all seriousness — in 6th grade! — the precise differences between cholos and quadroons and mestizos. In my memory the teacher is apologetic; it was an important part of the history curriculum, and many in the class were effectively one or the other. But many were also the descendants of conquistadors, and still lived like it, in mansions from which they could not see the people living in shacks made of cardboard and corrugated aluminum. As it happens, there was one of those visible from our school.
I wish I was exaggerating. The colonial legacy, in places like that, is confronted far more head-on than it is here.
Later, when living in Barbados, I got to experience the opposite: a nation of happy, healthy, mostly well-off black people. If you saw a native white, they were generally a beach bum, and there was a clear sense of discrimination going in the opposite direction every time you saw a well-muscled tanned surfer guy. To an industrious country (more British than the British, I always said: cricket and horse races you attended in your Sunday best, and a statue of Nelson in a Trafalgar Square that predates the one in London!) those people were worthy of disdain…
Of course, mine was a household where I got children’s books on MLK and on Cesar Chavez as gifts when I was six. Yes, I have seen Peter, Paul & Mary in concert. Multiple times.
When I moved back to the States, it was like a slap in the face: the way kids sat at different tables in the lunchroom at school, the way they had different hallways for their lockers designated by sheer custom. When I first got to that school (in Jacksonville, FL), I was sent by mistake to the wrong history class. Every other kid in the room was black. They were big and burly, and several of them were on the football team. When the teacher asked a question, there was silence. The level of education was clearly not what I was accustomed to. I tentatively raised my hand and answered the question. After the class, the teacher pulled me aside and told me that based on my answer, I was in the wrong room. Go to the office. I never interacted with any of the kids in that room again.
One day, there we are, myself and my brother, and a few kids we knew, in the park on MLK Day. We’re teens — I’m wondering a lot more about the blonde across from me than I am abou the holiday. Blaring out across the park is a boombox, with sonorous, resonant phrases. “What the heck are they playing?” I wondered. “Sounds like a televangelist preaching.” An adult (one who was a veteran of causes and marches) snorted sadly. “That’s Martin Luther King.” For once all the teens shut up, a bit ashamed of their own ignorance.
Everyone in our little group was white. Except (depending on how you classify my brother and I) me.
I got asked a lot, while there, whether I was from the Middle East. Until a few years ago, I was regularly stopped at airport security. I think trimming the beard a little closer helped. So did wearing a blue blazer on plane flights. But I shouldn’t kid myself that I even really know what it’s like to grow up here in the US. To me, when I walk around here — especially after returning from Europe — it’s literally like watching a world partitioned, very carefully trying hard not to offend. Every month, I hear a racist slur from somewhere — oh, not directed at me, just somewhere nearby. It almost always passes unremarked.
My paternal grandmother is of Irish descent, and I have a cousin with red hair and bright green eyes. Once, that was a stigma to my wife’s people, who came across on the Mayflower. My paternal grandfather was of Dutch descent — originally our name was spelled “van Koster,” I am told, or possibly with an umlaut, but during the war, the prejudice against anything vaguely Germanic-sounding led to a name change. My maternal grandfather was a dirt poor country boy, almost certainly of some degree of mixed heritage, from rural Puerto Rico, a land where the Taino Indians were exterminated; he was reaching very high up in society to marry my maternal grandmother, a descendant of aristocratic Spaniard families that did the exterminating. My very name is a culture clash.
And my children — well, they largely have no idea. A blue-eyed boy with sandy dark brown hair who tans instantly and never sunburns, like his dad. A freckled girl with light brown eyes whose legacy from her mother is that she sunburns easily.
At some point, I will make my children visit this site, because these are not subjects that one should sweep under the rug. On the other hand, their cheerful obliviousness — well, to some degree, isn’t that the point? I want this to be a curious historical fact for them, no more relevant than telephone switchboard operators or 78 LPs.
And that, to my mind, is the point of today.
8 Responses to “MLK”
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I’m really glad we don’t have this problem to a great extent in Australia.
I know there is some racism, but it’s not a huge part of everyday life.
Although, being a ‘white’ boy, I probably wouldn’t notice it even if it was going on. I can’t see why people would treat others differently based solely on their skin colour. I’ve got friends who are all different colours, it just looks better 🙂
I’m of the mind that we should cancel the holiday as a “Federal” holiday. My daughter is in Kindergarden at a mostly white Catholic school here in Kentucky. We emphatically cheer for Louisville and UK basketball even though 90% of the players are black. You see, she doesn’t understand how to be racist. I’m of the mind that she doesn’t need to be taught that. Why condition the next generation of young people that racism is something they should always keep in mind and foster further discrimination? She won’t discriminate if the adults in her life don’t show her how. I have a respect for history and all that it means but in the interest of social progress some 30 – 40 years after this major social event, I have deep reservations about why we still celebrate the holiday like we do. I don’t want her to grow up racist but it looks like I won’t have a choice in the matter because the adults can’t leave it alone. We must be constantly reminded of something that my kids can’t comprehend and frankly many 30 something adults can’t comprehend either. Yes I know it exists in many circles in the US but making the rest of the country look at it and recognize it only draws attention to it and spreads it to places where it wouldn’t have been in the first place. Its about time the fight for social rights goes local and gets off the federal stage so that it can grow and further accomplish what the movement set out to do in the first place.
Because on the way home your daughter’s friends’ parents may wonder at how amazingly them niggers play basketball.
I’m 33 and most would call me white though I’m mostly Portuguese. I’ve been called a Spic and I once witnessed my well tanned cousin being attacked while being called a nigger. These are bare footnotes in my life and maybe meaningless to most but if two “white kids” can go through it… I know we all have to teach understanding to ensure that doesn’t happen anymore.
You’re not protecting your children by pretending hate doesn’t exist anymore. If they don’t know it’s a problem then they won’t have a problem adopting it when their friends do it. Take a few nights to re-read Lord of the Flies =)
[…] https://www.raphkoster.com/?p=264Those readers outside the U.S. might not be aware that today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a holiday (a “bank holiday,” to use the British term). So I’ve been enjoying a long weekend — I took Friday off as well. […]
RodeoClown: I have, since being in Australia, encountered a bit of racism towards various groups (primarily Asians and Middle Easterners), but it’s rare. I literally heard a friend’s elderly white relative use the n-word in polite company a few weeks ago, and I felt as though the bottom of my stomach had fallen onto the floor.
I think in the extremely diverse, liberal county I grew up in, a lot of us were sheltered from racism. On those occasions when we encountered it, we were absolutely incredulous. We often didn’t even know how to react, because we were so dumbfounded by it. When someone said something racist, there was this instant sense of horror, separation, and loss, because you knew that you couldn’t trust this person to value all human life. You knew that, in the end, you couldn’t be friends.
I have so many weird little anecdotes. There was a girl I used to play with, when I was a kid. She was a couple of years younger, and lived down the street from me. One day, I caught her throwing stones at a girl from around the corner.
“WHY ARE YOU THROWING STONES AT HER!” I shouted.
“‘Cause she’s Iranian!” my erstwhile playmate said. Somehow, her logic was lost on me.
“You think she has any choice about that? So, she’s different. Big deal. I’m different, too! Why aren’t you throwing stones at me?”
“But you aren’t Iranian,” she said.
Oh boy, I probably should’ve told my parents, so they could talk to hers. I don’t know what her parents told her, but they surely didn’t mean for her to be chucking rocks at the neighbor kids!
As a side note, when I clicked on the link you put up there, Raph, given the initial options, I was so viscerally jarred that it took me a while to proceed!
Of course, while some Americans pat themselves on the back about there being less racism in the U.S., they forget about other forms of discrimination that also happen. Sexism, ageism, classism, etc. These can be just as harmful, and you might be surprised how much kids pick up on these forms of discrimination even if they don’t pick on people with different skin color.
I think that classism (also known as “discrimination against the poor”) is perhaps one of the most pervasive forms of discrimination we have here in the U.S. The attitude that “poor people deserve to be poor” is frighteningly wide-spread; many conservative talk show hosts hold this up to be self-evident truth without batting an eyelash. Conversely, the attitude that rich people are better (or “have earned it”) is common and they are generally treated better than other people; Raph himself experienced this when he started wearing a blue blazer on planes. Wearing a blazer means you are in the middle to upper classes, not some wacked-out terrorist looking to blow up a plane.
Of course, many times classism is a form of subtle racism given that there are so many poor blacks in America. But the “poor white trash” usually don’t get any less scorn because of the color of their skin. I’ve seen this first-hand because I grew up as “poor white trash” (why, yes, I did live in a trailer park!)
(Interestingly enough, the spell check program I used to check this post had the words “ageism” and “sexism”, but not “classism”.)
So, while racism is deplorable and should be stamped out, let’s keep in mind that other types of discrimination and segregation can be just as insidious.
Happy MLK day.
I must say that I’m rather thankful for how my parents raised me. (That being prejudiced was wrong.) It may not seem like much to some, but considering that large parts of both sides of my family are unapologetically racist, I consider it something to be thankful for. And that, while not expected, it’s not unheard of to be standing in a group of white people that don’t know each other well and for one or more people to say something racist. Racism is sadly nowhere near something that can be forgotten and avoided.
Though I must agree with Psychochild. The embracing of classism is astounding. It seems that everyone thinks it’s okay, and that they’re going to be the ones who make it big and reap the rewards. I think if more people could accept that they won’t become wildly rich, then we could change things. But that’s something that TV won’t let happen.