Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today we celebrate a great man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some of us have the day off work or the day off school. I just hope we don’t take this day for granted no matter what is involved in our day.

About 20 years ago, during my first few months of kindergarden, I encountered this kid Derek. Derek and I hung out every day for about a week on the playground until one day he came to me and said, “We can’t play together no more.” I asked why and he said, “My momma told me that lil black boys should play with lil black boys and lil white boys should play with lil white boys.” I was shocked, couldn’t understand the concept and I doubt Derek did either. He was just doing as told. After that Derek and I never played together anymore on the playground, we grew up in the same school and probably had some classes together but never spoke of that moment. I’m not even sure he remembers it.

I grew up in a town that per capita, is fairly poor. It’s about an hour outside of Memphis and is featured in the song Tennessee by Arrested Development, “Outta the country and into more country
 Past Dyesburg into Ripley Where the ghost of childhood haunts me 
Walk the roads my forefathers walked 
Climbed the trees my forefathers hung from 
Ask those trees for all their wisdom”

Maybe you know this, but poor doesn’t really care about race. We weren’t poor, but my mom wasn’t the greatest with her money. Which meant we were kinda poor but no one really knew it, except me who felt bad about asking my mom to buy me clothes. Our economic situation made me feel more closely aligned to the others in school who weren’t readily accepted, more specifically, black people. I can’t help it, don’t really know how to explain it beyond that, but it’s how I feel. That brings us to today.

With so much that has happened, Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama, and me freely seeing an interracial marriage this weekend, it is so hard to believe that there are still people out there who dislike someone for the color of their skin. I detest it.

One of my friends the other day was giving me some story of how she didn’t think black people were discriminated against anymore. I was taken aback, and maybe not many white people feel the way I do, I don’t know. I just don’t feel like we as a society have reached the point of no discrimination, be it for race, religion, sex, orientation, whatever. Answer me this, if a white girl is walking down a street and sees a tall white dude walking towards her does she get a little nervous? Maybe, maybe not. If a white girl walking down the street sees a tall black dude walking towards her does she get a little nervous? Probably so. Ever seen the movie Crash? One of the opening scenes depicts this very thing. If that’s not discrimination, what is it? I get nervous when a black dude walks towards me because I’m thinking, “Dang, that guy looks so freakin cool and suave, I look like a dork compared to him, please don’t embarrass yourself!”

My mom is constantly telling me about the welfare checks and WIC vouchers that clear the registers of the grocery store where she works. It saddens me to know that so many people are still living in such poverty. While I’m sure there are some people ripping the system off it is quite unfair to assume that the majority of people on our welfare system are ripping it off. People complain about kids these days and how they’re going to grow up and be just like their parents, but let’s examine the situation. Parents in poverty, kids in poverty, often times the children are put in situations they should never be placed in. Situations that involve violence, drugs, abuse and basically being the parent of their home. Now I don’t have an explanation for the reason these circumstances exist across all races but I do have an idea that for some of our non-caucasion races it’s because of the attitude taken towards them.

I’d like to examine some lyrics by Lil Wayne from a track off of his latest album, The Carter III. The song is Misunderstood and at the end Wayne goes on a ripping 3-4 minute possibly marijuana induced rant,

“I was watching t.v. the other day right 
got this white guy up there talking about black guys 
talking about how young black guys are targeted 
targeted by who? america. 
you see one in every 100 americans are locked up 
one in every 9 black americans are locked up 
and see what the white guy was trying to stress was that 
the money we spend on sending a mothaf**ka to jail 
a young mothaf**ka to jail 
would be less to send his or her young as* to college 
see, and another thing the white guy was stressing was that 
our jails are populated with drug dealers, you know crack cocaine stuff like that 
meaning due to the laws we have on crack cocaine and regular cocaine 
police are only, i don’t want to say only right, but sh*t 
only logic by riding around in the hood all day 
and not in the suburbs 
because crack cocaine is mostly found in the hood 
and you know the other thing is mostly found in you know where i’m going 
but why bring a mothaf**ka to jail if it’s not gon stand up in court 
cuz this drug aint that drug, you know level 3, level 4 drug, shit like that 
i guess it’s all a misunderstanding 
i sit back and think, you know us young mothaf**kas you know that 1 in 9 
we probably only selling the crack cocaine because we in the hood 
and it’s not like in the suburbs, we don’t have what you have 
why? i really don’t wanna know the answer 
i guess we just misunderstood huh? 
you know we don’t have room in the jail now for the real mothaf**kas, the real criminals 
sex offenders, rapists, serial killers, s**t like that
don’t get scared, don’t get scared 
I know you saw one them sex offenders papers 
don’t trip he live right on the end of yo block, 
Mhm yea, that nigga live right down the street from you, 
sex offender on the level 3 drug, 
convicted ex-con 
yea check em out 
watch you got, you got a daughter, son , what you got.? 
hahaa yea, you know what 
*cough, cough* that’s the good weed, 
you know what, I have a f**king daughter 
you understand me and why the f**k would you bring my neighbor to jail 
jus because the reason why he live next door to me, ain’t the reason why I live next door to him 
Meaning he didn’t rap his way to my f**king neighborhood 
he sold crack cocaine to get to my neighborhood 
you move him out bring him to jail for life 
and then you move in a sex offender 
ahaha, hey give me a paper, 
ahaha is that a misunderstanding? because I don’t understand it”

I’ll admit that’s not the easiest thing to follow, but if you read it looking for the big points and not necessarily a logical flow then you’ll get the idea. I’m not equating Lil Wayne with Dr. King Jr. but I am saying there is some truth to his rant. I also understand that often times with drugs and drug sales comes criminal activity, but like Wayne said, they probably only sellin the crack cocaine cos they in the hood. Also I think from Wayne we can glean a true portrait of how many black Americans raised in the poverty stricken areas of town feel. You can also gain a portrait of how I feel about the way our brothers and sisters in humanity are being treated.

Kanye West got on TV after Hurricane Katrina and said, “George Bush doesn’t give a damn about black people.” This is how he felt. If the idea still exists in peoples heads that someone may be discounting them for their race then it is most obvious that racism is not dead. It’s kind of like this, when you hurt someone, emotionally, physically, however and don’t apologize because you think you’ve done nothing wrong, you still hurt them. That pain still exists whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. That’s how racism stands, whether you acknowledge it or not, if someone feels it, it’s as real to them as any tangible item is as real to the human touch. Sexual harassment in the work place is treated like this, if you feel sexually uncomfortable because of someone’s actions or words towards you, then it’s sexual harassment.

I want to look at a few other lyrics from notable musicians. First from Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and secondly from Talib Kweli.
Conor Oberst- When the President Talks To God
“We should find some jobs the ghetto’s broke!
No they’re lazy George, I say we don’t
Just give em more liquor stores and dirty coke!”

These lyrics examine a relationship our past president has said to have had with God. I don’t think this is a blasphemous song but I do think it shows how George Bush used Christianity as an excuse for many of his decisions. I have no qualms with the true intentions and teachings of Christianity, I myself am a Christian, but George Bush dirtied that title.

Talib Kweli- Eat To Live
“Little man in the face of harm if he don’t eat
He need energy so when he go to school he can compete
And keep up, all he got is bodegas
But hey he only got enough a for quarter water and a Now or Later
Anyway, grandma say Jesus’ll be here any day
Good – cause with nuttin to eat it’s gettin hard to pray”

Back to the issue of WIC vouchers, why is it that the food we offer on this program is the crappiest, most refined, least nutritional food available. Is it some sort of ploy to say, if you want better food then get off of WIC. I sure hope not! It’s a real dichotomy because the crappy food is way cheaper and can fill you up but it’s terrible for you. How can our children compete in school and other areas of life without proper nutrition? It’s not fair at all. The people who need help the most are getting the worst quality of help.

I know this post may have been a bit rambling and hopefully not too hard to follow but I’m serious about this. Racism and discrimination still exists. If you’re blind to that then I’m sorry, you need to open your eyes. Things still aren’t easy for african-american people. Things aren’t easy for many people. We’ve made great leaps for civil rights here in this country. We’ve seen and heard the things Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has had to say, elected our first black president and yet people still make judgments about people by considering their race.

I’d like to end on a positive note, some positive things we can learn from African American culture. First of all the value of family. I know we all love our parents and whatnot but the dynamic of most African American families is so much more close knit than any white American family I’ve experienced. Secondly perseverance. Over a number of years African American’s have had to keep pushing. Through slavery, through civil rights, through dispelling racism, by far one of the most persevering cultures out there. Third, music and art. I’ll include entertainers of all sorts in this group, Dave Chapelle, Bill Cosby, Sherman Hemsley, Chris Rock, Talib Kweli, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Mos Def, and the list keeps going. All of these people and more teach us so much about life if you sit and truly listen or watch. No one else could do what they do better. I’ve only listed 3 things but there are tons more. Today let’s just be thankful for how far we have come as a society but not turn a blind eye to the problems that still need to be overcome.

“I may not get there with you, but we–not some Americans but all Americans–will get to the Promised Land.”