Every year the message of Martin Luther King Day is the quest for racial justice, but this year in Springfield speakers honed in on the difficult struggle against systemic racism, a concept still little understood. Though Jesus may be in your heart, “Grandpa is in your bones,” said Sister Rebecca Ann Gemma, prioress general of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, at a Sunday evening service. She explained that racism inhabits people and institutions, including churches, whether they like it or not. Dr. Wesley Robinson-McNeese, speaker at Monday’s Frontiers International MLK breakfast, explained that the opposite of racism is not non-racism but anti-racism. McNeese invited all the 1,000 breakfast attendees – pointedly including white people – to join the fight against systemic racism. “Come only if you are committed. Come only if you are strong.”
–Fletcher Farrar, editor and CEO
This article appears in Health & Wellness.
