Thanks for the Day Off, Martin...

Martin Luther King Day sucks.

When I was in elementary school, every year we watched the same video about him. How he couldn't play with a white friend when he was little. About how he became a preacher. About how he stood up to the man non-violently, got arrested time and time again, and won a victory paramount to Ghandi's. And about how he was killed by a stupid little three-named cracker just because. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had it memorized.

I found out when I was in college was a player he was, and was actively nauseated. But if we can forgive Jefferson, we can forgive King and arguaby lesser offense. Nevertheless, I am weary of the noise about him, and especially about his "day".

The Examiner yesterday had an editorial about how MLK day should be a "day on," instead of a "day off." I didn't read it. I've heard that tune as many times as I heard "killing the man who said 'Love your enemies'" in elementary school. It's the same old routine every year: We mention the guy in passing and proceed to talk about his "legacy" and whether there's been "enough" "progress" since he died, and what "he would have done" had he not. I've yet to hear anything truly meaningful arouse from these. They've become ritual, an act of contrition: Bless us Martin, for we have thought insufficiently about what it means to be Black in America.

Jeff Goldstein tries to dismiss race, and raises a hydra of nonsense. What it "means" is whatever we decide it means, except we haven't decided. Unless we have.

I'm a pasty white honky with a nasal tinge to my voice. I haven't the foggiest notion of what it means to be Black in America, and I don't care either. As long as it means that you can vote and own property and sue and raise your voice like everybody else, I'm uninterested. I don't feel and particular obligation to help them, any more than I would help any other person. Whatever's "wrong" with the "black community" (euphemisms are fun!), I'm going to leave for that community to sort out for itself.

To my mind, Black Americans are in a position roughly analogous to Irish Americans, who were the original unwanted immigrant group, who also grabbed for political power as a way out of their troubles, and who also grew economically more slowly than did other groups that "came up" around their time. That's sad, but it also means that they too will have their day in the sun, to the extent that they haven't already. And it will happen from their own labor and their own freedoms, regardless of what MLK would have said or done, and regardless of what the Man thinks about it.

And if such be true, then I thank the man for his labors, and the day off.