Skip to main content

What Would MLK Say in 2018? Nine Questions You Must Ask Youself!

by Meg Okura
Whenever I see a four-foot-eleven black elderly woman in a perfectly pressed dress suit with ever so fashionable glasses that scream intellect, I get scared. You know she is judging me. In fact, she is, but most lovingly - she is my mother in law. A granddaughter of a former slave who was born in Salisbury, Maryland in 1934. According to her account, she was always at the top of her class. In her 30’s, thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, she was even able to pursue a doctoral degree and became a professional. She was able to support her family, was a multiple-time homeowner, married not just once but twice, and helped everyone around her with her time and money. My mother in law is one of many thousands of examples of successes in America.
Exactly four years ago, on the day of MLK celebration, my daughter who had just turned three at the time and I became Jews by choice. We chose Judaism so our daughter will be raised with progressive Jewish values, and so she will not be judged by her skin color but by her character and values.

 
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

I think about this part of MLK's speech everyday since the pregnancy and wonder what happened. 55 years later, today, we live in a nation where we are constantly divided into groups based on our skin color. Every time I am asked to check one of these boxes, my heart races. I just want us to belong to the human race.

Often, it’s those well-meaning nice people, like you and me, who say things that are most offensive, yet have no idea about it. For example, two years ago, a colleague of mine (a Jewish male) predicted that if Donald Trump wins the election, “you will be deported and your husband will be working in the kitchen”. He even claimed, “your daughter only got into _______ (an elite private school) because she is black.” (FYI, I have never been an illegal here, not even for one second. My husband is a professional, and a successful soprano saxophonist. As for my daughter, she scored 99 percentile on her G & T exams)

The problem with these friends is that they are so clueless, yet they scream the loudest with such confidence that they completely dismiss my opinions, which are based on facts and my personal experiences. They advertise how much they care about women, minorities and immigrants just as they dismiss exactly that person.

But I am not going to cry about being a victim of so-called micro-aggressions like this because this is nothing compared to the real hardships that I have been through in my life. Instead, I ask myself difficult questions about my own unconcsious bigotry and biases.

(1) Do I group people of color together and fail to recognize them as individuals with his or her own original thoughts and opinions?

(2) Do I expect less of people of color while I teach my children to be the best of the bests? Do I expect less diligence and less moral character from people of color than I would from my own child?

(3) Am I automatically exonerating myself of my own prejudices by accusing someone else of being a racist?

(4) When I accuse someone else of being a racist, do I really know that person’s personal views or history of what she or he might have done to actually help people of color?

(5) Do I truly care about the actual welfare of people I claim to care about, or am I using them for virtue signaling?

(6) Was my marriage to my husband an ultimate virtue-signaling?

(7) Did I become a Jew so I can rub elbos with so-called the "successful" tribe?

(8) Am I guilty or responsible for my unconcious biases and bigotry?  


(9) What would MLK say about me?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is There a Harvey Weinstein of Jazz? #MeToo

(Trigger warning! rape, child abuse) The #MeToo movement has been bringing about changes in the entertainment industry, especially film. Many of us wonder "Is there is a Harvey Weinstein of jazz?" The most significant difference between the film and jazz industries is that we no longer have influential gate-keepers in jazz. Record company executives, managers, booking agents, producers used to be extremely powerful. But today, they no longer make or break one's career in jazz. We have to "make it" on our own. Except for faculty members at educational institutions, nobody could take advantage of young female jazz musicians today. But it doesn't mean that I have never been sexually harassed or made to feel uncomfortable on the bandstand or off. Until recently, many jazz musicians used to make inappropriate jokes and offhanded comments. But I always told myself to have a thick skin, and ignore the comments. I also used to receive unwanted sexual advances

Why Was a Harlem 4-Year-Old Screaming “Let My People Go!?"

Our guests don’t ask four questions, but one. "When do we get to eat?” We tell them to eat something before if they don't want to be hungry staring at a shank bone and parsley while we read for two hours. To make the matters worse, every year at our Passover seder, our Afro-Asian Jewish American daughter passionately sings “Go Down Moses” crescendoing into the part “Let my people go!” The song exemplifies the parallel between the Jewish people's enslavement and departure from Egypt and the African-American slave experience in the United States. The parallel that I only draw once a year on Passover. “ Exodus and Emancipation ” is one of the tracks from one of my new albums, a debut album by the NPO Trio ( Sam Newsome on sopranos saxophone, Jean-Michel Pilc on piano, and Meg Okura on the violin) to be released on March 15 from Chant Records, a newly established avant-garde, and world music label. I first met Jean-Michel Pilc almost 18 years ago when I used to play

Defending Rioters and Looters Don't Help Us

I never liked being called a person of color, though people calling us black didn't bother me as much. It's just semantics, right? But I nearly gagged this morning when I heard an innocent nine-year-old white girl saying, "we should call them (the looters) people of color because 'black' sounds bad." I looked at my daughter- her shoulders were down with blank stares at her computer screen. The homeroom teacher encouraged the little girls to "take action" and added that "these people are looting because they are angry. And they are angry because of racism." My heart started to race as the last thing I wanted the teacher to teach is to (1) identify people by race, (2) justify looting and rioting, (3) ask the girls to "do something." So my daughter and I had a talk after her zoom homeroom. Here are some of the things my nine-year-old said. (1) It sounds like only white people are "normal" people, and other people aren't