Until recently I always looked at myself as somebody that embodied Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Dream” (Though many that know me would say Post-Nation Malcolm). I come from a segregated, poverty stricken Brooklyn Housing Project, to having the privilege of receiving a high school, college and graduate school education from some of our nation’s most esteemed institutions that had previously been reserved for the wealthy and White.
I was brought to my high school as part of an attempt to increase diversity at a prep school that counted only 4% of its students as non-white. The efforts to recruit kids like me (deserving kids of color from NYC that just had not been afforded the opportunity to attend institutions that frankly we were both unaware of and ill equipped to pay for) became the eventual life work of a man who encapsulated Martin’s dream. John Hoffman was of Jewish descent, but he promoted the dream as a means of giving back as well paying it forward.
Today, in large part because John would not let me fail, despite being so out of place and underprepared compared to the other students. He showed encouragement. He helped me get any extra help I needed. Most importantly he helped me to see the bigger picture. One in which even at 13 and 14 years old, I began to understand. While I was uncomfortable being in an environment so foreign to my upbringing and cultural comfort level, he helped me to understand that if I was able to succeed, it would have far reaching effects.
Today, what started out as John’s kids, turned into the Albert G. Oliver Program (now know as the Oliver Scholars). There are over 1200 Oliver alumnus that entered into predominately white preparatory and boarding schools. 99% of the Oliver alumni then went on to some of the nation’s best colleges. All positively impacting society and their communities, largely through the example of service promoted and shown by example by John Hoffman, who learned many of those lesson from Dr. King. The school I went to now has a minority enrollment of over 22%. Schools are more diverse, reflecting the landscape of a nation that had seemed to be progressing positively.
I really did embody Dr. King’s dream and for all of this country’s struggles and contradictions, I still looked at it with positive optimism for the progress I could see made…
Today that has turned into a nightmare… and no matter how long or often I close my eyes, the sad truth of its reality has become apparent. Today, unlike any other time in my lifetime there is a surge of White Nationalism in which empathy and tolerance for different races and cultures is not apparent in the agendas of a class of some that feel so threatened by any potential usurpation of their established power and control that they rather turn back the clock on all progressive integration than accept that the United States for better or worse really is a diverse land.
We have just concluded eight years of a presidency by an African American. He came into office in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Political ideology aside, no one can argue that the country is not in a far better condition and position than it was before he came into office. Yet, these White Nationalists are not interested in the truth, only a reaffirmation of their stranglehold on the power structure and diminishing the rights, power and voice of all other groups that they see as a threat.
This is non-sensical, but that fact makes it no less real. This nightmare is real and we all need to wake up and understand what is happening and put an end to it through political resistance and change. I still remain hopeful and optimistic (though I had a few hours where my positiveness was tested to the extreme). The United States is a flawed nation, but one with so much potential in large part because of the diversity of its citizens.
These educational institutions that I and the Oliver Scholars attended were private institutions that were under no obligation to increase the diversity of their student bodies. Yet, they did because they understood the importance of diversity and the inevitability of the changing demographics that created more of a disservice to its students to extend the bubble of White privilege as a closed club, when a progressing world would call for interactions within every race and color.
This nightmare is too real, giving even more credence to understanding and promoting the message behind Dr. King’s “Dream”.
#DrMartinLutherKing, #Dreamspeech, #whitenationalist, #Politicalpower, #oliverscholars, #Drking, #empathy, #racerelations
