Gabriel on Martin Luther King

It comes to no surprise whatsoever that the city/state where I spent most of my life, and am currently attending college is racist. Not even a little bit racist like Utah (I suppose…I have never been there. This Black man has no business being in Utah), but very racist like as racist as you can be in contemporary American society. It also comes to no surprise as evidenced by the evils of modern rap music, and my own experience growing up in ‘the hood’ that all streets, boulevards, avenues, drives, whatever named after Martin Luther King Jr. are either in slummed out neighborhoods, really ghetto neighborhoods (I mean truly ghetto, like multiple people living in the same high rise apt and sharing a bathroom, not some white guy wears some Nikes and a backwards cap and teenage/tween white girls think he’s ghetto kind of ghetto.), or are prone to high crime rates.So with these givens in the world, I must try my best to overlook everything and pray that when Jesus comes back he shows people that he isn’t a white, blond haired, blue eyed, surfer looking douche bag (as a pseudo-wise friend of mine once said “his complexion is somewhere in between Osama Bin Laden and Michael Clarke Duncan”). That’ll show them (the man). Besides doing that there is really nothing I can do at a grand scale to change things, I accept that, and embrace it when I think of bringing children into the world.

But this feeling of acceptance turned into a mild rage when I learned of something that touches me deeply…yes education. It seems in our fair city of Lexington, KY there is an alternative school that was brought to my attention.

NOTE: In case you are fortunate enough to live in a city or area where there are no alternative schools (or unfortunate enough to live in an area where all the schools are so terrible it would be a waste of tax money to have a school large enough to encompass all the bad kids), these are the schools that kids that bring guns to school are shipped off so that the respective school system can still get state funding for meeting its attendance quotas.

This alternative school seen HERE is named…you guessed it, Martin Luther King Jr. Academy for Excellence Alternative. Basically a school for bad kids, trouble makers, and teenage mothers is named after one of the greatest figures to walk the earth (who just so happens to be Black). So yeah, I don’t see any school named after George Washington (maybe Carver the peanut guy since he was Black too) being deemed as an alternative school for kids who are deemed to effed up to attend normal school. This is how you can spot a racist area or city.

But the other thing that troubles me is the fact that other people of color (EBP) living and/or working in Lexington and the surrounding areas have done nothing about this. There is a super fest full of Black people that happens every early fall in Lexington (called the Roots heritage festival). Why can’t the people who spearhead the festival take aim at this problem?

It is one thing to not do anything at all (which I can’t blame those people…doing stuff requires work), but it is another to act like one is doing something important (festival) when in all actuality they are not (letting this place continue to be named after one of our greatest leaders in world history in one of the most racist states in the country). But I’m a newcomer here in Lexington (a little under 4 years here). Maybe someone tried to tackle this problem before and failed. I don’t feel like finding out right now. I can’t wait until I leave this basement. It makes me angry.