Martin Luther King, Jr.

482 words

What To Do If Your Child Sounds Like A Racist
by Dianne Roth

Monday is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I sincerely hope it is a better world because of him.

In the 50’s and 60’s of South Denver we were all the same. In my high school of 3,000 students there were two students of color. One was a football star and without him the state title would have been out of reach. Sadly, a few months after graduation, his body was found in an alley. He was a victim of alcohol and violence.

The issues of prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination were foreign to 99% of us.
But, I often think of him and wonder just how great his high school years were. I regret that I cannot sit with him and talk about the world we grew up in.

When it came to raising my own children, I decided that specific lessons in tolerance felt artificial. Drawing attention to the problem institutionalized that problem, so I let nature take its course. My oldest was six when we were driving through town. He pointed to a black man walking on the sidewalk and announced, “There’s a bad man.”
I was struck speechless!

Soon, he pointed to another person, a white man, and made the same announcement. I was still not responding and hoping for inspiration on what to say. He kept pointing at people along the street and telling me they were bad people. The variety of people he pointed to included men and women, old and young, black and white.

Amazingly, I kept my mouth shut. Had I even said, “Black people aren’t bad,” I would have drawn attention to the color of someone’s skin and he would have had new labels for people. Instead, the scene played itself out and when I could breathe naturally, I asked, “What makes those people bad?”

His answer was so simple. “They are strangers.” He was trying out new knowledge on the people he was seeing. I was the one who had assumed he was referring to skin color.

He made my heart stop one other occasion. A tall, elgant, black man walked into the pizza parlor. He was wearing the most amazing patchwork leather suit and a purple fedora. My son’s eyes bugged out, his brain went into high gear, and his mouth, always loud, began to engage. I was too far away to stuff a slice of pizza down his throat. He yelled, “Look at that man’s pants.” Laughter filled the pizza parlour and the man cheerfully tipped his hat.

I heard about those pants for weeks. They still remind me that I was the one seeing color, not my son. I hope, each year, that we are closer to the dream. That all of us will be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.... or by the color of our pants.

Dianne Roth is a teacher, mother, grandmother, and freelance writer. She lives in Oregon.