(a picture of my little brother Mondrian and his beautiful wife Bridget).Hello Dear Friends & My Beautiful Family-
Today is the day America sets aside to remember the
life of MLK Jr. While my work place sees this as an
"optional" holiday (e.g. I don't have the "option" to
take the day off) I thought I would pay tribute to MLK
Jr. with a personal story of tangible progress.
While many in the media will spend the day reflecting
on (the negative) aspects of where Black Americans
are today: Black men suffer far worse health than any
other racial group in America (due to lack of decent
health care system and access) a high a percentage of
Black men are AWOL as fathers and husbands;
disappearing from our colleges (UC Berkeley's 2004-05
freshman class had only 108 African-Americans out of
3,600 students; a large percentage graduating from
high school with an eighth-grade level of proficiency
in math and reading; in prison, on probation or on
parole (a third of black men in their 20s).
I would like to focus on the positive. I can't speak
on statistics, but I can speak on the change I have seen
in one generation in my own family.
Some of you have known me for 10+ or even 20+ years so you know
the stories. But I think I have only told one or two
of you about my folks and how they met.
My mother and father met the year that MLK Jr. was
assassinated in 1968. My mother a pale Spaniard and my
father a dark African American. They fell in love on
their first date, but nothing was easy after that. My
father's life was threatened for dating my mother
because she was white. My mother was brutally beaten
at party she attended with my father because they
called her an "n" lover and told her to date "her own
race." Didn't matter to my parents though. Through it all
they went with their hearts and had us (Mondrian,
Matisse, and I). My mother used to say "Pumpkin (yes,
that was my nickname)true love is not easy, because life
is not easy, and life is love."
Mondrian and Matisse both married their wives in the
last two years. Matisse in a quiet private ceremony in
Hawaii. Mondrian in a 200+ Chicago wedding.
I drove to the Chicago wedding from New York with some
of my closest friends. I had never met Bridget's
family, but Mondrian had been in love with her for
five years. Mondrian (as most you know) looks exactly
like my father, dark, handsome and strong. He is also
hilarious, and generous. Bridget has rosy porcelain
skin, strawberry blond hair, and she is the only one that I know that is more generous then Mondrian.
To be honest- I didn't know what to expect from a
large Midwestern family. When we arrived, I realized
that beside my friends and brothers, we were the only
brown people in the room! It didn't matter, and it
never crossed any ones mind in Bridget's family.
Bridget's father burst out of the church doors with
open arms "This is like meet the Fockers!!" He gave me
a big hug and said immediately-
"Mondrian is a gift to
this family and a gift to my daughter."At the ceremony as I held on to Sean's arm (Mondrian's
best friends) as I got ready to walk down the isle (I
was a bridesmaid)- I looked down the isle at Mondrian,
and I looked at Matisse. I started to cry, because I was so happy (of course this made Matisse cry, which made me cry harder...).
Mondrian and Matisse married the women of their dreams, not as
society dictated to them, but as their hearts dictated
to them. No one mentioned Bridget and Mondrian's skin
color or how their child might be "culturally confused" (as we were told over and over again as children). No. They were only told that they were blessed to have found one another, and that they are
going to have beautiful children...
If I may say so without sounding too arrogant- My
brothers and I are the dream. We are educated, motivated, and speak our minds (an a bigoted-racist persons worse nightmare). My brother's are amazing husbands, Matisse is great father (and Mondrian you will be too).
So progress, while slow, can happen in one generation.
My children might even think it is crazy or even
unheard of that their grandparents had such a hard
time getting together...but I will remind them that
there is still much work to do in honor of a man like
MLK jr. Love and Respect- Maya
