Mesa Legend - ARCHIVES - Vol. 39, Issue 10


Volume 39, Issue 10. Today is .

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Volume 39, Issue 10
February 12, 2002

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Key to future lies in learning from past

\BY Justin Lambright
Mesa Legend

I want to address an issue that was passed to me this morning.

It is, unfortunately, a race issue.

It's not my fault. It's not your fault. It's just a problem—a problem that has been plaguing Americans as long as we've been a country.

Longer than that, actually. Since we were colonies.

Longer than that, even—since man has had the capacity to determine that there was a difference.

It is easier to hate than it is tolerate.

It is easier to point fingers and place the blame on someone else for being different, or thinking you're different than it is say to yourself, "I was wrong."

I've been wrong for 26 years.

Well, most of those 26 years.

I thought that if I fought with my fists against racism, that it would go away.

I thought that if I loved everyone equally, they would return it.

I thought that if I was tolerant, I would be tolerated.

I was wrong.

I hate admitting that.

It's easier to point my finger at everyone who has hated me, who claimed racial issues with me, who failed to tolerate me and say it's their problem. They are narrow-minded.

But they are not narrow-minded, necessarily.

They are human, the one thing I try to remember with brothers and sisters on this rock I fail to allow for.

I spent almost two years on the street. I lived under the Mill Avenue Bridge and lived with a group of non-racist young adults.

Some very violent, misdirected young adults, but non-racist.

I've been pummeled to near-unconsciousness in defense of a stranger of a different race.

And this whole time, until about ten minutes ago, I thought this made me a non-racist.

It doesn't.

It just means I got beat up a lot.

The problem here is that everyone in America, for the most part, still is concerned with race.

It comes in many forms. From "reverse discrimination" to outright racism.

We need to learn to love and accept or hate or whatever we choose to do, not because of the amount of pigmentation in someone's skin, but because of what he or she does, or fails to do, or (to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) by the content of their character.

February is Black History Month.

Is it a coincidence that Valentine's Day also falls in February?

The one day of the year set aside for observing, remembering, and cherishing a fundamental human emotion: Love falls in Black History Month.

Do I imply to start loving black people simply because they are black?

No.

I mean, it isn't about setting one group aside for special treatment.

It isn't about pointing out a few key players in America's long, hard struggle toward unity.

It's about remembering anyone and everyone who has ever thought to themselves, "This isn't right. We need to find a way to change it."

People like Malcolm X, who realized the woes of violent actions.

People like Martin Luther King Jr., who so selflessly put himself in danger on an almost daily basis to unite America.

People like Abraham Lincoln, who took the very first steps in righting the wrongs we committed against the black community for more than 200 years.

People like the Union soldiers of the Civil War, who willingly gave their lives defending complete strangers because they were being wronged.

People like you and me who have a chance to change the future.

Justin Lambright is Opinions Editor for the Mesa Legend and a Journalism major at MCC.