{"id":448,"date":"2017-01-16T17:29:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T01:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/?p=448"},"modified":"2017-01-17T21:16:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T05:16:41","slug":"a-few-thoughts-on-this-martin-luther-king-jr-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/a-few-thoughts-on-this-martin-luther-king-jr-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Idealistic Thoughts on this Particular Martin Luther King Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto, nobelprize.org<\/p><\/div>\n

A\u00a0few thoughts swirled in my head as our nation celebrated the life of this great Civil Rights icon\u00a0while in preparation for the inauguration of the most divisive president-elect in my lifetime. (The term ‘bitter irony’ comes to mind.)<\/p>\n

The\u00a0first, shared by many on Twitter as well, was that there’s no way on God’s green Earth that we could ever pass another holiday for a Black man in this racial climate. If we can’t get proper justice for the brazen killings of Black men even with\u00a0damning video evidence, a federal holiday\u00a0is pretty much out of the question.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0second was imagining the horror, and immense frustration, that he might feel seeing our\u00a0nation regress so badly\u00a0with respect to race relations: with the election of our first Black president as the catalyst .<\/p>\n

The\u00a0third was a bit more reflective.<\/p>\n

I proudly identify as a Black & Gay man. But there are significant problems within each of those communities. With each death of a Black man or woman at the hands of authorities, we must look at the deaths of Black men and women by our own. Where are WE remiss? Do we treat each other with respect? Do we value our own lives? Do we treat each other as we demand of the white majority?<\/p>\n

I’d like to believe ‘mostly yes’, but wouldn’t bet my savings on it.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to protest against a race-baiting fascist, backed by a racially tone-deaf House and Senate in a criminal & judicial\u00a0system that was built on racism, and demand our due rights. The hard part is making sure that, within our community, we are treating\u00a0one\u00a0another with the same standard\u00a0that we’re demanding.<\/p>\n

The same is true of the\u00a0LGBTQ community. Racism, ageism, and ‘fatism’ are\u00a0rampant. However, since\u00a0they’re all\u00a0masked under the guise of ‘sexual preference’, they’re often excused and sometimes even encouraged.<\/p>\n

I can’t speak for the lesbian community, but I’ve heard many gay\u00a0men state\u00a0a racial preference for dating while vigorously feigning victimhood when called a racist. In fact, I had someone once tell me that I was a cute… for a Black guy. And I’m sure that he saw nothing wrong with saying so. He likely meant it as a compliment. Therein lies the racist rub.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong. Gay men don’t own any\u00a0exclusive rights to sexual racism\u00a0(see John Mayer<\/a><\/strong>). But this is an ongoing\u00a0issue within the community, and a huge one for\u00a0gay and bisexual men of color. So as I see gay\u00a0men celebrating the life and ideas of Martin Luther King, and using those\u00a0words and ideas to fight legislative attacks on LGBTQ civil rights, do they also think about applying those same ideas to their treatment of each other? Again I’ll say, I’d like to believe ‘mostly yes’, but still wouldn’t bet my savings on it.<\/p>\n

I may be an idealist, but I’m also not naive. I know that these\u00a0aren’t easy issues to dissect within these communities. They are complex and multi-layered. The question, however, still needs to be asked. As minorities, are\u00a0we willing to give the same consideration to our fellow community members that we’re asking from the majority?<\/p>\n

If the answer is NO, we need to some soul searching…\u00a0and perhaps re-read our history books.\u00a0Maybe then we’ll finally and truly understand Dr. King’s “dream”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0few thoughts swirled in my head as our nation celebrated the life of this great Civil Rights icon\u00a0while in preparation for the inauguration of the most divisive president-elect in my lifetime. (The term ‘bitter irony’ comes to mind.) The\u00a0first, shared by many on Twitter as well, was that there’s no way on God’s green Earth … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17,11],"tags":[98,99],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-admin","4":"post-448","6":"format-standard","7":"category-general-stuff","8":"category-national-politics","9":"category-political-stuff","10":"post_tag-martin-luther-king-jr","11":"post_tag-mlk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevware.com\/geek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}