A powerful insight, but...
Has the message and the inspiration been lost?
How will most folks commemorate Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s birthday recognition? Complaining about no
open government offices? Laying around and doing
nothing of much importance? Perhaps making snide
remarks alongside their buddies, or radio disc jockeys,
or Fox News reporters as to the so-called illegitimacy
of this day and of our current president?
I wish to take the occasion to give tremendous Thanks
to Dr. King, Coretta Scott King, all those who fought
the good fight as Freedom Riders and Freedom
Fighters, and those who continue the legacy today.
There is still so much to be done.
I feel the sting every day of just how far there is left to
go on the journey.
I hear the rat-a-tat-tat gunfire on my soul as an orchestra
of "nigger-this" and "nigger-that" are barked daily, easily,
repetitively, their issuers incorrectly imagining me a
receptive brother-in-arms of hate and dismissal.
These calloused, thoughtless words owing nothing but
to ignorance; born in, bred in, taught, recycled, imposed,
carried down so ironically triumphantly from the shameful
"don't know no betters" of hate that passes for heritage,
especially in these lowly southern backwoods.
One generation to the next, passing on the familiar
like a treasured family heirloom, defiantly daring someone
to tell them all that they 'know' is wrong. Clutching
dissension like a badge of honor. "Accept me by seeing
how faithful I am in my nonacceptance, Paw!" they seem to
cry out.
Others like them offer up the same withered theories as
to why there is a proper scapegoat--with misinformation
its father--behind every mishap and wrongdoing ever suffered
by these scared and lost boys. They don't even know the
meaning of the words they speak, the lies they spill, the
hate the brew like bathtub gin, ever-more potent and
dangerous the longer it sits and steeps.
A world connected non-stop, all peoples seeing into
one another's lives, across the oceans and across the
barriers of language and time. And still we have pockets of
time-displaced folks who revel in their lack of development,
who seek to know nothing more than what they surround
themselves with. They are as preserved as a mosquito in
amber, as annoying as if still alive and mounting a campaign
of frustrating distractedness.
Like the atrocities of World War II, are we destined to
have the evils of segregation become like fantasy as those
of that generation slowly die off? Will the lessons of Dr. King,
and the need for them still, be forgotten because we no longer
have a breathing reminder of how far we have left to go?
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