NY Latino Journal, Breaking Through to the Other Side
Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop“, followed by his assination in Memphis, Bomani Armah writes in his story, Okay, Barack. Now Show ‘Em Your White Side, (The Washington Post, March 23, 2008),
Barack Obama is as white as he is black. Staffers need to start snapping as many pictures as possible of him putting mayonnaise on his sandwiches and shaking hands straight up and down (no more low-fives that evolve into a shake with that pat on the back).
As white as he is black. How do we gauge what is embedded in each of us? Are we what we eat? Multi-faceted all, are we not? I don’t think you can expose one side without the light of your other facets shining through.
Black enough or white enough does not concern me. Is he man enough?
Here is Obama making tuna fish sandwiches and using…..mayonnaise!
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. …. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. …Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee
The Lunch Encounter 