Ruminations on Martin Luther King Day, 2015

The American Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men are created equal" and that their Creator has endowed them all with the unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires all States to give the equal protection of its laws to all.

The enforcement of segregation against black citizens was clearly contrary to the meaning of equality as set forth in these documents. While debatable questions may be raised about specific legislative proposals intended to recognize and enforce that equality, it is certainly contrary to the meaning of America to seek ways of subordinating an ethnic group or of making an ethnic group superior to others.

Martin Luther King, jr. opposed the laws and customs which treated black citizens differently from white citizens. In this, he was simply claiming the promises of the Declaration and the Constitution. At its most fundamental level, the civil rights movement of which he was a leader was a call to America to be true to itself.

Yesterday I went to see a film called "Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible." (The link goes to the first part of it. The rest can be reached through further links.) It is uneven. A couple of the things that people were troubled about in their lives struck me as pretty trivial and perhaps not even race-related. But even so, it does illustrate the existence of both racism and white privilege. Some people object that their families never owned slaves, that their ancestors immigrated after slavery was ended, that neither they nor their ancestors had ever oppressed people of other races, that they are poor and powerless. That may be true, but it is beside the point. White privilege really means that white people are not subject to the indignities black people suffer: being followed by security in stores, being stopped by police for "driving while black" or admonished by police for walking in white neighborhoods, needing to make sure that their eight-year-old son is known to every member of the suburban police force as a resident of the 97% white town.

The ending of white privilege does not require any loss for white people; it only requires that people of color be treated no differently from white people. But this is not an easy thing to accomplish. Attitudes are formed over years and decades. For example, if we are aware of crimes committed by young urban black men, it is natural to associate crime with young black men, forgetting that criminal elements arose from other ethnic groups of urban poor. Meanwhile, black people are perfectly aware of the fact that they do not get treated as equals in American society, despite the Declaration and the Constitution, and it is only natural that this leads to resentment. We end up with a situation in which crime by urban black people is partly fueled and exacerbated by the resentment of the inequality which is partly brought about by the crime.

I used to be more optimistic about the future of racial equality in this country, but I am discouraged as I come to realize the degree to which people of color are still not regarded (consciously or unconsciously) and treated as equals. Still I do not consider it possible that we will be forever divided along racial lines or that there will be some kind of race war. But I think progress will be gradual and that true equality is still a generation or more away.