“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.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the visual arts, color theory , invented by Sir Charles Lemieiux from England, is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations. Wikipedia

I possess an unusual characteristic I want to share with you: I am color blind.

Not in the literal sense of the term, which would make it extremely difficult to be a designer, but from an early age my life experiences have developed in me an almost inability to identify people based upon the color of their skin.

Even more remarkable may be the basis for this writing: because of my own experience, I truly believe it is possible for all of humanity to shake off generations of racial stereotypes, prejudices, and perceived ethnicity-based differences to instead inhabit and embrace the amazing dream of a most amazing man whose birthday we recognized in America yesterday: Martin Luther King, Jr.

I want to share with you some of my personal experiences in hopes that you too may take on an active role in the realization of this dream. King’s radical redesign of a country’s dysfunctional and ignorant color theory can come to fruition, but only when each of us identifies and perpetuates our personal, individual responsibility in making it happen.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and from 3^rd grade through my senior year in high school I lived in the city itself. Even back in the 1970s the Bay Area was a unique melting pot of ethnicities, cultures, sexual lifestyles and more. I know this prevailing attitude of tolerance and acceptance played an integral part in the development of my color blindness. Living in a society that recognizes and even celebrates the differences in people without criticism, judgment or negative comparison and competition is key to developing new visions, attitudes and social characteristics.

But one of the most significant contributors to my color theory was the home I grew up in. My parents were somehow carriers of this color blind gene, and they lived their lives in ways that purposed to insure that their children inherited its life-giving, eye-opening qualities.

When I was four years old, my parents brought home a new baby sister. Overjoyed to have a new sibling for my younger brother and me, we embraced our new family member with the wide-eyed innocence of positive ignorance. Yes, I said ignorance. Because we didn’t realize, at our young ages and as members of a color blind family, that our new sister’s skin was considerably darker than our own. We didn’t understand that she could not possibly be our biological sister, nor did we have any capacity for comprehending the process of adoption. We just knew she was an adorable, chubby 2-month-old baby sister, and we loved her as only big brothers can.

I don’t know at what age we began to understand that our sister was adopted or of another race than us. The fact is, it really was unimportant at that point because for all we knew up until then was that she was our flesh and blood. Family. Nothing else mattered, especially the color of her skin.

We grew up in a primarily black neighborhood in SF, and we bore the initial brunt of being the “white boys” on the block, taking our beatings and verbal abuse from the other neighborhood kids. But it wasn’t long until they realized we didn’t see them as “black”. We just saw them as other kids that we wanted to play basketball and football and ride skateboards with. Soon they turned from racial-driven antagonists to our friends, and the radical redesign of the neighborhood’s color theory was in motion. Similar things happened in our schools, where segregation was obvious, though less pronounced than before the civil rights movement. The more my siblings and I proved that we didn’t see others by skin color, the more others began to stop identifying us in the same manner.

Because of this, I grew up exposed to all types of music, especially the old school R & B and funk. In high school I DJ’d house parties with my two friends, Tyrone and Chino. Yes, a white guy partnered with a black guy and a Latino guy. We called ourselves “The Three Funkateers” and we spread the radical color theory redesign with every party we pumped music into. Many kids were amazed just at the site of us.

In my senior year of high school my family moved to Hawaii for my dad to take on a new pastoral job. The islands have their own brand of racism, primarily due to a history of white missionaries landing with determination to make the inhabitants “civilized”, all but destroying their local culture, language and identity. Still many years later there is a resurgence of Hawaiian pride in culture and heritage, but it is tarnished with the hatred and pain of the past. The five years I spent there exposed me to this, and I did my best to propagate my color theory among those that I came into contact with. I also learned and was shaped quite a bit more by the startling reminder of our modern society’s struggle with racism.

Fast forward to 2001, when I moved my young family to a Northern California suburb to become a full-time Worship Pastor at a Southern Baptist church. This particular church was nationally recognized as one of the most multi-cultural congregations in the country. At the time, the Senior Pastor was black, the Youth Pastor was Mexican, and I was the new white Worship Pastor. We used to be extremely proud of the fact that when you looked at the congregation on any given Sunday, you could not determine a racial majority. This is very unusual in churches, which are often joked about as being the most segregated place on earth every Sunday morning.

Because of my upbringing and musical background I was a perfect fit for this group. Armed with a 30-voice gospel choir and a full 11-piece band, I could lead them in a rock song one moment, followed by a soulful gospel number, then right into a hip hop Kirk Franklin song with rap and scratching turntables. The next five years the church grew exponentially and leaders from all over the country came to try to figure out how we managed to break the racial barriers that pollute so many Sunday morning gatherings.

This is when I really began to really become aware of my color blindness. It happened when I realized everyone who was trying to figure out the “secret” to our “multi-cultural success” was asking the wrong questions, and even with the best of intentions they were shining the light on their own racial stereotyping and failure to embrace MLK’s radical color theory redesign.

“How do you pick the songs you sing?”

“How do you get all the different musical backgrounds and styles of the musicians to blend together so well?”

“Did your search committee set out to hire pastors of three different races?”

You see, they didn’t get it. They were still operating with their eyes alone, identifying success as a blending of skin colors and assigning musical styles to an ethnicity. From my perspective, I never set out to master the ability to blend different cultural musical styles in a way that would grow the church. I just set out to be me. It just so happened that I am color blind, so being me worked really well in that particular context.

It only lasted for five years because there came a point where my wife and I realized we were no longer enamored with the purpose of growing the largest multicultural church on the West Coast. I also think there is something intrinsically contradictory with proudly identifying a group as “multicultural”. Doesn’t that signify that we are yet again identifying the members of that group by the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character?

My wife and I have progressed to being more enamored with growing our own family and being of value to our society, and that was becoming more and more difficult in the context we found ourselves in. So we moved away and spent the next 2 years back in Hawaii reshaping our family and our direction in life.

A little over a year ago we made a decision to move to northern Florida. I won’t go into the details that got us here, but this is my first experience with anything close to the southern USA. I have been appalled to see that racism – or at least the old school color theory – is still very alive and well in the south more than any other place I’ve been. It’s obvious that this is a heritage that continues to be passed down to the next generation.

Which leads me to my conclusion and overall point of this somewhat long diatribe.

If Martin Luther King, Jr.’s radical color theory redesign is ever going to sit firmly in its rightful place as not just a dream, but a mindset that is an integral part of the soul of every human being, it has to start with the individual.

Yes, movements and multitudes make headlines and grand statements and even some change. But it is all fruitless until you and I stop identifying people by the color of their skin and start recognizing them by the content of their character.

My color blindness was shaped first and foremost by my parents. Most racists can say the same thing – it’s what they saw in their own home and what they were taught. My wife and I are doing our best to pass the color blind gene on to our children, and so far it seems that it is taking.

Propagating the new color theory is simultaneously an act and a state of being. It can’t be faked. It must be believed in the depth of your soul. When this is truth in your own life, those around you will be impacted, even without you so much as trying. And when you do set out to make a radical difference in your society, steering it towards King’s redesign, you will see change happen. Real change. Lasting change. Because you will pass it on and it will be embraced by others, then passed on by them. Want to see something go viral? Try unconditional, color blind love of your fellow man. Nothing is more contagious.

It may take more generations, but we cannot just wait for it to happen. What will you do today, and tomorrow, and the next day to influence your world toward Martin Luther King, Jr.’s radical color theory redesign? Start now. I dare you.

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