Photo by Sara B. Healy
NOTE TO READERS: Today I am reversing my usual posting schedule. As you will realize when you read this post, it is NOT a Picture Story Challenge. I felt the need to write this and so I did. That’s what’s so great about blogging; you get to chose what you write. On Thursday, I will post a Picture Story Challenge.
Martin Luther King’s Birthday
Today in the US, we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday. When I think of Martin Luther King, I think of freedom and when I think of freedom, I see birds in flight.
Let me explain. For me, there’s something glorious about watching birds fly; the way they stretch their wings and navigate the currents of the wind makes me sigh with wonder. They always seem so free.
Birds were given the freedom of flight so they can lift themselves high above the dangers below. Flight can mean life or death.
For birds, their freedom of flight is instinctual; they don’t get to choose whether or not to fly. They do it because it’s their lifesaving gift.
Freedom Choice
Humans were given many gifts. In my opinion, the greatest one is the freedom of choice. It separates us from other animals and allows us to choose the actions and decisions we make in our lives.
Unfortunately, along with choice, we also have prejudice. Prejudice is part of our instinctual human nature. We, like birds and other animals, naturally fear what we don’t understand or what is different than we are.
This is why I believe we were given choice. Through choice, we can question our prejudice and then choose how we will respond to it. Therefore:
We can choose to fear people who look or act differently than we do OR we can choose to embrace their uniqueness.
We can choose to fight people who believe differently than we do OR we can choose to acknowledge the universal need people have to believe in something beyond them.
Make a Choice
To make a choice to face our prejudices is not always easy. As Martin Luther King showed, there are consequences to fighting prejudice, but we do have the choice.
Today, as we think about Martin Luther King, consider your own freedom of choice and how you can use it to fight the prejudices in your life.
You have the lifesaving gift of choice. Use it wisely.
What about you?
How do you use your freedom of choice in dealing with prejudice?
How do you recognize your own prejudices?
Have you ever been in a situation where someone was prejudiced against you? If so how did you handle it?
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I remember some guy at a party calling me “that fluffy blonde,” and not in a nice way. I felt hurt. I went out of my way to ignore him the rest of the night. He didn’t even know me! That was years and years ago when I was not as evolved as I am now.
Jannie Funster´s last blog ..Am I The Only One…?
Sorry that you had that happen, Jannie. He lost out on getting to know a fabulous person.
Sara, your post is so true. Freedom of choice is a wonderful and powerful gift.
There are so many snap judgements made by people and I think we can all be guilty of that at times. I remind myself to look past the obvious and take people as I get to know them. Assumptions alone can be prejudicial.
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How great that you are honoring Martin Luther King today. What a healing thing to do. I am astounded how people are pouring their hearts out and wallets to help the people of Haiti. MLK would be proud.
Prejudice is all about fear being passed down from generation to generation. I once heard someone say if you don’t have African American friends, why not? One can insert any race. Bottom line we’re all more a like than not. We’re all one!
Sara, your writing is absolutely beautiful here. Thank you for choosing to write this today. For me, it’s all come down to this question: How do you recognize your own prejudices? As you so eloquently say, “Prejudice is part of our instinctual human nature.” When I stop denying it, look it in the face, dialogue with it, then I can see that the opposite is true too. We are all prejudiced, and we are all NOT prejudiced. And like Tess says, in that, and everything else, we are more alike than different, and we create a space to go forward.
Patty – Why Not Start Now?´s last blog ..Meaning Mondays: The Mask Edition
Beautiful post. I definitely think it’s fantastic to remember everything that Martin Luther King Jr. stood for and I totally respect everyone who does remember and tries to value what he did.
I am not a prejudiced person at all. I grew up in a family who taught me to be loving and accepting to everyone and everything no matter who or what they were. It doesn’t matter what color or religion we are – we are all people and we should all respect each other even if we do not agree with each other all the time. I always live by this and I always treat others as I want to be treated.
I have a lot of good friends who are other races and religions than me even though I grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic background. Even my husband is not religious – he is only spiritual. Our very good friend is from India. The school I work in has a very large population of African American students. I love them all and I do not differentiate them by their race any more than I would differentiate them by sex or eye color. We are all people.
Great work Sara. And the photo of the bird is outstanding! I haven’t seen a lot of prejudice towards myself and I try to keep an open mind. There are certain races that I feel wary about when I’m out and about on the streets. It has a lot to do with hearing too much negativity from the media and from me not having a lot of experience having them in my life. As you say, it has to do with the not knowing.
Davina´s last blog ..I Find Stillness
Great post! I did one inspired by MLK, also.
One of my favorite quotes is by Maya Angelou that goes, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” I didn’t grow up being aware of prejudice but through education, I learned about prejudice against women and against non-Caucasian women, two things that I am and have rooted deeply in my identity. I have worked my entire adult life living this quote by Maya, by fighting prejudice against things that I identify with (woman, minority) and by treating others equally. It’s a big subject and I thank you for writing beautiful words about it.
Great post Sara. I’m teaching an International Food & Culture class and I show the change in our perceptions of different cultures. I show a picture of a cream of vegetable soup to show the old concept of America being a melting pot; not a very pretty picture. I use a picture of a chef salad to show the new concept. The new concept shows how each culture is unique and has tastes and colors for us to enjoy separately that enhances the salad.
@ Jannie — Given that I’m getting older and my hair is no longer as fluffy as it used to be, I don’t know if I’d mind being called “that fluffy brunette!” On the other hand, your comment made me wonder why people were more prejudiced against blonde hair than black, brunette or red hair. I really didn’t know!
So, I did some research, learned a lot about blonde hair and found out that our history has a lot to do with myth:~)
@ Talon — You are always so nice…on behalf of Jannie, I thank you!
It is so true what you said about assumptions and snap judgments. As humans, we do tend to fear what we don’t know or understand, which can lead us to react without knowledge — not unlike herd animals. I think this is also why people will do things in a GROUP that they would never do as an individual. I like your idea of reminding ourselves take it one person at a time and question our assumptions for accuracy:~)
@ Tess — You said it so well that it deserves repeating….”Bottom line we’re all more a like than not. We’re all one!” Thanks:~)
@ Patty — I loved how you thought through this. I loved your words, “When I stop denying it, look it in the face, dialogue with it, then I can see that the opposite is true too. We are all prejudiced, and we are all NOT prejudiced.”We get to choose what we will believe and how we will deal with our instinctive natures, just like you did:~)
@ Caity — I envy how you grew up and your family’s values. It goes to show that prejudice, like many other bad things in this world, can be stopped when families teach the value of acceptance, compassion and open-mindedness:~)
@ Davina — Thanks for your words about the photo — it’s a picture a pelican and “his mouth can hold more than his belly can:~)
Sometimes it’s good to be careful and trust your intuition. On the other hand, fear often happens, like you said, because of media coverage and what we don’t know about a race or a group of people. I think education and learning about people as individuals helps us see the “group” in a different light. I appreciate your honesty and openness, Davina:~)
@ Belinda — I love that quote!!! So you wrote a post on MLK too? Well, I believe there can never be too many on this subject. I’ll have to visit your site and read your post:~)
It’s interesting that you were not aware of prejudice growing up, but learned about it later. What I love is that once you learned about it, you made a choice about how you would deal with it. You chose to live Maya’s quote by finding how we are alike, rather than only seeing how we are different. That makes me smile:~)
@ JC I like this idea of all us being a chef salad; instead of blending in, we show our colors and cultures with pride:~)
I’m with everyone here, Sara, when I say that I appreciate this post. I think I can see why you had to write it. It’s certainly a message that I often need to be reminded of.
How do you use your freedom of choice in dealing with prejudice? By dealing with my own prejudice first and foremost. I suspect that I’m no better or worse than anyone else when it comes to this thorny issue, so I always need to be on the lookout so that my prejudice doesn’t spill over onto others around me.
How do you recognize your own prejudices? Whenever I think in terms of “us” versus “them”, then I know I’m being prejudiced. A good way to then deal with it is then trying to get to know that person or thing that I’m being inwardly prejudiced about. There’s nothing like a little familiarity with those you would previously have scorned to get your heart opening up a little more!
Have you ever been in a situation where someone was prejudiced against you? If so how did you handle it?
I suspect that I have been in too many to name, but nothing that I can prove beyond, “It made me feel horrible.” People are often not so overt about their prejudice any more. They usually convey it (knowingly and unknowingly) through what they say and body language. For example, when I’m with my wife or a couple of friends and we meet somebody for the first time, 9 times out of 10 this new person will look at anyone BUT me. Now, this may simply be hypersensitivity about my looks on my part, and they may simply be trying to be polite by not staring, but it happens far too often for me to be comfortable with it. As for how I handle it, inwardly I don’t, but outwardly I am warm and polite, and make an effort so that they’ll feel welcome. This, however, is why I tend to find most social situations awkward.
Tony Single´s last blog ..Fearful Asymmetry
Hi Sara! What a great subject to post on – prejudice – whoa – I think everybody side steps that, and also has trouble reconciling with prejudices of their own that may crop up from time to time. It is sometimes all too easy to be influenced by others as well – our family, people we work with or spend a lot of time with.
I don’t know if it was prejudice or what, but I was made fun of a lot as a child because I was adopted. The adult experience (some 30 yrs ago) involved being shunned, avoided and ostracized by “friends” who were well-meaning Christians considering me a pagan witch because I read books outside their “niche” , shall we say. There was really nothing I could do about it because their fervor was so intensely against me. Suddenly I’m being judged and condemned, not on what kind of person I am, but the books I read? Whatever.
@ Tony — I like what you said about “us” versus “them” as it usually a pretty good way to judge prejudice, especially if the “us” comes with either fear or anger. I also agree that getting to know a person can chase away prejudices of all kinds.
I’m not going to tell you that people will not judge you by your appearance. It happens and it’s happened to me. I often feel ugly and very nervous when meeting new people. While some of the reactions may be prejudice, I believe a lot of it IS my hypersensitivity, which makes people uncomfortable.
Let me give you an different example. I knew a man who wasn’t attractive and in addition had scars on his face from some accident. Yet, he was extremely popular. I watched him to see how he did this.
It seems his secret was he ignored the discomfort that people showed him at first meeting. Instead, he totally focused on the other person by asking questions about their lives, jobs, and children, etc. Eventually, the people he was talking to forgot all about the scars on his face because they were too busy talking about themselves to notice anymore:~) Now, I can’t say I can do this, but it is a good reminder for me when I feeling unattractive and sensitive about it. Take this for what its worth:~)
@ SuZen — Thanks for sharing your story. I smiled because I always hoped I was adopted:~) I didn’t exactly FIT my family and they were never too sure what to do with me. Seriously, prejudice can come about from any perceived “difference” about a person. It’s sad, but true. Your story about being judged by what you read and being considered a pagan witch has such historical roots that it’s seems almost unbelievable. History repeats itself too often, but especially when we put our group beliefs before acknowledging individuality.
I believe until we can look at someone who is different than we are or believes differently than we do and see what is similar between us, we are destined to choose prejudice. It’s like Tess and Belinda said in their posts….we are more alike than different. Recognizing this is a choice we have to learn to make:~)
Hi Sara .. choice – yes .. the brain thought it had subscribed to a number of blogs – yours too .. such is life – decisions made or not!! Now I am subscribed – so it’ll be good to be here, more often.
Thanks – see you more often!
Hilary Melton-Butcher
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@ Hilary — I am so glad that you subscribed to my site. A Sharing Connection always enjoys people like you:~)