REMEMBERING

AND REFLECTING

I remember when Rev. Martin Luther King was shot and killed.

I was standing watch in the electronics shop at Naval Air Station Key West, FL.  Also on watch with me was another sailor, a black fellow, and we began talking.  I said what a tragedy it was that the black community had lost its most important leader in my lifetime up until then and what a talented and powerful speaker he was.

It was during this conversation that he made some comments that have stayed with me and shaped my life for the past 45 years.

He agreed with most of my comments and then said, "You can never know what it's like to be black in this country until you are black.  You just can't".  He went on to say that he was from New York but that (at that time) he couldn't safely go into Harlem even though he was a black man.

As the years have passed I have lived overseas for awhile, and worked in the Ivory Coast, Angola, and other West African countries.  I was one of the few white people among a see of black faces.  The cultures would vary but what didn't vary was my status as "the white man".  It was a very odd feeling.

It was clear I was an "outsider" and the "odd man out".  I was the one who didn't belong.  What was I doing in their country? The question was felt but never spoken.

 No matter what label belongs to you, white, black, gay, farmer, corporate mogul, I don't know what your life is like unless I "Walk a mile in your moccasins".

All I said summed up in the last six words.