Today, as we commemorate and celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is important to contemplate the impact that his life and leadership had on each of us. I consider my generation to be fairly enlightened in terms of race relations, certainly more enlightened than my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. I have close friends, colleagues, neighbors – even a president – of races different from my own. These relationships never seemed unusual or surprising. In fact, I have always taken race relations for granted. As the son of a United States Naval officer, I grew up seeing leaders of color as a normal and expected thing.
Being born in 1965, I was too young to understand the racial conflict that marked my early years. The hatred and violence has always seemed like an abstraction. I know it happened. I’ve seen the burned out blocks in Washington, D.C. – the lingering reminder of the riots of the 1960s. I’ve seen the films of defenseless men, women, and children being attacked by police wielding clubs, fire hoses, and dogs – simply for protesting peacefully for their fundamental civil rights. I have cringed as I looked at photographs of lynchings, and other terrorist acts perpetrated by racists. Despite the evidence, it has always felt distant and almost unreal.
My parents’ generation was not so lucky. They witnessed firsthand the discrimination and racial violence that tore at our country’s soul. They witnessed the civil rights struggle first hand. My mother and mother-in-law lived the racial horrors of Birmingham, Alabama of the 1950s and 1960s. Both grew up in middle-class homes where African-American “help” was normal and expected. The women who helped raise my mother and mother-in-law were important and integral parts of their families, but society said that these women were not their equals, nor would they ever be.
I have come to a new realization. My generation’s enlightenment is rather complacent. We inherited the benefits earned by the generation before ours. While prejudice and discrimination are still far too common, the sea change that occurred in the 1960s altered race relations forever. My parents’ generation worked for this change. They earned their enlightenment, and they have passed it to us. However, like inherited wealth, it is easy to take our enlightenment for granted.
The fact that members of my parents’ generation earned their enlightenment makes it much more powerful than our complacent enlightenment. Theirs is an active enlightenment. My mother and mother-in-law and many more like them helped overturn a system they were raised to believe was normal, and even benevolent. Despite the love their families felt for their “help,” they came to recognize that any society that placed one group of people beneath another – simply because of something as base as the color of their skin – was evil. That realization drove them and many more whites to join the civil rights movement.
That is the genesis of their active enlightenment. What makes it so powerful is that they earned it, and these earned benefits will always retain value. Their generation cannot and will not forget what it was like before. Their enlightenment is precious, so they protect it. They continuously invest in it. I see this in the actions of my mother and my mother-in-law. My mother spent much of the past 30 years working with and advocating for the poor elderly in Virginia. She worked in a neighborhood in Norfolk, VA, that was predominately African-American, when there were plenty of needy elderly closer to her home. I believe this decision reflected her desire to serve a community in which she was emotionally invested.
Similarly, my mother-in-law spent her career as a therapist and clinical social worker serving mostly disadvantaged clients in one of Birmingham’s poorest communities. Many of her clients were African-American. While she is now retired, she continues to remain actively engaged with Birmingham’s African-American community. She is a member of an African-American church where she is the only white face. Despite severe disabilities, she mentors and counsels anyone who asks.
Some attribute my mother’s and mother-in-law’s actions to some sort of white guilt, as if they were atoning for the sins of previous generations. Perhaps that is true for some people of their generation, but I choose to believe otherwise. I see their commitment as their way of safeguarding something that they earned. They know how real and pervasive the evil was. They witnessed the achievement of something precious, so they know its value. We inherited the same gift, but we fail to recognize its true value. Their active enlightenment is far more powerful than our complacent enlightenment. We can learn from them. Their actions and commitment make us remember.