MLK holiday lacks meaning

(This is a slightly edited repost from an article I originally wrote 01/29/02 for The Western Front)

Well, I ignored this year's Martin Luther King Day rhetoric about the holiday being "A day on and not a day off," and went to the redneck haven Cle Elem.

My friends and I spent the weekend hung-over, exhausted and downright chilled to the bone.
The highlight of the trip was snowmobiling across numerous peoples' front yards, which by the way, are huge in Eastern Washington.

I kept waiting for an old man, front teeth missing, clad in quilted flannel, to come charging across a frozen meadow 12-gauge in hand, yelling, "Git off ma land!"

Thankfully, that didn't happen. The closest thing to it was a neighbor laughing at us after we managed to plow the snowmobile into the ground.

Believe it or not, this experience made me think about MLK Day.

Is it okay for me to buy into and joke about a stereotype? It would seem so because I just did.

And both you and I laughed at it.

But really, what makes that OK? Is it because the butt of the joke is assumed to be white? What if I told a different story? Would the same kind of joke be okay?

Well what if I said I spent the MLK weekend in South Seattle, hanging out with some friends from high school?

The weekend consisted of selling drugs, drinking 40s and big pimpin'.

The highlight of the trip was cruising Rainier in my friend's '64 Impala while hittin' switches. I kept waiting for some strung-out crack head to carjack us while we were stopped at a red light.
Thankfully that didn't happen. The worst thing that happened was that Ezell's was closed by the time we got there.

It seems the pendulum hasn't swung towards MLK's dream; it's just been masked behind meaningless white-guilt holidays, like the third Monday of January, which is when MLK Day is observed.

MLK's real birthday is Jan. 15, for those who want to know, not that I am a scholar on the man. I just looked his name up on Google.com so I'd look smart.

Is shifting jokes and ridicule to different races really what King had in mind?

Probably not.

No matter what you may say when other people are around, everyone cracks racial jokes at some point or another. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The problem lies in the staunch refusal to acknowledge that we all do it.
MLK Day allows for people to announce that everyone else is the problem and that they support their adoption of MLK's dream.

MLK Day has become hollow. It's become a get-out-of-jail-free-card for people who refuse to deal with the real problems facing race relations.

Attending MLK Day celebrations is like attending church on Easter and Christmas, a mere token of something you know you should be doing all year.

Feeling guilty for one day does not purge all of one's racial sins. Sorry folks.

So what can be done to work towards MLK's dream? I really don't know, but a sincere attempt at genuine relationships is a start.

Don't hide behind ignorance and political correctness. Ask people questions if something is unclear.

The only way to move towards achieving the dream is to put all the cards on the table.

Unfortunately, that means admitting your own personal shortcomings.

But that also implies pointing out problems with other people as well.

I do not know how many times I have gotten into a conversation with a white person who was bitching about the N-word.

"Why is it so bad when we say it, but it's OK for them to call each other that?" My reply is to go ask a black person about it.

It may be uncomfortable, but you both walk away from the conversation with a better understanding of each other.

Start a dialogue about race issues to clear up the gray areas. For too long diversity has been trivialized with tokenisms and political correctness.

People should not be afraid to ask questions and answer truthfully, without sugar-coating answers.

By discussing issues of race, ignorance and fear are overcome, because stereotypes will give way to truths.

I'm not a scholar on this issue.

I don't know any more about King than the average person.

But what I have done is take steps toward achieving his dream by implementing his ideals into my own life.

I've had numerous discussions on race with various people and what I've discovered is that I can't change the world and neither can you.

But what we can change is our everyday lives.

We deal with people of differing races everyday, so why devote only one day to fixing a year-round problem? Don't put race on the back burner because you've done your time at the MLK celebration.

King marched year-round. The least we can do is return the favor.