Monday, January 17, 2005
np: sub-freezing north carolina weather.
"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.'..but..when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'..then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
segregation works in many different ways. dr. king was of course referring to the outright segregation of his times, but it continues in more subversive and not-so-easily identifiable ways today. the wedge is the new segregation. although it's as old as time itself. forces drove a wedge between poor whites and their black brethren in the south, knowing that despite the fact that they had mutually more to gain by helping eachother, race would ultimately trump any sense of connectedness.
this past year saw that wedge played with gay marriage, changes to social security, medicare/medicaid reform, and countless other issues where it was seen that people's sense of propriety and form could trump mutual best interest.
beware of people who argue that history is just that. history. beware of people who would say that people like dr. king, malcolm x, medger evers, robert f. kennedy have nothing more to say removed from their time and place. those people are wrong. the names change, the colors change, the scope and frame of the problem changes. the problem, itself, never changes.
may we finally learn that this year. god bless us all.
