The poverty of spirit causes more racial troubles in America than any poverty in Africa that pushed Kenyans and Ethiopians into a life of poor quiet empty of wealth in San Diego. Flattering words understood to express the missions against separation to young blacks and whites who have fallen in line together do not speak the full truth.
Lasting models that tell the story on the happenings during the civil rights march on Washington, DC keep visitors to the main floor in the Geisel library at UCSD serious about the tough road to an American life with nothing between the races but free agreement that is the high road in America. But, today is a time to take another step.
"I have a dream today," Martin Luther King Jr. said as the civil rights crowds watched him on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
No names were to be denied. Names were only to be awakened.
Hope in the day "children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" still lives in the hearts of most. This is not a time to give up ground.
A blank custom for using the color of peoples to name them, not a colorless one but one without the character of the peoples, tears the kin feeling from the heart. The coldness is seeing American brothers and sisters is trouble.
Each American is a living model of rooted free men and women who do not perish from the earth. At votes and at polls, citizens are counted as typical African Americans or typical caucasian whites. Not as their fathers and mothers who came before. Anglo-Saxon whites and Kenyan and Ethiopian blacks.
Like all of America, San Diego is in trouble. The trouble that comes from poverty of spirit.
The full chorus of voices who will speak at the Let It Flow performance event at UCSD Price Center east ballroom on Thursday, welcomed by soul food, will not yet get a hold on the peoples own character. During Sixth College's annual Black History Month, fostering opportunity for African American students again is a fundamental goal. Preparing them to join the American community as men and women of the people, open to all names taken by color, still is a task not entrusted to the UJIMA Network at the university.
The spoken words "black" and "white" are losing life. The name black often held in check, so there are no regrets. The name white bypassed, spared, even shunned, just to not dig deep into today's true meaning of freely united, or stand unprepared for an off hand disagreement. Fear saps the meaning out of words.
There are no fights. Just a friendly touch.
Martin Luther King Jr. did not give up the color of black Americans skin, or the color of any American's skin. He said, "we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God almighty, we are free at last!"" He proved his civility in the truest words.
A firm colorful examination on truth.
This article is a telling commentary for Post Edition, an every other Wednesday collection of pure citizen voice. The other Wednesdays are days for developing news, called Open Commitments.
To read earlier telling commentary, read
FMLA still lenient on secure family financial status
An immigrant's path depends on safeguards for local opportunity
Filner defies court of public opinion on marijuana
A family's own money gives recovery a push
No going half way on rebuilding district schools
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