Diversity Event

Thursday night I went to the MLK Legacy Series talk given by Michael Eric Dyson.  He is a Baptist preacher so when he first came out he was very energetic to say the least and he seemed very comfortable talking to us.  It made me feel very comfortable and excited to hear what he had to say.  He started off saying basically everyone used to be a racist because if you talked about race you were a racist.  I was a little thrown off by that but it has always been a big issue especially since when our parents and our grandparents were younger.  He also said MLK Jr. said racism is wrong.  Obviously we know that he was strongly against racism. That’s what he fought so hard to get rid of; to get people passionate to step up for themselves and finally create equality.

He also mentioned the black community stepping up and becoming just like one of us.  When Jackie Robinson (the first black ball player in the major league of baseball) joined the baseball world that was a huge step up for the African American community.  He was there to show people that they can do what they set their mind to; to be anything they want to be.  That strongly helped in the some of the major steps for the African American community.  In our lifetime and in our parent’s lifetimes there have been many major steps, and there have also been many firsts that have been achieved, and barriers broken.

He also mentioned something that I had never heard of or even thought of before.  When he was talking about slavery he said slavery had never been as viscous until Christianity got involved.  Christianity was a strong faith to have among many slave owners and of course going to church and reading the Bible had been very important to them.  I don’t know word for word what it says in the Bible but he mentioned something about those who do wrong should be punished and at least in the old testament it was okay to have slaves and or servants.  Since slave owners had a strong Christian faith a lot of them could be like people we would now look up to such as lawyers, teachers, and doctors.  You just wouldn’t be able to tell back then because it was just the normal thing to be able to have slaves.  Going to this presentation was an eye opener for me in a way and I’m very glad I was able to hear what he had said about MLK Jr. and slavery because some things I had never even known.