racial injustice

Black Lives Matter: What Is Different Now?

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I was born in 1959, just before the Civil Rights Movement. One of my earliest memories of things happening in the world was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I was 3. My mother turned on the vacuum cleaner to try to hide the fact that she was crying, but I noticed.

I remember seeing the footage of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. being shot on live TV when I was 8, but the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just a couple of months before that, has stayed with me much more than the Kennedy assassinations. Maybe the reason is that the Kennedy assassinations were national tragedies, and personal tragedies for the Kennedy family, but the shooting of Dr. King was a human tragedy.

The Kennedy assassinations mark a tumultuous time in American history when change was in the air, and many forces were fighting for footing in the changing political, social and economic seas. Many people, my parents included, put their hope in the Kennedys, who represented a vision of positive change, our very own Camelot.

With the death of President Kennedy that vision died; with the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the  coffin was nailed shut; with the death of Robert Kennedy, Jr., that coffin was buried.

Over 50 years have passed since those chaotic times, and some things haven’t seemed to change all that much. People are still people, and the cancer of endemic and systemic racism continues to live on. It’s hard to say whether it is any less ingrained for all these years. Modern technology keeps it burning in our collective consciousness.

We have made strides, right? I think we have.

Though racial prejudice  is not as overt or “accepted”, and racism has gotten more subtle and underground, modern technology is like a kind of chemotherapy that targets the cancer and exposes it for treatment. Will Smith said recently that racism is not any greater now than it used to be; it’s just filmed more.

It seems like this cultural cocktail of COVID isolation that has given us more time to reflect, even as our collective pent up energy grows, and the most recent examples of hidden racism exposed to the sunlight have opened the floodgates to a current of active response like I haven’t really seen before. Not just the usual suspects, many people of all political, religious and socioeconomic stripes are coming together in unity, saying, “Enough is enough!” Continue reading →

I Had a Dream…

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2008 Democratic National Convention: Day 4~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More than 86 years have passed since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth. Almost 50 years have passed since his death. Not insignificantly, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day at the anniversary of his birth, not the anniversary of his death. Though I cannot help but remember the tragic day of his death that left its imprint on my young, impressionable mind, I pray that the legacy of his life will draw us back to his message. May the light of his life outshine the darkness left in the void of his death.

“I had a dream….” are the words that echo through the halls of history into our present consciousness. We hear those words repeated with the same sense of passion with which they were first spoken, but they seem dulled by the resistance of time. The present passion with which those words were spoken sits now like a dusty tome on the shelf of our collective memory.

Yet, those words were poignant…they are poignant still today. Continue reading →

We May Just Be Colorblind

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lightstock_75446_xsmall_user_7997290I intended to spend some time researching and writing about Thanksgiving. I was going to do that last year, but got distracted. Yesterday I planned to take the morning today to research and write about Thanksgiving  but it will have to wait because I am distracted again.

Like watching a train wreck is “Ferguson”. It has risen (or has been reduced) to the level of one name status, like Chernobyl or Iwo Jima or Prince. Ferguson has character and personality of its own, and it is ugly.

Life can be ugly. Life can be beautiful too.  We can find ugliness and beauty in many places. Sometimes all we see is the ugliness. Sometimes beauty can be seen in the midst of the ugliness, like a line of Ferguson protestors standing guard in front of a business to protect it.

Ferguson is more than an incident that some simply find unfortunate. It is more than an incident that demonstrates over militaristic modern police tactics, the foolishness of brazen, gangsta youth or vestiges of raw racism. Ferguson has reopened the deep wound of centuries of slavery, oppression and injustice. We dare not brush it off.

Consider the now iconic missive: “Can’t we all just get along?” (To be perfectly sardonic)

It is not that simple. Continue reading →