This year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Los Angeles there was a controversy over a sporting goods store’s advertisement. It featured the likeness of the late Reverend Doctor King in a wetsuit, hangin’ ten.
When I heard about it I was amused at first, because I didn’t know all of it.
Initially I thought it was a mark of how far we’ve come…that the three day weekend created for many workers by the institutionalization of MLK had the ho-hum, perennial guilty pleasure of a long break with no obligations at all; no hiding eggs, no mandatory barbecue; just a chance to hang out and to shop, maybe. Cool. But then I heard the rest: the ad offered a discount on anything black, in the store.
Whoa. Racist. Horrifying. Or is it? That Doctor King was black is just a fact. Like the fact that George Washington had false teeth and puffy white hair, and Abe Lincoln had a mole on his cheek. I don’t know the surf shop guys but I can just imagine them offering discounts to anyone with a moley face or dentures on Presidents’ day. I mean putting King in a wetsuit in the first place is kinda out there. Not racist in any way that I can see.
And now I hear (a bit after the weekend, but whatever) a commercial for a mattress company that wants you to come in on King Day and buy a King!-sized mattress. Oh my.
Again. In poor taste? Maybe. If Lincoln or Washington were adjectives as well as proper nouns… like King… you just know someone would have used them in ad copy eons ago.
Racist? Not a chance. Indicative of societal change so that celebrating King Day is as natural as Veterans’ Day? I like to think so. But I don’t know. Are things better for civil rights in the twenty five years since King Day first was observed, under federal law?
I do recognize that some places in this country came kicking and screaming to acceptance of King Day as a (probably paid) holiday. And that in at least one school district, they were going to “pay” for excessive snow days by canceling King Day… in other words holding classes and taking attendance that day despite its holiday status. Racist?
Utah was the last state to acknowledge King Day, and only 11 years ago. But to this day, Mississippi celebrates King and also Robert E. Lee on the same day. Er…Lee having been Commanding General of the (Losing! hello!?) Confederate Army during the Civil War. Civil Rights, Civil War, same day. Nice!
And with varying punctuation, Arizona and New Hampshire celebrate “Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day.”
Ladies in the mid-west, the northeast and especially in the deep south…tell us…what’s the vibe where you are?
