When the honoring is really patronizing

Real change requires risk and going against the status quo. It comes with discomfort and sometimes confrontation.

I do not attend my hometown MLK Day event because it is so shallow that I am uncomfortable. Dr. King is merely quoted and characterized. He is “peaceful” and “non-threatening” and digestible.  Furthering racial & economic justice means more than subscribing to one or two of MLK’s feel-good quotes. It is not tolerance. It is accepting that injustice is something we all participate in and must consciously do something to change.

I returned to an 

MLK day tradition and chose to literally be the minority, to listen to poetic words about the human condition of 'other' and reset my personal clock for work as a conscientious resister of systematic injustice.

Just like a one day scared straight incarnation I knew it was not forever, but it was a visceral informative touchpoint that will inform my being WITH others.