~a column by Colleen O’Brien
At a community breakfast in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King on Saturday, I heard two speakers talk about subjects that tailgated remarks made by President Donald Trump two days prior. It was pure coincidence, a kind of magical realism that in a timely manner denounced the bad manners and accompanying constant anger on the part of the President.
One speech had to do with white racism, the other with our obligation as citizens to be informed and stay educated, particularly when it comes to the politics of our country and how they affect us.
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“This course offends all whites!” This was one of the emails received by the new president of Florida Gulf Coast University because he supports a class called “White Racism” offered by sociology professor Ted Thornhill at the university in Fort Myers, FL.
Dr. Michael Martin, newly-elected president of FGCU, talked about the CNN News-worthy class called White Racism, the more than 50 students who have signed up for it and the derogatory, scatalogical and scary emails he and the professor have received since the course was announced.
“One of the emails said, ‘This course offends all whites,’” said Michael Martin as guest speaker of the event held in honor of the Dr. Martin Luther King holiday at the middle school in Punta Gorda, FL. “I have over 70 white years in, and it doesn’t offend me at all.”
One email, he told us, wished stage four cancer on him and his family. The emails will be used in teaching the course.
Martin explained that White Racism teaches the systemic racism historically driven by whites. “Starting with Romans persecuting Jews to the many-decades-long Jim Crow behavior in the U.S.,” he said, “show me a black society holding white slaves for more than 250 years, blacks killing six million white Christians in Germany, blacks marching whites across hundreds of miles to somewhere else in order to grab their land, blacks making white apartheid legal in Holland.”
He said that Martin Luther King profoundly impacted white racism in this country. “If we get up every morning planning to do something to make the world better, even though we no longer have the peaceful resistance of Dr. King, we can follow his words resolutely. The vitriol of this period we live in? We need to pledge to help all good folks join together and not accept this kind of behavior. Teaching a class is a start.”
He added that the class is taught all over the country in colleges and universities from Yale and beyond. “It’s exactly what we do in higher education,” Martin said. “Take current topics and teach them” with the perspective of where the ideas came from and their historical story. He likened it to teaching the socialism of Karl Marx, in history classes, political science classes and English classes; and the necessity to study what has gone before us no matter what that history is.
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The other speech was written by senior Madison Burton of Charlotte High School. Her winning essay on Martin Luther King expounded on King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which, in 1963 when he was a young 34 years old, he said, “Stay informed and educated about what goes on. Without proper knowledge it is difficult to make good decisions and fulfill your duties as good citizens of the United States.”
The timeliness of Burton’s speech is ironic. The President of the United States two days before, on Jan. 11, referred to African nations, El Salvador and Haiti as “shithole” countries. The next day he denied that he said it, and Fox news and several Republicans once again reinforced a lie.
Who’s being honest here? The people who were in the conference when they heard the President say it? The people who support him no matter what he says? The President himself who, once again, said he didn’t say what he had said?
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Are we able to stay “informed and educated about what goes on,” as Dr. Martin Luther King advised us from Birmingham jail, when we are faced with blatantly opposing words?
We seem to think there is a dilemma because of the troubling times we live in. I don’t think we are too troubled to figure it out.
Because we are in the middle of bad behavior and lying people, we need not be disabled. We are in a time that is on the cusp of change, and the change we seek is not backward but forward: to a place quite near, the place in our hearts where there is hope. It is in our respect for people of all colors as well as in the justice we know is for all of us, not just the white guys.
What happened to me last weekend as I listened to those two speeches that “tailgated” Trump’s ugly words is this: I understood that I was witness to people like Martin Luther King who go on, move on and keep fighting for decency, speaking up for all humans and never giving in to bullying and lying.
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On Sunday I attended a church service to hear a friend who was the organist for the morning. He played and the choir sang “We Shall Overcome.” This gospel song was the calling card of the civil rights movement, but it was the next hymn that hit me most sincerely: “Building a New Way,” written by Martha Sandefer, goes like this:
“We are building a new way…we are working to be free of hate and greed and jealousy…we can feed our every need, start with love, that is the seed…peace and freedom is our cry…without these this world will die…working to be free of hate and greed….”
All in all, a teaching weekend. Giving up in the face of ignorance and power turned ugly is not the answer.
