Hating segregation, Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t fight against discrimination of blacks alone, he fought depravity without prejudice. He was solid, a brilliant gem who was willing to sacrifice himself for freedom. His phrase “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”. Society is in grave need of an understanding of each thing he uttered. Perhaps our schools would see more peace and more thriving if they would go back to teaching his words from his heart of lamenting love for others of all colors.
Everyone understands what it’s like to read a fairy tale, to put themselves in the story as though it is happening to them. Growing up in the countryside outskirts of Seattle, Washington, my peers and I of mixed skin colors were told stories from long ago when people used to judge each other based on the color of their skin. One story captivated my attention. A story of two children in the South in the olden days. On a plantation, they spend the first couple years of life playing together, forming a bond, and then one day they come of age and are informed that they are different and are no longer allowed to play together. The story put me in a moment of grief. It jolted me into a vision of the friend I grew up with, torn from me. I was relieved that racism was a thing of the past and not real life. I idealized a world where we all mixed up our skin colors so much that every one blended and we looked the same.
My uncle married my aunt, whom I barely knew before I was born. She was nice but distant. Her husband was my beloved favorite uncle. His skin was black as coal, his beard was different, coarse, and curly. 300 lbs of muscle. He often held my tiny hands while we sprang up and down on the oversized trampoline. His weight brings the canvas to graze the earth with each blissful jump. He was the kindest gentlest soul I ever knew as a child. He taught the kids in the family to play cards, swam with us, and exemplified to us a solid male role model.
My fairytale life of not knowing racism continued into my adulthood. My brother married a black woman, my other brother married a Filipina. My cousin adopted two Korean daughters from Korea, and things were as I thought they should be. If racism was in the shadowy corners of anyone’s heart in my city, it was well hidden where no one could see.
When I reached 25, I was hit by a drunk driver and rendered crippled for 2 years. I lost my company which made my 7 employees and myself newly unemployed. I married my second husband who was also 25, we had children, and I became a housewife. A couple of years later he had a good job offer in Maui Hawaii. We moved across the ocean. There, as a resident, rather than my prior experience as a tourist on the Islands, I learned about racism. My fairytale belief of racism being dead in America came to a sudden end.
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We shipped our van 3,000 miles across the ocean on a barge. When it arrived, I took it to the DMV to transfer my license plates. The tall Japanese lady abruptly refused to give me my new plate and sent me away without reason. I went back to the department 3 more times, each time with my 2 and 4-year-old children, both very blonde hair and pale skin, following along at my feet. Each time after a long wait, my plates were denied. On the last trip, a Hawaiian man kindly issued my plates. Maui was each day, each trip into a grocery store, each encounter with various people a new adventure. Asians and Filipinos who would say hateful things, give us looks and create difficulty for us. Within the first two months, we found meaningful relationships with people of all skin colors to fill our lives with meaning and the ability to thrive. In our neighborhood, at our two churches, we found our village of almost every ethnicity. Black families in Maui are considered howlie along with whites. We were equally hated by the racists there, the Asians and Filipinos who accepted us did so against the morals of their kin. These things gave us deeper bonds. Standing our ground worked, and loving the racist people more eventually brought some to accept us. My oldest daughter, who has other ethnicities in her, encountered far less racism. She looks as though she could be Asian, Hawaiian, Indian, and maybe some others. People often ask her what she 'is' and explain she looks as though she could be of several ethnicities. Her looks benefited her, but she still saw racism, especially toward her blonde siblings.
With new understanding came the realization that my childhood fantasies were backward. Every race mixing so that there was no longer a possibility of racism was as backward as doing away with every religion to avoid hatred between belief systems. For sincere love and acceptance to exist, there must be a contrast of differences that can be loved and accepted as they are. There must be black, red, yellow, white, and mixed, all loved in their differences, all loved for their humanness.
After my divorce in Hawaii, my children and I became dislocated looking for a place we could afford to live. I no longer had my company and had no work history for several years prior; work was rare and my oldest was now being turned down for jobs as well. After going to Alabama to have my youngest child’s medical care. Rent was high back home and we found ourselves stuck in Florida because of inexpensive rental homes. We learned to love Florida as one of our homes with each friend we made, but had a new lesson to learn. Central Florida was the place where we would see a new face of racism, this face striking a chord of disharmony deep to my core. It was a division of blacks and whites. One day we visited a park in Dunnellon. The newer toys and baseball fields were inviting. My toe-headed babies ran for the toys and began to scale them as mountains. A black woman looked at my oldest daughter and me and said: “No white people allowed at this park, you have to leave”. I slinked back in shock. My kids began protesting in the car: “Why do we have to leave? We want to play!”. I answered: “Apparently, the South is not part of America that we know, and we are not allowed at this park because of the color of our skin”. That day set the tone for us, making it a greater triumph with each black friend we made.
After living in central Florida for about 4 years, each time we take a trip away, we thoroughly enjoy the change. The freedom of interacting with other ethnicities of people normally. We smile, and they smile sweetly back. We can interact normally; everyone is the same. In central Florida, we have learned to accept the gap as the way things are, but it causes a feeling of strife. Each day is like walking through deep mud that should not exist because it has been cleaned up years ago. Why do only some seem to realize that it’s gone? The invisible mud sticks to our feet and dries on, weighing everyone down, heavy and depressing. When we travel to other places without the mud, it begins to break and fall off in pieces, and the weight lifts, our spirits following suit.
Martin Luther joined with all skin colors when he could. He was willing to risk his life to help those like him. He explained in his 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' that he would have been willing to risk the same for white Jews if he had lived in Germany during the Holocaust. Racism of any form is an injustice. And Dr. King was right, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. With each person who is kind, we cultivate relationships and new opportunities to bring more of what Martin Luther died for.
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