Martin Luther King's Day

So it’s Martin Luther King’s birthday today. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what that man did. He had a dream and guess what people, it’s kind of coming true. Dreams can come true, can’t they? Yeah, there are some major holes that have to be fixed and the problem of racism is far from over, far, far, far, from over.

But his dream is coming true as we speak.

What a beautiful thing.

If you are a person of color you may disagree, honestly I am a person of color but I’m not black. I don’t know how hard it is to be a black person in this world.

I was in the hospital recently in an area that serves Detroit. I met a lot of black people: nurses, techs, and fellow patients. Their struggle is real, it’s different than my struggle as a light-skinned brown person. I’m not white, but I’m not black either. I am respected in this society because Asian people are highly educated and upper middle class very often.

That is not true of African American people. As a rule, you don’t just assume that a black person is highly educated. What do you assume when you meet a black person? Do you know what I assume? I assume that they have a better personality than I do because they have seen the world in such a different way than me. I think they have more soul than I do.

I don’t have any close black friends, but I made a best friend out of a fellow patient at the hospital I was in. She is a beautiful black woman who I love dearly. Her life was much more complicated than mine. Much, much, much more complicated. She had been in trouble with the law, out of no fault of her own. She had been through things I can only imagine.

I have a pretty cushy life really. I don’t fear the police. I fear any man with a gun, including a police officer, but I don’t fear that they will arrest me for being alive while being brown.

When I was in the hospital god were there some black people with personalities? Mostly the nurses and techs. They saved me in there.

They taught me that I am not the center of this world. That I’m not a princess. My name is Nina Kaur, Kaur means princess in Punjabi. Every Sikh woman is supposed to take that last name. I often have a princess complex about many things. I was spoiled by my father. I’m 47, my father is on his deathbed, and he still manages to spoil me somehow.

I have his credit card, now the man is blind but knows everything and finds out about every charge. I don’t spend his money now, but I can’t say I haven’t taken advantage of his credit card in the past when I had a shopping addiction. And by the way, he knows this about me, he knows everything, he is a wise old man. He knows his daughter doesn’t have a good sense of money, while on the other hand, he is a financial genius.

See how I’m spoiled?

When I went into the hospital my white friend Jeff came from Califonia and went to my house to pick up clothes for me to take to the hospital. He is the cheapest guy I know in this universe, but he bought me some books and magazines. He is also the richest friend I have. The hospital managed to lose the books, magazines, and clothes. Jeff was livid. I was livid. The nurses just looked at me and said, honey, there is nothing that can be done about this and went about their business as usual.

Those were my clothes from Macy’s, I was in a hospital with homeless people and people who borrowed the little clothes I did have. The girls who did borrow my clothes were white, they were around my size. Some of the black women were larger than me. This is an important point. They were beautiful no matter what their size. They did not have the barbie doll complex that white women and men have. Even Indian people have this complex now.

There was a time when Indian actresses had curves, they don’t anymore. They’ve bought into the white norms of America.

But black women have not.

My friend who I was talking about is a larger woman. She is absolutely beautiful.

So are you, no matter what size you are. I have to tell myself this. I’m nowhere near my goal weight.

But I’m beautiful, I realized this in the hospital. I didn’t know this before I went in there.

It’s Martin Luther King Day. Let’s celebrate his dream coming true, the fruition of that dream.

We have a long way to go people, but we have come a long way.

nina