A View From Wyoming On MLK Day
Growing up in Wyoming, MLK Day was just a day.
Growing up in Wyoming, MLK Day was just a day.
We went to school, did our assignments, and maybe one radical teacher would show us a clip of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. She would say this man is celebrated because he ended racism in the U.S., and ever since, people of all races and backgrounds have lived in harmony alongside each other, happily ever after.
And as a result, we didn’t need to focus on the repercussions of systematic racism, because everything was fine now, and as long as you were thoughtful about where you sat on the school bus, you couldn’t hold biases against other people.
The problem is, these kids at my school grew up. And many of them continue to hold onto the view that prejudice and its repercussions were solved by that one man, somewhere in the South, a long time ago. And you can’t provide evidence to the contrary, because if that was how the world was, they would know. They would have learned about it in school.
It’s hard to blame generations of people who were never provided access to a rounded history, who wouldn’t be able to even recognize bias if it bit them on the ass. It’s hard to blame a generation of people who are siloed in their own quiet quest to survive for not understanding how others may face the world differently from them.
But I still do. I’m nothing but angry when I see hateful rhetoric repeated. Many times, I’m certain that this person doesn’t even know the impact of the words they’ve just used, and I can’t understand that in a culture of 24/7 news and media access how one isn’t at least absorbing the global conversation of race and inequities. I shout. I humiliate. I slap. I storm out. I dismiss people and cut them out of my life. I have no empathy for them. I cancel them.
But that doesn’t really solve anything either, does it? It just deepens the schism.
This MLK Day, I’ll wake up, make coffee, and go to work at Nextions. I will spend my day being thoughtful about these issues and thinking through strategies to interrupt biases. I will turn on the empathy that I’m often unable to find after work hours.
After I shutdown my computer on Monday night, I will honor Dr. King by challenging myself to retain that empathy. I don’t have to agree. I don’t have to sympathize. And I don’t have to be a white savior in a cape. But I can try to understand what circumstances formed this specific community’s point of view. I can reflect on how and why they are going from Point A to Conclusion B. And I can think about what impact I can have on our institutions and channel my own disgust into contributing to a society where everyone can thrive, through acts of kindness, listening, and inclusive strategies.
I can’t solve everything (or most things). But I can become more involved with my community instead of outright rejecting it when I see its shortcomings. I can lead by being an ally, an upstander, and a kind contributor to the conversation of justice in the institutions I care about, such as our schools.