Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Let's get rid of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I'm not sure I like Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Don't get me wrong, he was a great guy. And he did a lot of good in the world. But, I'm not sure it's a good thing to have a federal holiday for his birthday. For several reasons.

I'm sure he saw his work as more important than himself. If we're going to celebrate him, doesn't it make more sense to celebrate the anniversary of something he did or accomplished, rather than his birthday? (And especially rather than the third Monday in January, which is approximately his birthday?)

And honestly, I'm not sure we should celebrate him when we don't celebrate other people who also did a lot of good in the world. We don't have a federal holiday for Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Ghandhi, or Mother Theresa.

If you want to disqualify those last 5 because they made the world a better place but were foreigners, then maybe we ought to talk about the fact that while we have no federal holidays that honor women, American Indians, Latinos, Asians, or members of any minority, we do have one for Christopher Columbus, who was both a foreigner and a cruel and violent man. Also, he didn't discover America and wasn't unique in his opinion that the Earth is round. (I'm not wild about the lies that surround Thanksgiving either, but I like the idea of a day of giving thanks. And if you take out the happy friendly pilgrims & Indians and just give thanks, I'm down with that. But there's not really any part of Columbus Day worth keeping.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. did a lot of good work. Instead of celebrating him and his work, I think he'd want us to celebrate civil rights. I think he'd want us to remember the race relations problems our country used to have, and to take a moment to be grateful for the fact that a lot of them have improved. And then I think he'd want us to look at the race relations problems our country still has. And I think he'd want us to look at all the groups of people in our country who are still fighting for equal rights, even when those groups aren't defined by race. And I think he'd want us to sit down together and figure out what we plan to do about that.

And once we've solved those problems, I think he'd want us to look at all the other social problems we have. Like the fact that a lot of people in our country don't have access to affordable healthcare. Like the fact that there are people in our country living on the streets. Like the fact that our infant mortality rate is almost three times higher than Singapore's. Like the fact that the infant mortality rate for black Americans is almost three times higher than the infant mortality rate for white Americans. Like the fact that we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world. Like the fact that we don't have enough schools, and a lot of the schools we do have are in bad need of repairs. Like the fact that our prison system is overcrowded and overburdened. Like the fact that a disproportionate number of the people in our prison system are black or mentally ill. And I think he'd want us to sit down together and figure out what we plan to do about that. Because that was his thing.

Let's replace Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with Civil Rights Day. (New Hampshire kind of already does this.) Or even better, Let's Fix Shit Day. (We'll need to rename that one so it can be celebrated in elementary schools.)

And if we are going to add one of those days and still celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let's make it a public holiday, but not a government holiday. If for no other reason than the fact that today, in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, my city drastically reduced the public transit service -- making it harder for poor people to get to work.

Discuss, people.

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