1/19/04

Today is Martin Luther King day. I fully appreciate the significance that his memory has on the black community and the black community should be proud.

Martin Luther King was an African-American and he spoke about many black issues, but most of all he was a civil rights leader. His teachings can be applied to any group of people, blacks, latinos, Arabs, Asians, gays, lesbians, disabled Americans and many more groups. The most basic factor is that regardless of what group one belongs to is that we are all people and members of the human race regardless of the group that a person belongs too.

Discrimination in any form against any human being is disgusting. Discrimination can also take many forms from outright denial of a job to a well disguised obstacle. The heart of bigotry is the urge to discriminate against a person that is different in any way. The difference can take the form of a difference in skin color such as the difference between black and white people or it can be a subtle difference in the way 2 people walk or it can be the perceived difference in a person‘s wealth.

People are not born bigots, it is a learned quality. The evil that we must fight is the evil of bigotry. I am an American and America is made up of many smaller minority groups. Each of the groups have been the subject of discrimination & jokes. We have all heard them; Polish people are stupid, the damn Italians and the Mob or the damn Irish and more. The only true native Americans are the Indians and the rest of us can trace our ancestral roots to another place in the world.

American society is made up of many smaller groups. Some of those groups are Polish, Black, Latino conservative, liberal, Gay, Upper Class, lower Class etc. and each of us can belong to several groups. For instance white Conservative or Black Liberal. Americans like to group people, it is our nature.

I believe that the bottom line sum is that we are all American and regardless of any group affiliation NO American should be discriminated and that was the message of Martin Luther King. The task at hand is to promote healing between the groups; that is the strength of American society.

William F. Egerter