Living Martin's march, 1 jump-hug at a time

  Blog »    Living Martin's  march, 1 jump-hug at a time 

Friday, February 28, 2014   Jeff Lampl

(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:7 (NKJV)  

This article was written a few weeks ago by a member of the Robinson family who is part of the CLC family.   It’s great and I’m glad to share it with you.  Jeff  

“When my 4-year-old daughter hears Cheruto Rono coming in our front door, Riley springs to her feet and scampers to her 6-year-old friend.   The two girls cheer and hug and giggle and jump in a circle all at the same time because of another chance to play together.   Riley is white, Cheruto is black and they love each other to death.

Somewhere, Martin Luther King Jr. is smiling.  

My other daughter, 9-year-old Olivia, keeps talking about wanting to go to Kenya with the Rono family the next time they visit their birth country.  Olivia, Cheruto and her two sisters, Chemutai, 9, and Chesang, 10, could sing, dance, eat, play and sleep together 24-7 then.  

I’m afraid if that happened, Olivia would never want to return to Mommy and Daddy.  

My 12-year-old son, Wyatt, plays with the Rono girls, but sometimes gets annoyed by their antics and blows them off. In other words, he treats them just like his own sisters.  Brenda and I leave our kids with the Ronos when we need a baby-sitter and we sometimes watch the Ronos’ kids for them.   We help each other overcome challenges and celebrate all the good times together. We are living, in microcosm, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.  

Many children have off school today in honor of the civil rights leader.  

Many parents will rightly seize the opportunity to educate children about America’s shameful, racist history. Some will stress the importance of treating everyone with dignity and respect and as equals, regardless of skin color.  Some people will gather for special events to mark the day and media will publish reports about the Alabama preacher’s impact on America.   You’ll hear the famous excerpts from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech a half century ago in Washington D.C.

Experts will again debate how far we’ve come as a nation in transforming King’s dream of racial equality into reality.

I say, ignore the big picture. Leave that to the next King or Nelson Mandela or Jackie Robinson.  

Instead, if you haven’t already, act locally. Start in your house, the playground, your neighborhood, the pool, the park, your church. Treat everyone equally and teach your children and grandchildren to do the same.  

Until we all promote racial equality through our actions every day, not just on the third Monday in January, we’ll never experience King’s vision of “justice (rolling) down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Yes, we have elected and re-elected a black president, but we still have far to go before freedom truly rings for everyone.  

I’ll never forget the Solanco girl who told me her life’s biggest challenge, overcoming racism, was presented to her when she was a first grader.  Her family stepped out their front door to go to church one morning in the mid-1990s and discovered “KKK” and swastikas painted on their house and cars. One of my black friends told me about the several times police pulled his car over despite the fact he had done nothing wrong.  Just two examples of the injustices blacks endure. I won’t pretend to know their struggles.  My wife and I will continue to try to serve as role models for our children so their generation does better than ours.  

The Ronos are among our very best friends and are a big reason we’ve never moved from our East Petersburg home, since they live a few doors away.  Our story is just an anecdote. I know two families’ love for each other is not going to erase the history of slavery or solve the racism problem in our country.  

So Martin’s march continues, and as he said, “We cannot turn back.”  rrobinson@lnpnews.com

 

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