Martin Luther King Jr. Day

At Goshen College, MLK day—a celebration of the courage and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr. toward justice and American race-equality—is trumpeted with speakers, activities, and numerous opportunities for the campus and the community to get involved. The visiting author, Dana Johnson, and speaker, Dr. Wilburt Smith (who is also, incidentally, an author, film producer, board member for the community colleges of Southern California, and director of an insurance agency) of the 2012-2013 school year both hail from sunny California and are both key figures in American race relations. They each spoke at Monday’s opening convocation preceded by a Goshen College choral group, The Parables, who sang a powerful, repetitive refrain that asked over and over again: would you harbor a stranger, a foreigner, a felon? Dana Johnson, the first speaker, then read a passage from her novel, Elsewhere, California about an African-American middle school student moving from inner-city Los Angeles to the suburbs, with novel with some autobiographical influences. Dr. Wilburt Smith then shared about his recent film, Hole in the Head, and his friendship with Vertus Hardimon, a man who, as a child, had been the victim of radiation experimentation. In the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., Hardiman’s story was a story of forgiveness and redemption. As Hardiman said to his friend Dr. Smith, who was recording and publishing his story, “I think [God] wanted me to live, to tell the story. I think He wanted it told to show the magnitude of His mercy.”

As college students, as contributing members of a larger community, and as citizens of nation that has known the great chasm of racial hatred and the painful reparative process of forgiveness and reconciliation, all of us here at Goshen College were blessed by the powerful stories of Dana Johnson and Wilburt Smith. Their stories moved me to tears, to laughter, and to a renewed sense of the power of forgiveness and grace. When, during the trailer for Smith’s, A Hole in the Head, many members of the audience—myself included—turned away from the sight of Hardiman’s painful disfiguration (he literally had a large hole in his head), Smith admonished us for our insensitivity. “Do not look away,” Smith rebuked, and I was sorry that I had. I was reminded that in order to begin the process of healing, I must look injustice full in the face. I must take ownership for wrong, share in the pain of the oppressed, and believe in the redemptive power of grace. Like Hardiman, I must be attentive to blessing: “I can see, I can hear, I was raised in my right mind this morning. That’s a blessing. That’s three blessings.” After seeing and hearing a brief piece of his story, I would like to add to his list: today I have witnessed the miracle of forgiveness, that’s four blessings.

 Both Johnson and Hardiman’s stories were a good reminder of—in my own role as an emerging teacher—the ways that I must be sensitive to racial differences in current and future classrooms. Some teacher’s tout “color-blindness,” as an effective means to equalize racial differences within the classroom, but I would argue that color-blindness is merely another tool for denial. Rather, I think teachers must promote “color and difference appreciation.” White students and black students often come from different cultural norms, and within each group are various subgroups with similarly different values and expectations. As a teacher, I want to model this value for color and difference-appreciation and to encourage my students to do the same, honoring their differences with respect, sensitivity, and, naturally, appreciation. Furthermore, I want my students to remember; to remember the dark emptiness of the oppressor and to known the bleak fear of the victim’s pain. Most of all, I want my students to be moved—to be really moved—by the power of forgiveness and to know that while grace doesn’t erase all wounds, it can heal them. Finally, I want students in my classrooms to look at a scarred, broken nation 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement and to see the way it continues to stumble haltingly along… to fall. I hope most of all that I equip my students to get up and stumble along with it, lending here an arm, there a shoulder… and knowing that their imperfect help, however small or seemingly insignificant, is everything: it is a blessing.