I teach a group of delinquent juveniles. In one of my grup sessions, we talked about values. We talked about what we would do if someone in the grocery store violated one of my boundaries like pushing my cart or ramming me with their cart. I told the kids that I would not beat the crap out of a person for ramming my cart in the grocery store but I would let them know how rude, unappreciated and disrespectful it was. In my mind, a person who would do that obviously has some serious problems. It's not worth upsetting myself over or even starting a fight. When I told my kids that, they laughed at me and told me that only white people do this. I was puzzled. I said, "you're telling me that only white people believe in the integrity and being the better person and choosing a nonviolent way of handling their problems?" Of course they all said yes.
I was immediately brought back to a segment I saw on PBS or something with Barrack OBama being interviewed. He is the bi-racial Senator form Illinois who may run for president of the US. In his interview, he said that when he was a young man in his adolescence he struggled with trying to figure out who he was (like any adolescent). He said that as he grew older, he realized that honesty, integrity, and basic decent human values were not "WHITE" valeus but were human values. I thought that that was so profound. I wondered what it is in our society that has not changed over the last 35 years or so that would make Barrack Obama feel the same way in his adolescence that my youth are exerienceing today? Is it that we don't teach our children right?
Mr. Obama's mother tried to instill those values in her son yet it took a very long time for him to understand the meaning behind what she was trying to say. I am black. I don't think that these are white values. I think that these are human values. I have the church to help me understand that. I prefer to think that I feel this way about values because that is what is taught in scripture. If most people saw me, they would assume I get those values from a "WHITE" church. What is interesting is that the church has more non white members than white members at this point. Why is it that black kids associate these values with white people? Is it because we have been oppressed for generations? In our quest to be equal, why do we continue to separate ourselves by refusing to emulate basic human values? Why do we continue to perpetuate the negative stereotypes associated wiht our race? How much is society responsible for and how much are we responsible for? Hwere do we draw the lines? Yes, we have been oppressed for hundreds of years, but at what point do we decide not to be oppressed anymore and teach values, promote education, teach our children right?
The most interesting thing to me is that these kids would probably praise Martin Luther King Jr. up and down but it seems to me that they missed the meaning behind his message. He was an advocate for nonviolence even when his boundaries and values were violated. The first solution that came to these juveniles minds' were violent means of enforcing their boundaries. These kids missed the meaning behind the message just as Senator Obama missed the meaning behind his mom's message several years ago.