I have the day off of School today for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and this article showed up in my facebook feed today, so I've been thinking about Dr. King, and his legacy for me, as a millenial, white Canadian living in the United States. This speech is possibly one of the best known speeches of the 20th century. Dr. King, and this speech (which from what I have read today, was almost forgotten by the time he died) are intrinsically linked together, inseparable even.
I am white. Specifically, I am a mixture of German, Ukranian, Irish, English, Scottish, and possibly even some Spanish or Portuguese thrown in there somewhere (the cod fishery in Newfoundland drew in a lot of people from a lot of places). But these are not who I am - I am an Eastern Canadian, and that is how I culturally identify. Being from where I am from comes with its hardships, but generally, I have lived a life with many advantages thanks to my parents, who have always done their best to allow me to follow my dreams. As a result of those dreams i have landed here in America to pursue a masters degree.
It is interesting to look at american culture as an outsider, especially as one that can just blend in (I have no real accent). Unlike many of my international student brethren, I can just slip unnoticed into situations and conversations and see Americans act like Americans act with other Americans. I see little things, both small kindnesses and small betrayals that no one thinks will be noticed. I see the doors held open, or the small change given to help with someone else's purchase, and the million other small kindnesses witnessed each day. But I also see ugly things: friends prevented from dating others because of their skin colour, or hearing in between the lines from upper class colleagues that "That's a dangerous neighbourhood" means "there are a lot of black people there".
Maybe it's because I'm in a relatively conservative part of Ohio - Smallish town, working class, pretty religious. But where i'm from, a place that is much the same in many ways, "Whatever the hardships and storms we must weather, we're the people who made it by standing together" as the song goes. It seems so strangely divisive to treat people differently because of their race, skin colour, or socio-economic heritage.
I understand that you can't turn an oil tanker the size of the US on a dime, and that changing cultural direction takes time. Indeed, there are inter-racial relationships on television and in real life, and there's even a black president, but in many ways i don't think Dr. King's "dream" has been achieved. The children of former slaves and the children of former slave owners are welcome to sit down at the table of brotherhood, but not everyone is interested in doing so. People are still judged by the colour of their skin not the content of their character. I compare the racial attitudes of those 'conservative folks" to that of my home country and just don't understand their mentality (though Canada is no less guilty in its own racial problems, I don't understand those decisions either).
As I see it, however, the fact that I don't understand their mindset (nor do most of the people I interact with on a daily basis) is a good thing. The fact that we see a problem with a racist mindset, and that we don't see our life partners or our friend's life partners through the lens of their ancestry is a huge step forward. But I have to be careful with my optimisim. Humanity has a need for an "Other", a Bogeyman onto which we can hang our burdens, our problems and our self-superiority. Be it Irish in Victorian England, or Blacks in the post-Confederate south, or Jews in Pre-WW2 Germany, or the growing racial and religious tension against Muslims in our modern era (even the Hyper-conservative and Hyper-liberal bogeymen apply), we have to stop shoving our problems onto cultural outsiders and visible (or invisible) minorities, and start looking in the mirror for the solutions to our own problems.
I've gotten to a point where I'm not sure if this is cohesive. It's all swirling in my head, and I hope I haven't offended anyone or made any huge social faux pas.