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a personality. I've thought about this word a lot lately, especially since Monday was the day we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. It was also President Donald Trump's inauguration day. Hardly a day goes by without someone quoting to me King's most famous words about not judging a man by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. However, do we really practice character vision these days?
I say practice because it is a skill. It takes no skill to claim the identity of immutable properties. All one has to do is enter into the politics of that particular identity and speak in its pre-approved clichés. Nor does it take any skill to make snap judgments based on someone's immutable characteristics. This requires nothing less than ignoring the personality of the person in front of you and attaching them to every stereotype that comes with that particular identity.
We often see this type of behavior in the sink Social media And from our so-called thought leaders who sit behind podcast microphones and stir up outrage to line their pockets with clickbait money. The irony is that many of them ask us to see character and yet practice the opposite.
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Seeing one's character does not make money.
Others even asked me to see color first and foremost. When I was on a rooftop raising money for a community center, we heard how a white neighborhood in North Chicago had to hire security guards after George Floyd protests Because violence was happening.
As we were preparing to record that story for Fox, several people came up to me and stressed that we should make this about white people finally getting a taste of the violence that plagues our neighborhood. I completely resisted. This wasn't racist to me. This was about the downward spiral into which our city's values were descending. I left the issue of race out of the topic and produced what I thought was a much better and more insightful story.
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It takes discipline to resist the temptations of identity politics and delve into a person's character or even the character of a community at a given moment. When one does this, one often arrives at a deeper, more profound meaning that is closer to the truth. This should not be surprising, because character is, ultimately, human reality.
We live in the USA, and that should mean something. If there is anything I learned from King and his long struggle for civil rights it is the lesson of the struggle to be a man and an individual. His infantrymen often carried signs that said: “I am a man.” This was the essence of our struggle, what was denied us under centuries of brutal oppression.
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So why would I betray King for the sake of instant gratification for the lower class by playing identity politics? I have trained myself to walk the path of character and this choice has brought me many fruits.
Today I am in the middle of building a $45 million community center where our focus and the foundation of everything we do will be character. My neighborhood may be mostly black But we are raising men and women of strong character, and I hope they will become so successful that their names will mean something to you one day.
