I Have A Martin Luther King Jr. Story

Not that I met him or anything - he was assassinated when I was barely three months old.

This is not a good Martin Luther King, Jr., story.  It's a story about the American South, white people, & racism, & of course it involves my family.

I'm not going to mention which family member is involved.  No need to embarrass anyone who may have evolved since the incident.  A couple members of my family seem to have reformed & speak more respectfully about African-Americans now than they did in my childhood.  They voted for Obama, & not just because they are Democrats.  More members of my family, however, are unrepentant racists, & it's one of the reasons I don't enjoy visiting them.  After the 2008 election, one member of my family on Facebook just inserted Obama's name into what were already moldy racist jokes.  It's the kind of family I come from.

I hate to pussyfoot around this, but the story uses the n-word, but I'll just write "n-word."  You know what that means.

A family member was in Austin (though not to visit me).  I had already lived there for a while.  That family member met me on campus (where I worked) & we went to get something to eat.  At that time, you could drive through campus from 26th Street (now called Dean Keaton) to MLK (which was previously called 19th Street).  We were going to eat somewhere that we could get to more quickly by taking I-35, so I told my family member to go south through campus & take a left on MLK, toward the highway.  My family member noticed that the street was called Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, & off-handedly made the observation, "They've got a street named for that [n-word] everywhere."

I sputtered & told this family member that I completely disagreed with the comment in no uncertain terms.  I was, frankly, shocked & appalled that anyone would make that observation, even one of my unrepentantly racist family members, about Martin Luther King.  Who in the world outside of Klan members didn't show him a modicum of respect?  The fact that my family member would even say the n-word in reference to him outraged me into a kind of angry incoherence.

But despite that, my reaction didn't lead to any confrontation or animosity, as this family member probably expected that from me, & besides was pretty secure in their racism.  We went to get food.  I doubtless continued to shake my head in bafflement for a while.

I have kept this memory while my family member has probably forgotten it.  One of the reasons this memory has stayed with me (in addition to its blatant awfulness) was that I was angry with myself for not standing up to this person or at the very least having something devastating to say in response.  So when I have told the story in the past, I have made myself more of a hero, adding a (what I think is) clever retort that I thought of later.  I guess I'm lying, but really it's only a lie in the sense that I made my comeback more of what I was thinking (but couldn't at that time put into words) than just me saying in horror "Oh fuck did you really say that?"

Here is how it should've gone, or did go, if my family member could have read my thoughts:

Family Member: They've got a street named for that [n-word] everywhere.
Me: Ha! You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.  Compared to Martin Luther King, we're the [n-word]s!

But really, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to my family member's racist world view.