"The Other America"

I have been thinking all day about what to post in my blog tonight.  Unfortunately, words cannot adequately describe what I am feeling right now.  I really just don't know what to say.  How many more black men and women must die before our country finally understands? 

I am not naive enough to realize that I am part of the problem.  I wish that I could tell you that I have lots of minority friends, but I don't.  I wish that I could tell you that I have stood shoulder to shoulder with others to protest what is going on in our world today, but I can't.  I wish that I could tell you that I have always stood for the rights of the minority, but I won't tell that lie.

The truth is, I have lived a life of privilege.  While I have worked hard to get where I am today, the honest truth is that I got a head start because I was born white.  It's also true that I am safer in this world tonight because I am not a black man. 

I have a lot to think about tonight.  There is a lot more that needs to be said.  There is even more work ahead of us.  We have to set this country on the right path forward. 

One of my former Leadership Cincinnati classmates shared a post that I thought was really poignant.  The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr gave a speech (check out a video recording of the speech here) at Stanford University on April 14, 1967, which he called "The Other America".  I don't care whether you watch it or read it, but please do one or the other tonight. 

Dr. King speaks of two America's.  One America "is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity."  This is the America that I grew up in.

Dr. King speaks of another America too.  "This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

It's sad, and more importantly, it is unacceptable that we still have two America's today.   Dr. King's words ring true today, "racism is still alive in American society. And much more wide-spread than we realized. And we must see racism for what it is. It is a myth of the superior and the inferior race. It is the false and tragic notion that one particular group, one particular race is responsible for all of the progress, all of the insights in the total flow of history. And the theory that another group or another race is totally depraved, innately impure, and innately inferior."

Some of his words are even more haunting.  He goes on about something he refers to as "white backlash" - "What I'm trying to get across is that our nation has constantly taken a positive step forward on the question of racial justice and racial equality. But over and over again at the same time, it made certain backward steps. And this has been the persistence of the so called white backlash."

You probably have heard several of the next few passages in the past 24 hours or so.  Dr. King says, "Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a real sense it is impracticable for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. And continue to affirm that there is another way."

But what has been frequently left out is the rest of this passage - "But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention."

It is an amazing speech, for it is as timeless today as it was over 50 years ago when he first gave it.  We have two America's.  Until we address that fundamental issue, we will never have progress.  Dr. King's words speak to all of us tonight - the question is, do we hear them?