When I think of Dr. King, I think of the Selma marches, I think of Birmingham, I think of Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lead the African-American community in demonstrations asking for the right of equal opportunity in America: a seat on a bus wherever they chose; a restaurant or hotel of their choice; the right to apply for a job without being turned down because you were black. Blatant in-your-face- discrimination was publicized by Dr. King and America was shown it was not right.
It took fearlessness to do that. Who today has that fearlessness that Dr. King and his followers showed all of America?
Today, subtle discrimination denying equal opportunity, and guaranteeing less opportunity are the evils that Dr. King, had he lived, would be attacking today.
When I write those sentences I just wrote, it seems incomprehensible to me that someone would deny another person that. When you think about it, it is an awful situation to think about. In the 36 years since Dr. King was murdered, the nation has come a long way in my opinion, in breaking down the visible barriers of racism based on creed and the color of one’s skin.
Today the barriers to Equal Opportunity are more subtle and just as effective.
Barriers still exist: in the classroom. There is reluctance to deliver quality education to the black and Hispanic populations in America today. The only reason there is a concentrated effort to do so are the state achievement tests which showed the shame of our education programs for minorities.
There is the perception that because your name and skin color are different, you automatically need help and are slow-tracked into remedial classes; the inclusion of the slower (read minority) children in one corner of a classroom so you can deal with the “problem children” all at once; the notion that it is all right to use millions of dollars meant for rebuilding poor performing schools with better buildings, better teachers, but is used to create educational bureaucracies for the politically connected instead.
In the last ten years the products of this subtle unequal educational opportunity have been well documented and given a name: The Achievement Gap. The educational establishment invests millions in studies to fine solutions to it and they have learned a lot about it. It takes more School District heads to stand up and say like Dr. King, “we simply are not going to educate half the population any more.”
The lagging behind of minority youth is blamed on the home and family breakdown. Well then you have to bring more attention to the family unit and those youngsters’ home environment, putting the education in there. It’s expensive but if you want to solve the Achievement Gap you have to do that.
The argument that you have to speak English in the schools and learn through English is racial superiority. Of course you have to learn to speak English, but really, Bilingual education is how we English-speakers learn another language.
Why not have teachers educate children in their own language with English simultaneously? It is proven to work in Port Chester and New Rochelle. It is time to stop the subtle prejudice that we do not want non-English speaking children in our towns and schools because they are too hard to educate and will cost us money to do that. They are children, you simply cannot throw them away because they do not speak English.
This discrimination Dr. Martin Luther King would find hard to take. He would bristle at lowering standards for minorities, because he would see right through that argument, saying: when are you going to raise the standards for my people because you don’t have to work any harder at educating them if you do not raise your expectations for them.
I think Dr. King would look around today and appreciate how Blacks and Whites, Hispanics and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and other races mingle together in today’s America.
I think he’d observe we are all becoming more appreciative and respectful of each other. But, I do not think he would like today’s buzz word :”diversity” and our smugness about our diversity.
He would say that’s nice, but let’s keep our eye on the prize, to borrow the wonderful motto of the White Plains Department of Public Safety, let us treat all with integrity, professionalism, respect, and to that add opportunity.
Now, let’s think how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would handle the present homeless situation in White Plains.
I believe Dr. Martin Luther King if he were in White Plains tomorrow would bring the homeless 30 spending short nights at 85 Court Street to breakfast with him.
He’d introduce the 30 men being treated like cruel political pawns by our leaders this week.
He’d ask each to tell their stories at that breakfast tomorrow. He’d prey for compassion from us the wealthy, the powerful and the decent, and the respectable to have compassion for the weak, the misdirected, the addicted and disturbed.
He’d ask White Plains leaders to accept the responsibility of leadership and by reaching out personally to the homeless to provide them meals and, perhaps jobs during the day, to welcome them in to White Plains somehow. To help them make a new start in White Plains in a firehouse, a church, or a vacant hospital. To challenge businesses to weave these persons into the fabric of the downtown, instead of telling them they are not welcome.
He’d challenge us to step up our humanity, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did when no one else was.
He’d shame the two governments, county and city, for not treating the homeless with simple human respect.
He’d ridicule the county decision to make homeless wait in damp, cold conditions up to a half hour or more for vans to drive them one block — apparently to keep the homeless, black, Hispanic and old — from offending the well-heeled diners at a posh restaurant next door to 85 Court Street.
Why cannot the homeless simply show up at DSS instead of vanning, Dr. King would ask?
He’d wither the geniuses at the Department of Social Services with scorn for taking up to 30 minutes to unload vans, then locking them into a gated compound with two bathrooms for 30 people, no food, no midnight snack, no television, no showers; herding them in like cattle, and out like cattle at 6 in the morning when they have schedule. No one wonder, Dr. King would say, why a lot are too tired to function during the day.
He’d ask White Plains to rise up and forgive the persons with the prison records who have done their time, and find jobs for them and through forgiveness, and respect for them, melt away the homeless’s suspicion and resentment alleged by our “leaders.”
As we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Monday. Ask ourselves what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think of the way we have treated the homeless this week. What he would think about how we have “reached out.”
Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. approve?
He’d remind us that Jesus Christ chose to minister to the “hardcore” of his time. He went into their midst. He healed them and made them fishers of men.
The way to honor Dr. King tomorrow is to honor the homeless, not humiliate them, not shun them.
