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Honolulu Lite
TODAY is Martin Luther King Day. It's a day off for a lot of people. And, like a lot of holidays, people will enjoy the day without really thinking about what the it means. Hawaii’s
race relations
to the foreThankfully, the day has not become a huge commercial vehicle for advertisers like a lot of holidays. There aren't many Martin Luther King holiday sales. A friend worried that some national mattress factory might one day cave in to the financial possibilities of MLK Day and run an ad that said something like, "He had a dream. And so can you. On this beautiful queen-sized mattress, on sale today for a special price of ..." Well, you get the idea. No one would do that, would they?
But I was shocked several years ago. I happened to have a tee time on Martin Luther King Day at a local golf course and the course was charging "holiday rates," higher than the usual daily rates.
I don't think Mr. King was expecting his ideals of equal justice and respect for human dignity to be translated into a golf course honoring him by charging higher prices for the privilege of hitting a little ball around several acres of land. Then again, there's a certain poetic justice, considering that many private golf courses throughout America's history discriminated against people of color.
Maybe King, who I suspect never set foot on a golf course, would get a chuckle out of the idea that golf fees for a bunch of badly dressed white people were being jacked up in honor of him. The famous Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., where the Masters Golf Tournament is played, didn't accept black members for decades.
Under a lot of pressure, that changed. When Tiger Woods, who is part African-American, won the Masters by something like 85 strokes over the rest of the field a couple of years ago, it was refreshing evidence that the country is moving in the right direction. (And it gave new historical meaning to the term "Master").
If Martin Luther King were alive today he might enjoy marching up to the first tee of Augusta with Tiger and saying, "So, son, what club do I use to hit one of those Mercedes in the parking lot?"
Of course, the local golf course that celebrated Martin Luther King Day by overcharging its loyal customers was only interested in one color: green. If it could squeeze a few more bucks out of players in honor of international terrorist Usama Bin Ladin, it'd do that, too. It might even offer special sales for golf clubs. ( Do you have trouble getting out of sand traps? Well, BLAST your ball out of the sand with the new BIG BIN LADIN SAND WEDGE! Usama knows sand and we know clubs!)
THE irony is that most golfers in Hawaii are not white, country club types. They are people from every race and the golf course in question was public, not private. So, the whole "holiday rate" thing was pretty disgusting.
Hawaii's come a lot further than the rest of the country on racial relations. We take it for granted that people of different races marry, socialize, work and live together in relative harmony.
Our differences are not a matter of separation, but a source of entertainment, as through the comedy of Frank DeLima, which reminds us of how far we've come. We've achieved what Martin Luther King could only dream about. In Hawaii, race is not an issue, it's a celebration. On this day, let's just hope that the rest of the country can catch up.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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