The Knicks just beat the Spurs 104-82. Big game. Big, big game. No, it wasn’t the
championship game or anything like that, and I’m not even a Knicks fan. It was the Martin
Luther King Day game! That’s how the NBA celebrates Martin Luther King Day. Doesn’t
anyone at the NBA understand irony? What, couldn’t they get the T-shirts for the dance
contest and watermelon seed spit-off printed in time?
Wouldn’t the greater honor for Dr. King by the NBA, a league rightly or wrongly associated with
black men, be not playing a game today? Instead of choosing to fight the NBA over marijuana
testing, maybe the players union should have come up with an appropriate way to honor the man
who made it possible for all of its players to eat in the same restaurants, stay in the same hotels,
and date the same white women.
I’m not trying to preach. One reason I admire Dr. King was his respect and tolerance for Jews, so
I have my own selfish reasons for my views. His tolerance was breath taking. Dr. King spoke of
a universal love for all mankind. I consider myself to be a tolerant person, but I get angry when
the guy next to me on the bus breathes too loudly from his nose. Seriously, though, that is really
annoying. It’s easy to claim to be tolerant. My college fraternity’s motto was “unity through
divergence,” but one day I realized—-we had no black members. I guess our idea of divergence
was white men of different heights. Actually, we did have a couple of black guys, but only one at
a time of course.
I know some of my friends think I see bigotry everywhere. But that’s just because I see bigotry
where it exists. A few years ago while I was working at a men’s store, my friend and co-worker
Vince, who is black, and I took the train home together. To set the scene, Vince dresses like a
banker and I dress like a banker’s son on “take your child to work day.” I was drinking a cold
beer out of a brown paper bag while Vince was just holding a bottle of wine for his date that
night. You should have seen the look on the people’s faces. They saw Vince, despite the pin
stripes, as a threat, and possibly a drunken one. Me, well, they figured I was just relaxing. I just
started to work again part time at that men’s store and one thing I pride myself on is that I offer
the same disinterested service to customers of all races.
Vince bought a car last year and when I told him to be careful on the Jersey Turnpike where
racial profiling was perfected, he said that he knew the drill. If he were pulled over, he would
keep his hands on the wheel at 10 and 2 until the officer walked up to his window. I’m not the
deepest thinker in the world, but as he was telling me this, I just couldn’t help thinking, “but this
is America.” So in Vince’s honor, I have a number of other tips for our black friends when
dealing with law enforcement. When walking near the police, always walk with your hands held
high above your head, like you’re carrying something expensive through deep water or better yet
while wearing those big, puffy, #1 fan, foam hands on both hands. If you want, you can keep
repeating, “aye bwana” but that might be a little bit much. If stopped by the police in Harlem,
reach for your wallet as though you were doing the old dance the robot. Mechanically remove
your wallet by moving only one joint in the body at a time. Most importantly, always move
slowly. Better to look lazy but be safe.
Fortunately, most police officers are fair and honest and unfortunately, not all of the leaders of
the black community deserve the reverence I hold for Dr. King. He never alluded to Jews as interlopers and diamond merchants as Al Sharpton has, and he clearly wasn’t as divisive as Jesse
Jackson is. Sometimes I’m surprised that Al Sharpton doesn’t have his own line of merchandise
benefiting his causes. “If you can’t be an anti-Semitic black leader, now you can at least drink
like one. Try the crisp, non-alcoholic (A Salaam Alechem, my brother) taste of Reverend Al’s
Nubian Cola.” I heard Jesse mention coal miners a couple of weeks ago and I figured, despite the
good he usually does, that he only cared about the coal miners because they get black lung.
Dr. King was murdered before he could organize his latest project. A march on Washington to
highlight the plight of poor people. Not poor black people. Poor all people. Nowadays, there are
streets in most big cities named for Dr. King and they always lead to the same place. We’ll have
a better America, and the dream will have come true, when Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is
the road to the airport and not the bus station.