Monday's Opening Thought: January 18, 2021

This week’s opening thought: Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. It’s a holiday that was signed into law in 1983 by a President who led a “War on Drugs” that disproportionately harmed, killed, and imprisoned Black bodies. It wasn’t observed as a federal holiday for the first time until 1986. It wasn’t officially observed and celebrated in all fifty states simultaneously until the year 2000, with Utah becoming the last state to recognize MLK Day by name.

Until 1999, MLK Day was known as “Civil Rights Day” in New Hampshire until the State Legislature voted to change the name. But guess what? It’s still not quite named MLK Day - it’s “Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day.” Arizona uses a similar name for the day.

Alabama and Mississippi still observe MLK Day as “Martin Luther King’s and Robert E. Lee’s Birthday,” because observing a national holiday on Robert E. Lee’s birthday was somehow sacrilegious. Virginia took it a step further, combining MLK Day with a celebration of the lives of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson until the year 2000.

Wyoming calls it “Martin Luther King Jr./Wyoming Equality Day.” Liz Byrd, who was a trailblazer in her own right as the first Black person elected to the Wyoming Legislature, tried to push for the state to recognize the day as a paid holiday. The compromise? The naming of the holiday as MLK Day. You see, her colleagues would not agree with passing the bill to make MLK Day paid unless they got to keep their chosen name for the day.

I could keep going but, well, there’s no need to.

White America has made a celebration and observation of the birth and life of a civil rights leader who died fighting for equity and against white supremacy into a push-and-pull scenario for countless decades because acknowledging a Black person and their work against systemic oppression on a national level in an honest manner is a bridge too far.

So my apologies white folx and uninformed people of culture with adjacency to white privilege. You’ll have to miss me this year and every year with the misquotes and distortions of Dr. King’s words and vision that y’all are so quick to post on the third Monday in January of each year. It’s obvious y’all do this without researching your quotables for accuracy or with a willingness to open your eyes and minds to developing an understanding of how this country views men like Dr. King. Y’all can do better than you do. You just don’t.

It’s well past time to acknowledge that the way this country viewed a Black man who had a 75% national disapproval rating prior to his assassination only to turn around and act like he was “one of the good ones” long after his passing is the true story of how many of y’all feel about Blackness and Black activism in this country:

Better dead and fondly remembered in whitewashed history now than supported in dismantling white supremacy while breathing.

This isn’t just a day off to me. It’s a mirror. Y’all just don’t wanna look into it.