The Content of Their Character

 “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.” – Martin Luther King

 As we celebrate this week the words, deeds, and lasting impact of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on what would have been his 95^th birthday, the passage quoted above, perhaps the most famous sentence from his most famous speech, has become a flash point in our ongoing reckoning with race.

Dr. King’s words, their meaning, his intent, and a discussion of their relevance in 2024 has been ubiquitous this week.

I can view one perspective as I scroll through my timeline on Twitter (or X) and find another, very different, different perspective in the posts on my BlueSky feed.

The quote was the subtext in the dual firestorms that led to and followed the resignation of Dr. Claudine Gay as president of my alma mater – the former a conflagration, the latter more of a kitchen fire at this point, although its embers still burn.

And the contrast between the two perspectives on the quote was on display, front and center, yesterday as Robert Kraft introduced Jerod Mayo as the new head coach of the New England Patriots, their first in more than 20 years, the 15^th overall, and first Black head coach in their 64-year history.

About halfway through the press conference, the following question was asked:

Q: Robert, Jerod said [in his opening statement] that being the first Black coach was important to him. Curious, what does it mean to you?

Robert Kraft responded:

Let me say this to you: I’m really colorblind in terms of I know what I feel like on Sunday when we lose, and I can just tell you that after my family, my passion is with the New England Patriots, and there’s something else very close second, but winning at the Patriots is my passion. I want to get the best people I can get. I chose the best head coach for this organization. He happens to be a man of color. But I chose him because I believe he’s best to do the job.

Toward the end of Jerod Mayo’s response, he provided the alternative perspective and the takeaway quote of the press conferences, when he said:

What I will say, though, is I do see color because I believe if you don’t see color, you can’t see racism.

Adding:

Whatever happens, Black, white, disabled person — even someone with disabilities, for the most part people are like — when they’re young, they kind of make the spot hot. Younger people know what that means. But what I would say is, no, I want you to be able to go up to those people and really understand those people. It goes back to whatever it is, Black, white, yellow, it really doesn’t matter, but it does matter so we can try to fix the problem that we all know we have.

I could feel younger people cringe as soon as Robert Kraft uttered the word colorblind.

It would be easy to attribute the difference in their responses to age – Kraft 82, Mayo, 37, even more than to differences in race. As distinguished Boston sports columnist Steve Buckley wrote this morning:

But while Kraft’s comment about being color-blind is well-intentioned and from the heart, it doesn’t always play well in the third decade of the 21^st century. 

And as someone, like Buckley, aged in between the two of them my first reaction was very similar to his.

As I thought about the question, responses, and reactions more, however, I began to see red, where I was being expected to see Black and white.

The “oh, he’s an old man, cut him some slack” reaction buys into the arguably false premise that there is only one correct way to go here with respect to seeing color. Color-blind is passé. We have evolved and know better now. Seeing Black is the new black.

From my perspective, and positionality, that’s much too simplistic a view of a multi-layered, complex issue and set of circumstances.

Not a Black-and-White Issue

To begin, Mr. Kraft, much like the Patriots this season, was in a no-win situation.

Damned if he did see color. Damned, as he was, when he didn’t.

If Kraft suggested, in any way, that hiring a Black head coach was important to him, he ran the risk of undermining Jerod Mayo’s credibility as a qualified head coach, the best person for the job. Even more than running the risk, we all know what the storyline would have been in the current environment – ask Claudine Gay.

Double down on that reaction given that Kraft and the Patriots anointed Mayo as the successor without interviewing any other potential coaches. The Patriots even employed a seldom-used clause to circumvent the NFL hiring policy put in place to enhance opportunities for people of color.

Double down again when Kraft pretty much literally said that his choice was not as much based on Mayo’s football acumen as it was on the content of his character – citing the same gut instinct that guided Kraft to the selection of his two wives and Bill Belichick.

Finding the best person to do the job and seeing color as part of an actively anti-racist approach are by no means mutually exclusive ideas and actions. It’s not even necessarily a case of prioritizing one value over another – you can make the argument that seeing color is a central component of selecting the best person for the job.

It would be naïve, however, as well as disingenuous, not to acknowledge that the seemingly black-and-white issue becomes more complex when we move from the group level, systems, and systemic racism to the individual.

It’s more complex when hiring the head coach of an NFL football team.

It’s more complex when designing a large-scale assessment instrument.

And it’s more complex when personalizing instruction for an individual student.

I know that the goal of personalization isn’t to ask the teacher to pull out (or to let the student to select) the “rich white” or “poor Black” or “rich Black” (for that matter) set of instructional materials or assessments when interacting with a particular student – even if we were able to get beyond the surface features that will be readily known and dig down to the third, or fourth, or tenth layer of intersectionality before using  AI to generate child-specific materials in real-time.

But I’m not sure that I’ve heard anyone yet explain to me satisfactorily what personalization is with regard to assessment, achievement standards, and outcomes.

I know that if you don’t see color, you can’t see racism and that seeing, and overcoming, racism, is a stepping-stone needed to build the bridge to the place where everyone can be confident that their children are being fairly judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

But I’m sure that building that bridge isn’t as simple as saying that the next vice-president, or Supreme Court justice, or Harvard president, or Patriots head coach must be …

I believe that at the end of the game we will be colorblind when we reach the end, but we are still only at halftime.

I was four years old when Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech, and about to turn 9 when he was assassinated.

I believe that we’ve made significant progress in the more than a half century since then as this week we celebrate MLK Day and welcome Jerod Mayo as the Patriots head coach.

Even if we have miles to go before we sleep.

Image by Charles Thonney from Pixabay