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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>From today’s (January 16, 2006) Spokesman Review with
a special thanks to Leonard Pitts Jr. of the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Miami</st1:place></st1:City> Herald -<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>King's genius went beyond race <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Leonard Pitts Jr. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><font size=2
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Miami</span></font></st1:place></st1:City><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> Herald<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>January 16, 2006<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>The barber leaned close so the white folks couldn't hear.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>How are you adjusting to the culture shock, he asked. Takes
some getting used to, I replied.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>We were two black men in a place – the Appalachian
foothills where <st1:State w:st="on">Ohio</st1:State> abuts <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">West Virginia</st1:place></st1:State> – that is home to very
few people like us. But the culture shock he spoke of wasn't about race so much
as economics. It's a strange thing he said, still leaning close, to see white
people, poor.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>It is strange, indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Not that I didn't know there are white poor. To the
contrary, I knew that while poverty on a percentage basis is far greater among
blacks than whites, there are, in terms of raw numbers, more poor whites than
poor anybody. And this region, where I will be teaching journalism until June,
is among the poorest and whitest in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Still, it's one thing to read statistics and quite another
to see with your eyes. But my sojourn here makes seeing inevitable. And I find
myself fascinated by how markers of poverty can be simultaneously so familiar
and yet so unknown: the unmarried teenage dropout soon to be a mother; the
service worker missing teeth; the uneducated woman dying of emphysema, sneaking
a smoke in her hospital bed; the rough man who lives between scrapes with the
law; the young guy buying a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor before noon. All
white.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>We are so comfortable thinking of people like them as
archetypes of black dysfunction. It's jarring to be reminded that they are in
fact archetypes of dysfunction, period, and that dysfunction, no matter its
color, should trouble us all.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Martin Luther King understood this. Which is one of the
things we understand least about him.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Today is the 20th King Day. It brings the 20th round of
interfaith prayer breakfasts, recitations of "I Have A Dream,"
assessments of progress toward racial equity and the lack thereof. I suspect
there won't be much discussion of white poverty.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>This is not a surprise. We like our heroes and their heroism
simple, unencumbered by that which doesn't fit neatly into a box. We like our
commemorations simpler still, a self-congratulatory excuse for a three-day
weekend or a used-car sale.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>But the man who said, "I have a dream" also said,
"All life is interrelated" and came to believe his mission as a moral
leader encompassed more than race. Encompassed, among other things, class.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>It is instructive to remember that in his last days, King
was planning what he called the Poor People's Campaign, a multiethnic march on <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State> to demand
action against poverty. "At Canan's Edge," the final chapter of
Taylor Branch's epic retelling of the civil rights years, recounts a summit
meeting a few weeks before King's assassination. Chicano farm workers, American
Indians from the Plains and white coal miners from <st1:place w:st="on">Appalachia</st1:place>,
sat with King to explore the revolutionary idea that their peoples might have
causes and grievances in common.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Then King went to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Memphis</st1:place></st1:City>.
And the idea has not been meaningfully explored since.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Neglect has made it no less tantalizing.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Yes, race matters. Most of us know this. But the genius of
Martin Luther King in his final days was to understand that there are paradigms
beyond race and that they matter, too.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>So today, as we are exhorted to seek paths of racial amity,
one hopes we will also be exhorted to understand, as King did, that conscience
has no color, that race is not destiny, that injustice anywhere threatens
justice everywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>There are among us children who sleep in hunger, rise in
cold, live in ignorance, and they are of every color and every tribe. We ought
not find their suffering easier to accept because they are not like us. Ought
to realize that the dignity of all is the concern of all.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>That, too, was Martin's dream.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Take care, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moscow</st1:place></st1:City>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Tom Hansen<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=2
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Moscow</span></font></st1:City><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, <st1:State
w:st="on">Idaho</st1:State></span></font></st1:place><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>"If not us, who?<br>
If not now, when?"<br>
<br>
- Unknown</span><o:p></o:p></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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