Dear Dr. King
Everyone remembers the letter. Most don't remember why you were in jail in the first place...
Writing letters to the dead... Clearly losing it. Regardless, here goes.
Dr. King, it's been over 40 years since the fateful day you were murdered. In 1986, Ronald Reagan (oh, the irony) signed the bill to make your namesake into a holiday, and since then we've had the 3rd Monday in January off. There are three issues that I have with your holiday, never to take anything away from you. The first is the fact that your holiday is watered-down. Everywhere I look, instead of reverence, thoughts of action and new levels of racial equality, I see commercials for McDonalds, jokes on Twitter, and vapid school assemblies about your name. The 'I Have a Dream' and 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' are played, posted and quoted everywhere. It's not that the attention isn't deserved, it's that the holiday is a misdirected attempt at respect that's ended up as a day off for most people. We supplement that day with ceremonial (more so than sincere) reverence so that people don't think we're 'anti-MLK' or the one kid in the class who never memorized your speeches.
The second issue with your holiday is that it more or less overshadows every other black person ever associated with any type of freedom-fighting or liberal agenda. Guys like John Lewis (#shoutout to Sojourn to the Past; no, seriously) Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Medgar Evars, Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton who all helped drive the Civil Rights movement that you are crowned king of, all get reduced to random names in a history book. Dr. King, with this holiday, your namesake has taken on a Messiah-like aura to it. You're seen as THE Civil Rights hero, rather than A Civil Rights hero. My forefathers will probably balk at this, but I don't think one person should be above a movement, especially when that movement is for an entire race. Is it your fault that you were assassinated and cast as a martyr? Probably not. That said, I don't think you'd be that hyped to have this day if you were still alive.
My last issue is the fact that literally minutes after MLK Day is over, we all pretty much just go back to living, rather than take any lessons from today. Your holiday feels like New Year's Eve all over again, with people coming up with aspirations they won't or can't hold up. Today, your name is to black people what Gasundheit is to a sneeze. For the minute, the saying and the feeling will suffice, but after the moment has passed, we don't remember the sentiment until the next time we sneeze. Dr. King, I linked the Boondocks video for the simple reason that before you died, you were telling everyone else the truth about racism. In that video, you're telling US the truth about our own race, which is ironic. Maybe it's that black people back then had enough KOS (knowledge of self) to know what was good for us. Nowadays it takes a holiday for us to remember. I can't wait till February when I get my yearly dose of Black History...
#ihaveadream that this really happened...
