MLK, Jr. Day

The most disquieting thing I saw on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was a social media post from that odious governor of Florida praising King for his leadership during the Civil Rights Movement — a history the governor wants to make sure students in his state never actually learn about in their schools or on visits to their public libraries, indeed, history he wants banned in his state, replaced with a whitewashed version of events.

Hypocrisy is nothing new in politics — just look at the Republican Party, not only in Florida but everywhere.

... such bold hypocrisy as evidenced by Florida’s governor has long been sine qua non to the political lifeblood of the Southern pol with national aspirations.

And such bold hypocrisy as evidenced by Florida’s governor has long been sine qua non to the political lifeblood of the Southern pol with national aspirations.

Still, it was unsettling to see the post, just as it’s troubling to think how slight the progress has been in race relations since King’s death nearly 55 years ago.

Before his death, when I was a precocious kid who liked to listen to the adults talk when they gathered in backyards or on front porches, King was spoken of with a haughty derision coated in a certain amount of genuine fear.

Needless to say, those adults (including, of course, my parents) were all white; diversity was the Korean wife of a Navy vet who kept to herself and was talked of as a mysterious curio.

We were told to lock our doors as we drove through certain city neighborhoods, on the rare occasions when there would be a family of Black shoppers in the same aisle my mother would take me firmly in hand, and when talking about a ball game my dad would ask whether a particular player might be “colored.”

That’s how I grew up, amidst centuries-old biases.

And then, on my first day of college, in my first class, I was sitting next to a Black girl and realized it was the closest physically I’d ever been to a Black person — and also that she was very pretty and soon proved to be much smarter than me.

I’m roughly a generation older than the governor of Florida, but it’s likely he grew up hearing the same prejudices as I did growing up in Indiana, the same irrational views on race.

By 18 I pretty much knew what I’d heard was bunk; at 44 the governor seems to be still harboring his own nasty bents.?