everyone's a little bit racist

The title of this blog refers to a song from Avenue Q. It's funny and meant to play on every one's racist guilt that lies beneath the surface. However, it turns out that some people are more than a little bit racist. I was appalled and sickened when I went on to check Facebook this morning and saw that my 18 year old cousin had posted: "what did MLK ever do for me? nothing so screw him. happy James Earl Ray day." What makes it worse is that a bunch of his friends commented with similar thoughts and 15 people liked it! A good friend of our family commented on how inappropriate that post was and told him that him and his friends would never amount to half of the man that MLK was. I agreed with her and posted that comments like that make my stomach turn. One of his friends commented after me "you sure love niggers".

Right now I'm disgusted with all of this. It's hard to believe that someone could be so racist. It's true, my cousin will never be the half the man that MLK was. I will always be grateful to the man who had the bravery and eloquence to lead a movement that changed the world. I'm grateful that I had the freedom to choose my friends when I went to school, regardless of their skin color. I realize that society has a long way to go, but we've made progress - would we have gotten this far without MLK?