You can’t make everything about everything.
“And there’s always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes,
He can’t understand why his heart always breaks.
His honor is pure and his courage as well,
He’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell!
And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man.”
– Billy Joel
So unless you are living under a rock you know that today was the 50th anniversary of MLK’s I had a dream speech. I made a pretty simple throw away post on Facebook that said:
So much work still needs to be done but the fact that the 50 year anniversary of the “I Have A Dream” speech is being overseen by the first Black president is kind of amazing.
As someone who is married to a black person, and who has racially mixed children, race issues are something that I deal with all the time. It is important to me. It is appropriate I think to reflect for a moment that when the speech was made a black person could be legally barred from sitting in the same restaurant as a white person and now, 50 years later, a black man is sitting in the Oval Office.
Just wanted to take a moment and reflect on that. But can we do that? OH FUCKING NO.
First comes lambasting the president on civil rights. Then comes the screaming about how we are going to attack Syria. Then comes the list of things that Obama does that King would never agree with*. Finally comes the argument how any law, activism, or protection for discriminated against minorities actually prevents equality.
Now, I think its great to have strong opinions and I think it is great to work towards change. I think its great to hold the president accountable. But I didn’t make an argument or position on ANY of those things. If your strongly held opinion prevents you from seeing ANY OTHER ISSUE AT ALL than you should take a step back and look at what it is doing to your mind.
You cannot take a moment to reflect on how far race relations have come, and how far we still need to go because you are upset at Syria? WHAT?
You cannot appreciate the fact that in 50 years we went from having African Americans legally considered second class citizens to having an African American President because King would have had disagreements with him? I didn’t say anything nice about Obama at all, other than the fact he was elected!
As for the comments about race, I suppose that they were at least on target, no matter how completely wrong they were.
The point is that if you cannot see an issue or a person as anything other than the thing that upsets you most, you are not seeing clearly. You are blinded by rage to a point where you cannot function to actually change the thing that needs changing. This goes for politicians as well as co-workers, family, and spouses. Everything cannot be about everything all the time.
If you cannot find something good because there is something else that is rotten, you are going to have a shitty life.
*I always love how white people in 2013 know exactly what Martin Luther King would think about everything.
