A Dream Yet to Be Realized

I have tried to sit down and write this post for a couple of days, but there are so many thoughts running through my head that I can't seem to wrap my mind around things.  I have finally determined that I simply have to get things on the screen and just see where things lead.

As part of my personal observance of yesterday's Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, I took the time to do some reading, meditating, and discussion with my parents.  Living in the greater Memphis area for most of my life, I have been keenly aware of the history of the Civil Rights movement -- or so I thought.  Yesterday I sat down to read Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream Speech" as well as the letter from a Birmingham jail.  I am in the process of reading Melba Pattillo Beals' memoir of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock and have viewed a moving documentary on the music of the Civil Rights movement in America.  In light of all of this, I have one lingering question:  "How did we -- as a self-proclaimed Enlightened Christian nation -- ever allow such intolerance and discrimination to occur?"

The journey for me began when reading Beals' accounts of the horror of the American south in the 1950s.  I have read many historical accounts of the events at Central High School and its implications upon the movement, but I never have been so aware that those reports were slanted from a Caucasian perspective.  As I meditated on the events, I recalled hearing stories of my parents and older siblings living in Marianna, Arkansas in the midst of racial tensions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  As I began to question my parents about their memories of this era, a few things became clear.

My parents have lived in Arkansas all of their life.  They both come from agricultural homes that were morally upstanding.  Both of their families employed African-American laborers in their fields as was the custom of the time.  As I listened to their stories, I was relieved to learn that what I suspected was true -- neither family was abusive to the African-Americans they employed.  The workers would receive food from the family table after working in the fields, but it was delivered to them at a separate location.  To have invited these men and women of color into their homes would have possibly endangered my family in an intolerant society.

When the discussion moved into the events of Little Rock in 1957, I was surprised to learn that neither parent really knew very much about the situation.  They remembered that there was some trouble, but didn't really remember much about the situation.  You can imagine my shock when I was asked why integration was so important.  "If the blacks had their own schools being taught by their own people, why were things so bad?"  I had to squelch my surprise a bit to explain that the segregation also reached into the upper echelons of higher education;  in other words, future teachers of color were not receiving the same quality education as their white counterparts.  The African-Americans understood that the claim of "separate but equal" was a total fallacy.  It appears that many in the white community did not.

The South has always been known for its unwavering commitment to the truths of Scripture.  I cannot imagine how Christian men and women witnessing (and participating in) the discrimination aligned such actions with the words of the apostle Peter:  "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear Him and do what is right." (Acts 10:34-35, NIV)  I suppose the explanation is best expressed in Dr. King's words.  In his letter from a Birmingham jail, King states that "Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.  Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr [an American theologian] has remind us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals."  King's words point out for us that individuals will very often put aside their personal moral codes in the face of a differing view of the general public. 

Martin Luther King, Jr's dream was that all men would have equal opportunities and protection under the law.  While his dream has been achieved in the letter of the law, our society still has a long way to go in the spirit of the dream.  During the past two days, I have heard comments that included questioning why God would bother to ever create a non-white race of people. I have heard racial epithets used in a derogatory manner and have witnessed condescension and hostility toward the celebration of Dr. King's birthday, simply because he was of African-American descent. 

As a nation, we still have a long way to go in regards to race relations.  The philosophy in the south is that the lingering racism is an imperfection carried over from a previous generation that will disappear once they ultimately die out.  I hold that nothing is further from the truth.  The same precepts that propelled the injustice of segregation continue to be passed on to a new generation of Southerners.  Until the region begins to address what it is that unites us all as people created by God rather than the differences and prejudices that separate us on both sides, we will never begin to witness the annihilation of the monster lurking below the surface of the South that seeks to destroy us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.