Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the whitest holiday ever.
I'm sure a lot of people, both white and black, would disagree with that statement, but I stand by it. To prove it, I could point to the fact that most people don't know anything about King, or the Civil Rights Movement. After all, unless King's oft-quoted dream speech involved the dream that Americans would get a sweet three-day weekend and watch a lot of football while consuming a six-pack of Bud Light, I think most people "celebrating" the holiday are largely missing the point. However, more at the heart of the matter is what that point is and what it means for Americans white, black, and other.
This weekend, I was assigned a book about border conflict in the United States during the antebellum period. The book was entitled Border War. However, I am halfway through the book, and it has yet to mention John Brown once. The book is actually about slavery and slave resistance in the border states. Nevertheless, I don't think the title is misleading. Slavery was, after all, a form of violence, and was met, in many cases, with violence. For hundreds of years there was a civil rights movement in this country which involved white people attempting to coerce black people into subservience by force, and white and black people resisting that concept by, in many cases, murdering members of that first group of white people, as, frankly, they deserved. This is the civil rights movement, and interpretation of it, that you don't get in your high school history books. It was brutal and bloody by necessity and it took place because one racial group decided to tell another one what they could and couldn't do.
This is not, however, the picture you get from Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I'll give the holiday some credit for being created via a multiracial effort, and perhaps it's unfair of me to be cynical about it, but it seems to me that a state holiday focusing on peaceful white and black efforts to overturn Jim Crow via the efforts of one man misses the point almost as much as Natty-guzzling frat bros cheering on the Dallas Pantherhawks (or whatever fictitious teams the kids are into these days). The multiracial resistance to oppression carried out by private and public interests should be celebrated. However, as a nation, it is supremely important to remember how changes in the law regarding race in this country came about. Violence is not ideal, but it is, at times, necessary, and for centuries in this nation, it was necessary for one group of people to violently resist another in the name of liberty and equality.
Lest anyone should call me bloodthirsty or divisive, let me point out that America's national holiday, July 4, celebrates a violent division. We do not, however, see that violent divide as negative. It would have been phenomenal had King George simply peacefully allowed this nation to separate from Britain, so that no one died. But he didn't, they did, and we celebrate it much in the same way we celebrate MLK Day (albeit with more explosives). It would also have been great if people had decided not to enslave and oppress black people in this country, and if no one had had to be killed to reverse that, but, once again, they didn't, and they did. Remembering that isn't divisive. Instead, it should remind us of what happens when one group of people oppresses another, the consequences of that, and perhaps goad us towards cooperation and a day when racial differences are irrelevant.
MLK Day, however, at least in the popular mind, is about one man leading a movement to peacefully resist the state. It does not discuss the violence of the period during which MLK lived, nor the resistance to centuries of oppression before that. It is a perfect state holiday: it allows us to believe that peaceful measures alone can persuade the state and the general public to change its ways, when history demonstrates otherwise. It focuses on Martin Luther King Jr., a black man that Americans can be comfortable with, instead of say, Gabriel. It also views American struggle through the lens of simple black/white racial issues and presents Americans with a concise and happy resolution which never actually existed. Racial issues, as well as issues of class, gender, and sexual orientation, continue to plague this country. MLK Day should be a reminder of that, and a spur to real unity, not a celebration of a false one. While this is exactly what it is for some, it is not what high schools and the state focus on. Perhaps instead of closing schools, we should keep them open and dedicate the day to understanding the real history of race in this country, the ways in which it still affects us, and working on possible solutions.
There is nothing wrong with setting aside some time to think about race in this nation. There is something wrong with approaching it in a way that helps alleviate America's discomfort with race and perpetuates avoidance of actually delving into the issue. MLK Day, or at least the way we celebrate it, does little to solve anything. Instead, it distracts us from real progress towards healing the greatest issue this nation has ever had and understanding what caused it in the first place.
Though, on the bright side, we do get a three-day weekend. Go, Pantherhawks.
