MOUNT VERNON — The voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. underscored the reason behind the gathering at Foster Hall on Mount Vernon Nazarene University’s campus Monday morning.
His words would be repeated throughout the morning as leaders in the community spoke about “Racial Reconciliation through the Lens of Dr. King’s Legacy,” the topic for the 15th Annual MLK Celebration Breakfast.
Rev. Scott Elliot, pastor of the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mount Vernon and an advocate for social justice in Knox County, served as the keynote speaker for the day.
“He held up a truth lens to show us the problem and held us accountable. He held up the love lens to give us hope and show us the way out. Unfiltered,” Elliot said of King, his impassioned voice ringing through the room. “Those lenses and the legacy of Dr. King’s use of them point to the one answer for racial reconciliation: all of us walking together toward equality for all.”
He questioned, however, why equality today was avoided. Elliot pointed out that most Americans shunned the idea of racism, wanted justice for African-Americans, and strived for a middle class full of racial harmony, but called those ideas fantasies of self-deceptions and comfortable vanity. “Many white conversations on racism don’t address the complicity and the complacency and the hard-heartedness and the pure evil of racism head on,” he said.
Though Elliot called racism a wide-spread virus within the American culture, he said people should not think systemic racism was beyond their ability to stop.
“Racism is white-created, controlled, and a continuing evil hurting all of us, but deeply, terribly, especially hurting non-whites. We must be careful not to dismiss or distance ourselves from systemic racism by thinking we are not a part of the system, not a part of the problem, not a part of the solution,” Elliot said.
He lamented the fact that society still played into the fantasy of self-deceptions that King spoke of 50 years ago.
For whites, the necessities of well-being included access to quality education, employment and housing, fair treatment by law enforcement and businesses, as well as their children’s needs being paramount. Non-whites were not granted identical access to those things, Elliot argued. “Only white citizens have full access to the rights that our nation promises to fully deliver to all of its citizens. That is racism,” Elliot said. “God-given rights are not a privilege to get or have access to — they are God-given. Those promised rights are not a privilege to have, they are what is due to [absolutely] everyone.”
It wasn’t white privilege to have those rights, Elliot argued, it was white failure of moral obligations.
“Reconciliation of the races begins and racism ends when white Americans who perpetuate and benefit from racism stop it,” Elliot said. “Stop it by becoming better informed and educating ourselves and others about racism. Stop it by acknowledging racism exists, it’s awful, and we are a part of it. Stop it by acknowledging our mistakes and working to fix them.”
Elliot said King aimed America toward reconciliation and, even 50 years after his death, could still make people face the lenses of truth and love.
Mount Vernon High School junior Rachel Murray, who won the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy essay contest, also drew on King’s belief that individuals in society could not walk alone to solve the problem of racism. She discussed acknowledging each person’s differences, accepting them, growing in knowledge of other ethnicities and cultures, and becoming a better person by benefitting from experiences.
“In order to live in racial harmony, there has to be peace, but peaceful does not have to be passive,” Murray said as she read her essay aloud. “In order to have peace we cannot just sit and wait for equality to happen, but actively pursue it.”
She urged everyone to fulfill King’s dream by walking as one. “I say that instead of walking alone, we stand united.”
Elliot, Ellamae Simmons, M.D, and Catie Hayes, Director of Community and International Ministries at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, were honored with the Beulah Apostolic Award of Excellence. Mount Vernon sixth grader Celia Manning won the middle school essay contest.
Mount Vernon Nazarene University President Dr. Henry Spaulding, Kenyon College President Dr. Sean Decatur, Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Mavis, and Gambier Mayor Kachen Kimmel also spoke about their community responses to racial reconciliation.
