In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday today, I have read a lot of great stories, tributes and messages of hope. Dr. King continues to inspire and be a hero to many in the world today 40 years after his passing. However, it took reading this post by John Saddington to inspire me to share my story.
My story doesn’t start off very neat or encouraging. In my childhood I always had a prejudice against Dr. King. First of all, he was a black man trying to bring attention to black people and seemingly blaming the white man for the woes of being black and underprivileged. I was put off by that activism and finger pointing. You see, I am an adopted Japanese-American. I was born in Japan and brought to Sacramento, CA at the age of 4. I grew up in suburb named Rio Linda, which was a rural, farming & ranch community and almost exclusively white. It neighbored an urban, crime-infested, predominantly black community named Del Paso Heights. From Kindergarten through high school, I can only remember one African-American teacher, and that was my first grade teacher. However, she never seemed black to me. She was black in appearance, but in my mind she was no different than any other white person in my neighborhood. She definitely didn’t fit the stereotype of what I saw in Del Paso Heights--small, unkept house with a Cadillac Coupe De Ville in the driveway and a men dressed like pimps and women dressed like they were going to church on Sunday every day of the week. Sadly, this is my frame of reference. Culture was non-existent and everything was either white or black.
Interestingly enough, there were a few African-American kids in my schools and I was friends with all of them. However, as was the case with my first grade teacher, the African-American kids were seemingly white…they dressed like me, talked like me, enjoyed the same cafeteria food as me. I denied them their culture and they didn’t present their culture. Through all of this, I was continually the butt of Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese (etc.) jokes and remember times when I was in fights just because I looked different than the white kids. Rather than standup for myself and those that didn’t look white, I tried harder and harder to be white. I deeply wanted to be accepted as white, even wishing that somehow my eyes could become more round, my skin could become lighter and my hair could be changed from any color other than jet black. As stupid as this is going to sound, I remember sitting on the grass in my physical education class as a high school freshman hearing two white kids sitting next to me using the N-word and talking about how they were driving out a black family in the community through their participation in a KKK cross burning in the black family’s front yard that week. I was appalled and disgusted by what I heard, yet remained silent and indifferent to the whole thing because I wanted to fit in as white.
My parents perpetuated all of the negative stereotypes and tried to teach me racial hatred. Interesting as my adoptive parents were a bi-racial couple--my dad was white and mom was Japanese--yet they were racists. There hate was so deep that even as I graduated high school and entered the workforce while being a part-time college student, my mom told me one day that if I ever brought home a black a girl she would disown me.
You see, everything around me influenced me to be prejudiced and filled with hatred and anger towards those that were not white. While I never really learned how to hate others for the color of their skin, I did learn to be prejudiced against the stereotypical black person if they lived in the wrong place, used the wrong language, or dressed the wrong way. Even my memories of tv shows back then like Sanford & Son helped perpetuate my way of thinking. For me, it wasn’t the color of one’s skin, but rather aspects of culture that caused the negative thoughts and prejudices. Everything was viewed and compared to my white, rural, suburban perspective. It doesn’t excuse my pseudo-racism however.
As you can imagine, I have had a lot of experiences and influences that have caused me to be conflicted or never really being fully accepted in a particular group. I’ve always been a marginalized person because I am complicated and see things differently than many others. Even in my view of Dr. King, it’s like I’m on the outside looking in. I was not one of those school kids that was drawn to Dr King’s message of empowerment or hope--I actually viewed it in a negative and judgmental light growing up. Not only could I care less about his words, I didn’t give him much respect because he was also a minister. Back then in my narrow world, God did not exist. Therefore, hearing Scriptures or references to Biblical oppression turned me off.
Fast forward to the year 2010 and I think anyone that knows me or hears me speak can realize that much of King’s message, philosophy, love and call to abolish racism resonate within my vocabulary. It is only in recent years that I’ve been drawn to learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and realize how much we have in common and how much I can learn from him. To a confused boy growing up in a conflicted world, it was easy to see how his message was for blacks, yet as I hear his words today it is obvious that it is a message for everyone:
- “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
- “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence”
- “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”
- “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”
- “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. “
- “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. “
How can one read the above-quotes and see black or white? Christian or atheist? Dr. King spoke a message of hope and racial reconciliation for all people. It is exactly that platform for which I stand today as a minister of the gospel and human being that I desire so passionately to see embraced within the church today. You see, I’ve been to the other side and it’s a very dark, unhappy place to be. I know what it’s like to experience prejudice against me as well as casting it upon innocent others. While my experience isn’t unique, it is different. It took many years, but the legacy of the greatness of Dr. King’s life has been infused into my being and it is my hope that others in the coming generations will come to know the beauty of Dr. King’s dream and I am humbled to think that in some small way, maybe I am being used to continue shining a light on his legacy. People can and do change. We can rise above our past and our negative environments to be a voice for what is right.
Thank you Dr. King for your steadfastness, compassion and sacrifice in the name of what is just, true and right.
The real question is why wouldn’t you? The church tends to follow patterns that have clearly led to growth and decline over the past 2,000 years. Trends change, people change, cultural influences dictate change…eventually the church changes as well. Unfortunately for the church, we tend to be reactive rather than proactive. It leaves us playing catch up and going through a lot of pain in the interim.
Something so simple has turned into something so divisive. I get it, but I don’t like it! People within Asian-American culture are divided in some aspects and people of the predominant white American culture are divided as well.
