Racism and Civil Rights November 8, 2009

Martin Luther King Jr..  What thoughts come to mind when hearing that name?  What’s the first thing one pictures of who this man could possibly be?  General guesses are usually ones based on what’s already known about him.  If there was not even the slightest glint of recognition over the name and all I told you was that this man, Martin Luther King Jr., was a man who has changed the basis of our time; lots of aspects in our daily life caused because of him, you could guess that this was one remarkable man without even knowing any other single piece of information on him.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born the same as everyone else, came into this world through the same means of entrance that any other person of any other race would but somehow the notion came upon our species that regardless of our undeniable similarities that there had to be one better than the other, somehow an arrogance of such an extreme nature was imbedded in our minds, that though we are all the same, we are also all different therefore one type of difference must, of all sense in this world, be claimed as the better of the many.  Our minds all work in the same ways, all making the effort to acclaim to society’s wants and needs but doing so while keeping to our own aspirations.  Martin Luther King Jr. had many interests, many goals he wanted to see achieved and he was more intelligent than the average person despite the pressure and strain of society constantly insisting that because of the colour of his skin he was of a lesser caliber; a stupidity-embellished mind that was rendered incapable of advanced thought and problem solving.  Despite the constant burden of life that he was meant to be less short of idiotic, he strived way past the normal expectation of learning capability, graduating high school at age 15.  By this time, he was completely aware of what the “white man” thought of him and his race and even though he was only a boy of 15, ideas were already spinning this way and that in his brain, thinking of a way that this could be changed.  He had experienced racism, slight and ambiguous, but it was because of those exchanged that motivated him that much more to change what was happening in the world.

After the incident of Rosa Parks on the Montgomery buses where she refused to move to the back of the bus when asked and was incarcerated for it, Martin King was driven to do something about this.  He and another civil rights activist, Dr. E.D. Nixon arranged a one-day Montgomery bus boycott, where no black person would ride a Montgomery bus of any kind at any time through that day.  Countless buses passed by streets and businesses stark empty, not a person inside save the bus driver.  The company that organized the bus boycott was called the Montgomery Improvement Association and they eventually elected Martin Luther King Jr. to be their president and announced that the one-day bus boycott would not be for one day but continue until Blacks were allowed to sit wherever they desired to on buses.  Naturally not many were pleased with this and people demonstrated their anger by responding violently towards him, bombing his house etc.

Although the bus boycott was a clear statement that the lack of rights for these people was not going to be tolerated any longer, it took a whole year before the Supreme Court ruled that the Jim Crow Laws were against the law.  With this great success, things were actually going somewhere even though there were those who were still, simply put, furious with what was being done.  Martin King and many other black leaders then formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, determined to fight the Jim Crow Laws and eradicate them completely.  Martin King traveled all across America, speaking for the severe need for eliminating all unfair laws.  He spoke for the right that Blacks should register and vote and led marches in Birmingham, Alabama where the police irrevocably acted much more violently than the protesters themselves, in Selma, Alabama where he marched for the right to vote and in Washington in which he made his “I Have A Dream” Speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  To their success, soon Blacks were allowed to eat at the same lunch counters, drink from the same water fountains, and share the same bathrooms; small steps in the grand scale of things but a huge improvement to what ridiculous rules were being held against blacks initially.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a determined man and eventually met with presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, who were all interested in abolishing the laws that treated Blacks unfairly.  When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Gray, he was en route to Chicago, where he was planning a march for not just poor Blacks but for every race who was subjected to racial circumstances that left in the situation of being financially insecure.

Up to the very end, Martin Luther King was aiming to broaden the societal view of worth and integrity.  He aimed to fight for every race’s injustice because as he said,

“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.”

He fought against the superiority distinction between races, wanting all to be seen as equal and different but in both ways, a positive view-point.  We all are the way we are because we are meant to be that way and differences between us are what makes the similarities that much more important because even though each person in unique as much as each tree grows on a different piece of earth but are still undeniably trees all the same, we cannot lose sight that we are all of the same cloth, same species, feel, love, and think in all the same ways.  When we lose what binds us together as a people, we forget what really matters.

Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his life to make a difference; the least any of us can do is understand his motives.  Take a gander and learn something; he was a brilliant man.

Social Bias and Issues September 23, 2009

The word ‘racism’ is not one that goes too often unrequited and unknown.  Racism can be a very touchy and sensitive subject for most who talk about it and most likely every person you talk to will have a different variation of an opinion.  Our law states that every person is entitled to all rights and freedoms regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. but regrettably, many countries still have many biases towards people of different races because they haven’t necessarily been taught that those beliefs are unfair and demeaning.

Racism — Global Issues: www.globalissues.org/article/165/racism This link dictates numerous amounts of information on racism all over the world.  Racism from different countries and of people with various backgrounds is good knowledge to at least know of.  Various people are going to believe many different things and it’s beneficial to be aware of that.

Although we, sadly, all succumb to having biases in our lives one way or another, it’s easy to overlook them.  It is true, I’ve had many biases over my life-time but I can’t say they were ever based on such issues as race.

Our biases affect the way we address almost every aspect in our lives, from tasks as simple as going to the grocery store to as more complex as bringing up a child.  Our biases are going to cause us to treat that cashier at the store differently than we otherwise would.  They’re going to cause us to teach our children to have these same biases.  If biases can affect circumstances so ordinary as those, it’s no question that they can affect the way we address social justice issues.  We’re not going to want to help out with causes in which we think have no real benefit or are assisting those who we think don’t really deserve the assistance.  And because we would already have these biases we would keep from educating ourselves further on the issues.  And it’s precisely because of these probable situations that it’s important that we are aware of our own biases.  If we know that what we think isn’t necessarily true we can eventually encourage ourselves to dispense of our ignorance on the topic.  Being aware of our biases may not be a quick fix but it has it’s advantages.  One who knows of their own biases can learn to overcome them and stop them from becoming predominant over their way of thinking.  Just because the biases are there doesn’t mean they have to rule our lives.