Celebrating MLK Day as a Black Leader in Tech
By Kim Noel, MD, Medical Director, 23andMe Healthcare Operations
For the past five years, every Martin Luther King Jr. Day I’ve learned something new. I used to think of it as a “day off”; national holidays are usually passive celebrations motivated by paid work leave. But, MLK Day has taken on new significance, especially in the past few years as national consciousness of racial injustice has resurfaced.
Being in the elite world of tech during this social movement has been an interesting challenge because so many here seem oblivious that the racial injustice and structural racism they condemn elsewhere is also part of their world . Absent dire circumstances, it is sometimes hard to grasp the intricacies of structural racism. However, even in the shiny Silicon Valley, we don’t escape reality (Worth reading “What it is like to be a black man in Tech” in Harvard Business Review if unfamiliar). MLK Day here, and in this new age has become an opportunity for self-education, learning more about the complexities of a glorified man’s approach to tackle a violent and unresolved fight for racial and social equity.
I am always surprised about what I learn on MLK Day. This year I learned that although a national holiday, MLK Day was not uniformly celebrated nationally. Despite being signed into law by Reagan in 1983, it was only in 2020, that Virginia separated the holiday from Lee-Jackson Day, in which the holiday was reluctantly lumped in with the celebration of confederate generals. I also learned that South Carolina didn’t accept the holiday until 2000. I was reminded that the very existence of the holiday came through struggle. That MLK Day legislation did not originally pass, as it was deemed “too expensive, and inappropriate in honoring a private citizen who never held public office” with taxpayer dollars. That legislation declaring a national holiday was forced, with a petition of six million signatures.It was one of the largest petitions in favor of an issue in U.S history, according to a 2006 article in The Nation.
I am also somehow always a bit ashamed of how little I know of black history, even having always been a good student with an elite education. I am excited to learn more. I’m excited to see new stories featuring black characters being portrayed in Hollywood and the media. (The movie Woman King definitely led me to read all about the Agojie warriors.) But entertainment aside, I realize that my ignorance about some black history is part of a broader problem in how we teach history. It tends to be myopic, or in the case of Dr. King, reductionist, portraying him simply as the “man with a dream.”
Dr. King had a dream, but he also wrote:
“We are not makers of history. We are made by history, and that many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten . . . America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.”
It is that imbalance of justice that continues to thrive today, that’s what makes Dr. King still so relevant today. I must make a full disclosure, that in dark times I tend to read depressing historical accounts. I believe it helps me put our current struggles into context, but it also teaches me about strength and survival amid difficult times.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the racial unrest that followed and the ongoing pandemic in 2020, I ended up reading historical biographies of slavery, apartheid, the U.S prison system, 1918 flu, and the Holocaust. I wanted to absorb all the resilience I could from the heroes who fought oppression and desolation during those times.
I also remember the first MLK Day and Black History Month almost one year after George Flloyd in 2021, when the world seemed too festive for my liking. Too much emphatic corporate sponsorship without being accountable to true social change and not enough acknowledgment of history. I craved a deeper understanding of the history of Dr. King that year, because I feel we have been too keen on focusing on the celebration of unity, and not keen enough in understanding the foundational elements of structural racism which were a core component of Dr. King’s work. MLK Day is a reminder that Dr. King’s job was left incomplete, and the day of celebration is a call for us to pause from our day jobs and get working on our self-education.
As a leader at 23andMe, where we are lovingly thought of as an activist brand, I hope that our company embraces the corporate enthusiasm of celebrating MLK Day, and inspires review of his full work. My wish is that MLK Day be a day of reflection that does not shy away from our shared violent history of slavery and racial injustice, a history that continues to thwart our goals of equity to this day. I hope that in these moments of reflection, we view these black heroes in the proper historical context, to understand their true exceptional strength. For MLK Day this year I celebrate his power of resilience and love despite oppression.
Dr. King wrote: “ Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
May we celebrate Dr. King for enlightening the darkened path, as we take a day to rest, be with loved ones and hopefully to self-educate.
