I Can Only Try To Imagine

[bloodyrosemccoy]

This is fascinating. Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did. Or, at least, I don't--I hear it, but have trouble getting my dumb-white-kid head around it. Gotta keep reading about it to drill it in there.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am, y'know, a dumb white kid from Utah who was born a couple decades after the big Civil Rights Movement and assumed in history class that after MLK, Jr. did his thing racism was over (god dammit, reality, you are a cruel master sometimes), so I really have no IDEA how to parse anecdotes like that. My reaction is something like "Wait, if you were black you could get your ass kicked to death for having an awkward door-holding moment? REALLY? THAT IS A SUPER DUMB REASON TO MURDER SOMEONE." But I hear enough stories that I certainly can't dismiss them. And then I think about how rotten that must be to have to watch your every move like that, and I hope that things are getting better and I try to make them better.

The other amazing link I forgot to share was to this. Just ... damn. If sitting on a bus could be that fraught I would collapse from stress. A society that institutionalizes that stress needs serious changing.