One would imagine that a fair world is worth changing for. It feels like a natural choice, and it follows a line of logic – if you live in an unjust world, and you cannot be moved at all by suffering, then the best recourse is to try to right the wrongs.
The heart is a sensitive thing, and if it sees something it knows is wrong, the head is bound to follow. Some sort of peace has to happen between them, and it is on this platform that the nonviolent leaders of the civil rights movement stood. Martin Luther King Jr, who we celebrate today, advocated for an examination of the American condition; he made appeals for people to look carefully at the structure of their society and realize something had to change.
Not everyone agreed.
That kind of change takes effort that not everyone is willing to make.
I’ve made my own appeals for change as a necessary part of getting by as an autistic student in a public school system, and I’ve been refused for asking too much. Now, to be perfectly clear, these were accommodations I was asking for, all of them protected by law and built into the structure of education, but it seemed like I was asking for an upheaval. In their words, it was unfair of me to ask for them to make changes in their grading plans or allow me more time to make up for the fact that I could not work the same way as the students for whom they had built their schools.
The hard part, the part they had to contend with, was that my inability to function and their responsibility for my success suggested something inadequate about their structure that they might not have completely understood. If you’ve never had to doubt your capability or chances for success, you might not realize that other people struggle. And you might not care, not when there are still people who do succeed and you’re one of them. Why give that up? Why would anyone change something that’s working for them? That means more work for them. That means personal work; they can’t stop re-examining the structure of their society and changing the logistics. They’d have to examine themselves and their participation, they’d have to commit to changing their minds and hearts before they could begin considering a new status quo.
What would be the link between my struggle to make things right and Dr. King's struggle to make things right on a national level? The link is that each of us needs to commit to making progress on the wrongs that we face. I’m just not sure what it would take to make that leap. We’ve had encouragement before. We have Dr. King’s dream and a glimpse of what the world could be if we put in the work. Everyone would have to be willing to examine, explore and confront their world. They’d have to ask what could change and what they would do to make it.
Author: Angel Bowen Sanchez