Is It Wrong To Be A Black Person?

[-= JR =-]

when i was in the 10th grade, they had just made Martin Luther Kings birthday a holiday a couple years before. When this day came my friend, in the true spirit of celebration and remembrance went to school with his face and arms painted black.

The teachers, vice principal, principal and even the school board thought it was the most offensive thing they had ever seen, demanded an apology to the school/students and parents and also suspended him.

was he wrong?
:unsure:

[Winetalk.com]

yes, he was wrong

[Almighty Colin]

Damn - I missed my chance to go as MLK for Halloween.

[LadyLaw]

Dear JR:

Didn't the actor Ted Danson get himself in a similar state of trouble when he dressed in blackface and went to a party with Whoppie Goldberg?? I remember everyone was pissed at him over it....

I personally wouldn't get worked up over the student incident, but schools are freaky places full of freaky uptight "educators".....they should have been thanking their stars the kid didn't come to school with an Uzi and an AK47 spraydown to show solidarity with the angst of the inner city black male...

[Dianna Vesta]

I think they misunderstood his intentions.

I have mixed feelings about MLK. On one hand I think he was brave and great man. I honor him for that and hate prejudice people. When I think about our history of slavery and how they treated women it makes me sick inside. How could they have treated people that way?

Then again MLK was a womanizer, cheater and some say a serious asshole. There's always two sides to every coin.

[Almighty Colin]

Dianna, you bring up some interesting points.

Society has a way of celebrating the greatness of individuals - yet hardly ever do we forget that they were human and had other faults. This has really seemed to accelerate in more recent times with the rise of the press and literacy.

On a practical level, I think that when we memoralize someone's life they become a symbol of a particular quality and the celebration of that person's achievements helps to instill that attitude in society as a whole. If you wish for a little less Orwellian/Skinnerian language, we can say it reminds us of the qualities that we wish to become a part of us.

People have protested the celebration of Columbus' birthday, Martin Luther King's birthday,
even Thomas Jefferson's birthday. One can argue all they wish against the merits of celebrating any of these individuals but it is not the individual that is important but the key idea they represent. In Christopher Columbus' case for example, one can argue against all the ills that he brought the new world both on a personal and in an introductory way. People argue that since Columbus wasn't truly the first person to sail across the Atlantic there is no point in celebrating his life. Why do we celebrate Columbus' life? The answer is simple. Columbus is our chosen symbol for the beginning of migration to the Americas that changed the entire world in an enormous way. Martin Luther King is also symbolic of major changes in American society and stands as an excellent symbol for minority rights - simple rights now taken for granted like being able to stay in a hotel.

None of the people whose lives we celebrate are 100% responsible for the changes we associate with them and in fact they usually are not any more than a small percentage - but for the most part - they probably each stand as the best symbol for the qualities and concepts we
wish to celebrate.

[Peaches]

I think suspending him was silly. Sitting down and talking to him probably would have accomplished a lot more :wacko:

I went to a private school in FL and we had 3 black people in our school - 2 guys and a girl. One of the guys won Homecoming King and came dressed on costume day (it was an Episcopalian school - we celebrated Mardi Gras and had a week or two of "celebrations" :) ) as a KKK member. This was back in the mid 70's where everyone wasn't so PC....

We knew the black kids were black, but we didn't care - they didn't try to claim they were"different" so they never got treated differently.