Long Way To Go

Today is the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. As there are most years on this holiday (which is sadly not a holiday for everyone) there are a series of afternoon NBA games to mark the occasion and cause us to reflect at least hopefully a little bit about Dr. King's legacy. And hopefully also the lengths we still have to go in a country that promises equal rights for all. 

Since I've been writing this blog, I've featured a post dedicated to Dr. King or the Civil Rights Movement each year the Washington Wizards have hosted a home game on this date. I've tried to make an effort to visit relevant sites so I can write in the first person about how being in the places where these events happened made me feel, although honestly the logic behind someone white writing about how sites where racial injustice occurred is a little laughable I know. I figure better to do it anyway than just ignore it.

My intent this year was to write something about the Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike of 1968, the event that led Dr. King to be in that city the day he was assassinated. Yes, I know I wrote about the assassination last year so that would make two consecutive posts about Memphis on this holiday day. 

As a civil rights event, the Sanitation Workers' Strike lacks the shock factor of women and children being beaten by policemen like they were in Selma, Alabama or school kids being subjected to high pressure water attacks like they were in Birmingham in the same state. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of unprovoked police on non-violent protesters violence in Memphis; it just didn't affect the nation's consciousness the same way events in Selma or Birmingham did.

So I'm not writing that post. Instead, I'm saying as far as we think we have come as a country with race relations, we really haven't come very far at all. Sure, the law theoretically guarantees equal rights for all regardless of race. But there is still a huge problem here. If you need to look for any evidence of the work still left to be done, look no further than last Friday and Kentucky's own Covington Catholic High School.

In case you missed it, or in case you've been completely ignoring Twitter for the entire weekend, there were a few marches down on the National Mall last Friday. Two of these were the March for Life, a protest I guess against the fact that the United States legally allows safe abortions like pretty much every other modern country on the planet, and the Indigenous Peoples March, an event designed to bring attention to injustice against native Americans in our home of the free and land of the brave.

Somehow, parts of these two marches came together and ended up with a bunch of students from the all-male Catholic high school (who somehow have strong opinions at their young age about women having the right to abortions) wearing Make America Great Again hats taunting Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder and Vietnam veteran, with chants about building a wall to keep immigrants out of our country.

I do not know the facts that led to this encounter, although I've read a number of varying accounts on the internet. I'm not sure it really matters that much to what I'm about to say but the idea of some teenagers from some private school in middle America mocking someone whose family has been on this land far longer than their families have with chants about stopping immigration is ludicrous. Also, no adults with these kids, who I assume are integral to their education about co-existing with other people who don't share the same skin color and privilege, spoke up and stopped this nonsense.

You think we've solved racial inequality in this country? Start by doing your own part next time you see something like that happening in front of you. And then remember it's the tip of the iceberg. We are challenged with this issue on a daily basis. 

During the Sanitation Workers' Strike in 1968 in Memphis, protesters carried and wore signs that read "I AM A MAN!" to affirm that the participants in the march in the late 1960 should be treated as men and not boys, which was (and still is I imagine in some places and for some people) a derogatory term leveled towards African-American men. The image at the top of this post is from a mural on Memphis' main street; the image at the bottom is from inside the National Civil Rights Museum. I imagine keeping this idea in mind would serve everyone well who ever gets into the kind of confrontation that happened on the National Mall on Friday.

At 2 p.m. today I'll be rooting for Bradley Beal and the Wizards to take down the Detroit Pistons and move into ninth place in the Eastern Conference. I also hope everyone in Capital One Arena pays attention to every message honoring Dr. King during the game. Go Wizards! I'll be back next year with a better post. I promise.