A dream rooted in the reality of today
I have a dream, too.
I have a dream that one day I will be able to post a story on DelcoTimes.com about the city of Chester, or about a person of color, or even about Democrats taking control of Delaware County government, and not have the online comments immediately descend into racist drivel.
I can’t tell you how many times in the past few weeks I have been accosted - either online, in emails, social media or the dreadful comments section of DelcoTimes.com with serenades of “those people” coming from Philadelphia to take over Delaware County. Yes, elections have consequences. And here in Delaware County, those consequences have an ugly underbelly.
Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. surely would have recognized it for what it is. He once referred to it as “lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.”
Dr. King lived in a world without the internet, but he would have recognized the same “withering injustice,” whether a sign that says “for whites only,” or an online comment that despairs “those people.”
The online world knows no colors; too often it also knows no decency.
I consider it one of my many great failings in the time I have sat in this chair. The truth is, there is no meter, not gatekeeper, no monitor on much of the information that is posted online every day, be it in the comments section of DelcoTimes.com, Twitter or Facebook. And much of it comes courtesy of anonymous authors, with no identifying disclaimer, other than a made-up moniker or avatar.
It was less than a decade ago when I thought America had turned a corner on race. The election of a black man to the highest office in the land struck me as a significant milestone, signifying maybe we in fact were ready to judge a man by the content of his character.
Now, as I dread every day the latest online salvos, I wonder just how far we’ve come, if we are truly ready “to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
The truth is I don’t have to look far to see the real reason this online racial divide exists. All I have to do is look in the mirror.
There is no world - at least none that would I prefer to work in where this kind of forum should be allowed. Where there appears to be no right or wrong, where the anonymity of the cyber world provides cover for what Dr. King clearly saw as the “quicksands of racial injustice.”
But the truth is that it does. No, there is no editor, no monitor, no check on this divisive conversation until after it is posted for all to see, and a few to disagree with.
Let freedom ring? Absolutely. Freedom of speech? Count me in. Freedom to say and post whatever dreadful racist hate-mongering pops into your addled mind? I am reminded that today, 57 years later, too many lips continue to be “dripping” with racial invective, under the cover of a darkness that I provide.
Just once I would like to see these online cowards slither out from the under the comfortable veil of anonymity and sit in a chair where I once sat.
I would suggest to them it might be an eye-opening experience. It is one I suggest to every high school and college class I speak to, urging them to seek out this experience at least once in their lives.
What was so unique about it? For the first two years of my college life, I had the high honor and privilege of attending classes at Lincoln University. What was so special about it? It took what I saw and lived just about every day and turned it upside down. Instead of nearly always being in a setting populated by faces that looked just like mine, I walked into a classroom at Lincoln University and realized mine was the only white face in the room. Yes, Lincoln is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning traditionally dedicated to the education of African-American students.
I wish everyone – just once in their life – could have just that sliver of a minority experience. I believe we would be light years ahead of where we are today, still trying to chase away the same racial demons.
I use the experiences I learned at Lincoln – how to treat people and how I would like to be treated
– every day.
That includes policing the comments section of DelcoTimes.com.
Yes, I am able to take down the most objectionable of these comments. But usually only after it has been pointed out to me.
The truth is the internet has fundamentally changed the world we live in. Today every person with a phone is a publisher. Every opinion - regardless how hateful - can be shared with the world with just a few clicks.
Please don’t try to take this down as simply the latest whine of a liberal, leftist, socialist newspaper edit. I firmly believe in a spirited discussion. I don’t have all the answers. I am wrong more than once every day.
This is more a call for simple decency, for all of us to be treated as equals.
Yes, 57 years later, too often we only pay those words lip service, while at the same time wiping away the drool of racism.
Let freedom – and responsibility – ring.
Let free freedom ring from every cell phone, from every tablet and every laptop.
By all means, take part in the discussion. But leave the racist overtones home.