Schneier and Simmons: It's not the color of his skin
BY RABBI MARC SCHNEIER AND RUSSELL SIMMONS

Sunday, January 18th 2009, 3:53 PM

Tomorrow, we commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 80th birthday, just one day before we inaugurate our first African-American President.

Americans across the spectrum rightfully draw a direct line between these two men. Most presume that line is to be found in the color of their skin.

They are wrong.

Dr. King was an African-American leader of unparalleled import - but he was also a leader of all people, a giant whose life and thought continues to guide and inspire nations around the globe.

In terms of civil rights, King was color blind, championing human rights for everyone, everywhere. His empathy and outspokenness showed the bravery and firmness of his conscience and the reality of his dream. For example, little has been told about King's support for issues that almost exclusively concerned the Jewish community, such as easing discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union and the safety and security of the State of Israel. He also spoke out against anti-Semitism in the United States, especially when the virus erupted in the African-American community.

Dr. King recognized that a people who fight for their own rights are only as honorable as when they fight for the rights of all people. This, then, is his legacy.

To narrow Barack Obama's achievements to the color of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to entirely miss the point. Obama's connection to King is not the product of his race; rather it is a result of his embracing Dr. King's legacy.

Obama's election demonstrates that we as a nation have begun to learn to reach beyond our individual boundaries and that we chose a man who does the same. "We must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans," the President-elect said in a recent radio address, "that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."

Or, as King wrote, "All life is interrelated . . . . We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother."

King's priority was his Beloved Community, in which, he believed, all play a role: "white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shopworkers."

"We are tied together in the single garment of destiny," he said in one of his addresses, "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality." King spoke not of an unattainable uniformity of thought, but rather of unity in difference, "the solidarity of the human family."

How significant, then, that the 44th President of the United States carries within him the ancestry and faith of Africans, Kansans, Muslims and Christians. His brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews literally span the globe and variety of human experience. Even his partner in life, Michelle, has a rabbi in her family; her first cousin, once-removed is Rabbi Capers Funnye. And that, moreover, Obama believes in our ability as a nation to honor the diversity within ourselves.

King's philosophy was a foundation for Obama's seminal speech on race in America: "I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together," the then-candidate said, "unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - toward a better future."

In this historic moment, let us not reduce the enormous legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to a question of race.

This nation chose Obama not because of the color of his skin, but because of the content of his character. He aspires to be, and we need him to be, a President for all people.

Schneier and Simmons are president and chairman of the New York- and Washington- based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.