Martin Luther King Jr.: 'Hatred paralyzes life'
January 17, 2011 | 11:52 am
In this photo from Dec. 21, 1956, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rides a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Ala., a momentous occasion that vindicated Rosa Parks after she refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955, marked a civil rights victory and sent a powerful message of hope. So, it is particularly heartbreaking to read "Black man's burden," an Op-Ed by Judy Belk that recounts how just 10 years ago (and 45 years after the above photo was taken) her 13-year-old son came to understand racism while on public transportation.
Racism is like that. A dripping faucet of sorts. You ignore it until you can't anymore. I so desperately wanted to slow down the inevitable. Stop the drip. Couldn't he have just one more year of innocence in which he could believe that his black skin was nothing more than what it is — a physical attribute rather than the definition to others of who he is and what he can or can't do.
But Ryan was already one step ahead of me in coming up with coping strategies.
"Don't worry, Mom, I figured out a solution. I just take out a book and start reading, which seems to make everybody relax." One woman, he said, even asked if he was enjoying a particular book as much as she did.
As a black woman who loves two amazing black men -- my husband and 23-year-old son -- I have seen again and again how society either assumes the worst of them or treats them as an exception to their race and manhood. It is a minefield black men must navigate.
