It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I’m not really doing anything to commemorate or celebrate. Sure, I get the day off work but I have no plans to attend services, rallies or even semi-related gatherings to mark the day. Perhaps I’ll attend a luncheon at the University later on in the week, maybe not, but either way the closest I’ll get to doing anything even remotely to the day for which I get paid to do nothing is to read homework for my African American Literature class, something I’d be doing whether it were MLK, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Ghandi Day, Columbus Day, Super Bowl Sunday or just another Monday night.
At the most, if I remember to do so, I’ll pray for continued progress in race relations, peace and positive growth in urban areas. I’ll thank the Lord for people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones aka Amiri Baraka, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Bessie Smith, Du Bois, Carver, and so on, but I don’t plan anything that requires more than prayer and a few moments of remembrance. I’m not apathetic to the plight of slaves both past and present. The tragedy of America’s inner cities often drops in on my train of thought. I’m taking the literature course in part because I want to learn more, appreciate more intensely, further the discussion and history and knowledge and everything else.
I have no plans for MLK Day, though, and I have no good reason why. Or why not.
I grew up in an ultra-conservative Baptist church and school, the kind where the label “independent fundamentalist” was emphasized and repeated so often we knew to identify ourselves as such, just in case someone confused us with the other types of Baptists out there. I still remember the day where some of us, wanting not just a day off but to stir up trouble and get to the bottom of a question that plagued us, asked the principal (who also taught our His-story classes) why we didn’t get the day off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Note that at the time, African American students were a rarity in our school. I remember only one all-black family sending their children and they weren’t around for more than a couple years. Note also that our school was as north as Indiana could go, at most a five minute drive from the Michigan border. When approached on the question, the principal didn’t appear to squirm with embarrassment or act as if he’d been put on the spot. He replied that he didn’t think Martin Luther King, Jr., was the kind of black person we should observe a holiday for. If we wanted to take a day off school to celebrate some other worthy black person, he said, then we should come up with a name and date and then he’d think about it…he mentioned Booker T. Washington as a possible example and later championed Clarence Thomas. But Martin Luther King, he said, was a womanizing Communist and not someone worthy of a holiday. Of course, this is the same church where I was pulled into the youth pastor’s office and told I should think about suggesting to those black kids I kept bringing to youth group that maybe it was time they attended, you know, um…”one of their own churches.” One of the few colleges we were encouraged to attend was Bob Jones University, whose unamashedly racist policy banning interracial dating lasted five more years after I graduated from high school, and then only after it landed George W. Bush in the hot seat during the Republican presidential primaries.
I can’t blame my upbringing for my lack of action today, however. The Orthodox Christian parish of which I am a part, not to mention Orthodox Christianity as a whole, openly teaches and understands it owes much of its theological understanding and history to African saints; in fact, while only a tiny number of Orthodox existed in the States before the second half of the twentieth century, many of them were an ethnic minority who faced racist scourge themselves. No, my own spiritual and religious ties aren’t to blame for my inaction. If anything, I’m doing nothing despite them.
No good reasons to explain my inaction come to mind. I’ve observed racism and prejudice first-hand enough times to know it hasn’t disappeared, but I have yet to find a way to act against it any other way than to make decisions to live life displaying love and acceptance for everyone, even calling out racist comments and actions when I see them. The major battles have been won. We all share the same bathrooms, schools and pools. Many of our most respected, best-loved cultural figures are African-Americans, and those most admired and watched by the general public represent African-Americans in different ways, from Oprah and Star Jones to Luther Vandross and 50 Cent, from Condoleeza and Colin to Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. The hushed but existing racist stereotypes and prejudicial undertones won’t be erased by the rallies or sit-ins that accomplished so many great things 30 or 40 years ago. The Supreme Court can’t rule on attitudes and, in fact, is probably supposed to uphold the right to carry even the most dangerous of opinions. The truth is, while racism itself is still alive and strong across America, what can be done with marches and speeches has been done. Amidst a nation where tolerance is still no more or less than a slogan, no action I could perform today that I don’t have the opportunity to do every day is necessary, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to take a day and reflect on that and thank God for those who dreamed of a day when inactivity no longer meant disinterest or apathy.