Injustice Anywhere Threatens Justice Everywhere

I had a chance to witness first hand last Monday how the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration has become a rallying point for an entire spectrum of people who feel our culture treats them as less than fully welcome, less than equal. I was part of a Dr. King Day “poetry jam,” and along with African-Americans generally associated with the civil rights movement Dr. King led, the performers included Hispanics, gay men and lesbian women -- do I need to say why they are concerned -- and a Middle Eastern woman who read poetry describing how the author had been treated with suspicion ever since September 11, 2001. This was not in any way a complaint session, but rather a celebration of those things that make us different, coupled with an insistence that those differences shouldn’t be a liability.

I had written a performance poem titled “Why I Want my Dr. King’s Day Say,” and as the evening wore on and those who had suffered genuine discrimination took the stage, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. Why should I, a straight white male, a straight white Anglo-Saxon male, need to speak on such a day as this. Actually, that thought had bothered me from the moment I first signed up to perform and now seeing how people had suffered for being themselves, I wondered if maybe I should just sit back and feel either sympathetic or guilty -- or a little of each.

But I did have something to say, a view of racial and ethnic relations based on experience. I won’t go into my bona fides but the fact is I knew I had something concrete to add to the discussion. And on top of that, when my turn came I remembered the words of Dr. King had written from the Birmingham jail in 1963. “Injustice anywhere,” he wrote, “is a threat to justice everywhere.” I knew that included me; if one could be victimized by a self-serving culture, then all are vulnerable. Just speak the unpopular truth and you may learn the hard way -- and you don’t need to be black, Latino or Latina, gay, lesbian, Native American or Middle Eastern to find yourself paying the price of freedom.

Still, as I stood to perform my poem (which ran on this page last week) I wondered how I would be received. Like a friend or an enemy? I’m happy to say I was given a very warm welcome. I was not “the white man,” but another person who cared enough about justice to go out on a cold Chicago evening to join in celebrating this special day. Apparently, those who have felt the sting of intolerance are not quick to turn the needle on another, even when he is a straight white WASP of a male. For that I am thankful.