Skin color is a meaningless detail

This Martin Luther King Day is a good time to reconnect to his dream of tolerance and peace for the U.S., and measure our individual progress toward that goal.

When U.S. voters first elected Barack Obama president in 2008, some people heralded the election of the nation’s first black president as a sign the days were behind us when issues of race carried any weight in the U.S. Alas, four years hence, it seems those pundits were premature in their optimism.

Jan. 21 was an historic day in the U.S. Not just because America’s first black president was sworn in for a second time, but also because the event happened on Martin Luther King Day, celebrated annually on the third Monday of each January.

In our nation’s history, King led a nonviolent civil rights movement against racial discrimination in state and federal law. The push to establish a federal holiday in his honor began shortly after he was assassinated in 1968. Ronald Reagan signed the law creating the federal holiday in 1983.

Though the federal holiday was first observed on Jan. 20, 1986, it wasn’t officially observed in all 50 states until 2000 — just nine years before Obama became the first black President of the United States.

Gone from the landscape of the president’s re-election and inauguration Monday were those pundits four years ago who said that race no longer matters in the U.S.

In our personal lives — would that it were not so — we’ve also noticed a change in who is welcome at the figurative dinner table that seems directly tied to Obama’s re-election. While matters of politics have always been hotly debated issues, in the past few years there has been a noticeable shift toward making presidential politics too personal.

Let Martin Luther King Day serve to remind us to always distinguish between a person, their actions and meaningless details like skin color.

So go ahead, question the president. Take issue with his policies. Dislike him as a person and a politician. Call him a socialist or a Nazi. It’s all protected under the First Amendment.

But then take a step back and remember that accurate portraits of people are not painted using mile-wide brushes. Accuracy — realism if you prefer — comes from detailed, careful brushwork and paint choices. It comes from contrasting colors, from distinguishing shadows and from highlights.

Martin Luther King Day is a challenge to each of us to engage in accurate portraitures of one another, even when political differences blind our sense of scale and perspective.

We know that not all brown-eyed people are short. We are certain that not all blue-eyed people like spinach. And we know beyond any doubt that not all people in the Valley like the president. And that’s OK.

What’s not OK is treating anyone badly because you don’t like the politics of the president, who happens to be a black man.