Having Conversations: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement of Today

How do we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement of the 1960s? Posting an inspirational quote from Dr. King as an obligatory Facebook status? Buying into racist stereotypes (it happened: http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/HaireoftheDog/archives/2014/01/20/celebrating-mlk-day-with-fried-chicken-and-40s-of-oe)? Taking a day off from school and work? Participating in a “day on, not a day off” by doing service (it also happened: http://news.cofc.edu/2014/01/20/4-martin-luther-king-jr-day-2014-events-and-activities-hosted-by-the-college-of-charleston/)?

This is a couple weeks late, but I want to propose that we commemorate Dr. King and a civil rights movement necessitating our attention still today by doing what the activists of the 1960s did: have conversations. Perhaps that is overly simplistic, but as I have been thinking about the collection of rights people advocate for today (equality among races, sexual orientations, religions, abilities, nationalities and citizenship statuses), I have noticed a common thread. We struggle to have conversations.

Remember the great government shutdown of 2013? Yes, of course you do. It’s what happened when the government struggled to have real conversations. It happens on much smaller scales: within churches, on college campuses, in neighborhoods, across generations. When I try to remember the real conversations I’ve had in the past month, they’re few and far between. I mean, I talk to people all the time—those I agree with and those I don’t. But the times I have talked about real issues with people and actively listened to their side, civilly presented my thoughts, and each of us allowed the others’ opinions to matter significantly…those times are few.

As part of “Share the Dream” week on the College of Charleston campus, Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented American and successful American journalist, spoke about what it means to be American—both documented and undocumented. He connected immigrant rights with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He gave the statistics and stories to propose that immigrant rights are important, that “no human being is ‘illegal.’” I walked away from his talk with a more meta message, though. His talk was much more about having conversations, and I think one of the clips he showed from his documentary, "Documented," encapsulated that. In the clip, he was interviewing an Alabama college student about recent legislation requiring students to present papers as proof of their citizenship when a man in the background of the shot decided to share his opinion, which greatly differed from both Vargas’s and the student’s. This man implied that all immigrants—legal or not—should leave the country because they are stealing jobs from Americans. Vargas didn’t shut him down (or let himself shut down), but allowed the man to express his opinion, asking him questions because he genuinely wanted to learn a different perspective from this man. And perhaps because Vargas listened to him, the man was then interested in Vargas’s story. They fist-pumped at the end of the clip, each apparently having learned something from the other. Heart-warming, right?

I don’t have to imagine how this conversation could have taken a different turn: I’ve seen it happen before. People get offended and defensive, calling one another “close-minded.” Liberal views and conservative views can both be close-minded, when everyone sees their own views as right and others’ views as wrong. There is no room for conversation.

I have been guilty of being on both sides of inability to have conversation. Now, I want the conversations, because out of conversations, movements are born.