An Open Letter to All Those Who Write Open Letters

Even as the LGBTQ community celebrated the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act, there was another big decision made last week that actually set back the cause of civil rights in this country.  I am referring to the decision to declare that the part of the Voting Rights Act that allows the federal government oversight of the voting law changes in states that have a track record of civil rights violations.
In American terms, the struggle for racial justice and equality is an ancient battle that has soaked deep into the grain of our society, and anyone who has paid any attention to the culture of the deep south or the increasingly divided urban centers of the north will obviously note that racism and the division of white, black,  and brown people in this country is far from a thing of the past.
Racial justice has always been a rather emotional cause for me personally.  Despite growing up in a community where a lot of the black kids I knew seemed far from oppressed and in some cases had become bullies, I never doubted the humanity of people who looked different from me.  I suppose because I saw white kids and Hispanic kids doing the same thing, and I figured that people of any race could be utter jerks.  Actually, that was where my understanding of equality began, not with the nobility of the oppressed, but with the realization that we're all pretty much slime who will mistreat each other if we get half the chance.
It was rather refreshing to grow up and discover that other people did as well.  I have always treasured those moments when I see humans relating to one another as equals, and for a brief moment, I had hope that there might be a "grown up" world where dialogue replaced propaganda, and egoism was supplanted by reason.
Then the internet happened.
Suddenly all the trolls not only had a voice, but a rather powerful format to convey that voice.  And the 24 hour news cycle kicked into overdrive as the mindless talking heads that pass for reporters these days tried to keep up with the rapid dissemination of information that was now possible via Twitter and facebook, and now it seems that everyone wants to put in their two cents (including me).  The end result is not an open forum but a cacophonous mess of opinions and pseudo-facts that are often so obtuse that you need "fact-checking" websites.  Now you need to research just about anything you read to make sure that it is an actual thing that happened and not just a rumor.
The "open letter" phenomenon is basically what runs the internet, facebook posts, tweets, youtube videos, blogs,  they're all basically open letters.  People put them "out there" and no one is required to read them, but  sometimes large numbers of people do.
The problem with open letters is that they have a very poorly defined audience, they're just random comments from one person to a bunch of other people, and the author has no idea who they are, what their positions are, or what they believe.  Writers are basically trolling for people to agree with them or "like" their status.
Since I started talking about civil rights, I would like to offer, as a counterpoint to "open letter discourse," Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  You can find it here: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
It's long, I know, but it's well worth reading, especially now.  I can wait for you to come back.

Did you notice that he had a defined audience?  Did you notice that they were "fellow clergymen?"  Did you notice that he rather stunningly, addressed a specific concern?  Did you notice that he did not denigrate their concerns or call them names?  Did you notice how powerfully he got his point across without once sinking into the mud?  Did you notice how absolutely right he was about how things were (and still are) in our country?
MLK was writing to his colleagues, colleagues who had criticized him for being too impatient in his cause, colleagues who claimed to agree with him about the whole equality thing, but who just thought it needed a little more time.  King uses the Scripture, the history of the prophets, the theology of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Paul Tillich, he demonstrates that he's coming from the same intellectual neighborhood as they are.  He even trots out Martin Buber's idea of how segregation changes an "I - Thou" human relationship into an "I - It" relationship where the other is no longer a Thou, but an It, a Thing not a person.  Holy Prophetic moment Batman!  Open letters are not relational, they don't think of the audience with any sort of specific humanity, they are just portals to vent an opinion.  King persistently, even if he does get a little sarcastic at times, stays with his appeal to the Christian values of his specific audience and continues his assault on the specific idea that he and others like him ought to just "give it time."
Oh yeah, but he doesn't forget to mention that he's black, and that he feels crush of oppression a little more keenly than his white colleagues ever could.  It is abundantly clear that he is not concerned about them "liking" his status, he is focused on them understanding his cause.  The world he describes in that letter is not that far away, and it's sheer arrogance for SCOTUS to render an opinion that, after a mere 40 years, assumes that the "ancient" attitudes of places like Birmingham Alabama have somehow been magically amended.  To think that the time those southern Clergymen entreated MLK to wait for has somehow arrived is naive in the extreme.
Racism is still alive and well in the north, and I know people that live in the deep south who emphatically attest to the fact that it hasn't really gotten too much better than it was 40 years ago.  The silence and apathy of ignorance will not protect us from the harsh reality of human sinfulness.  For every one step we take towards equality we often take two steps back.  The steps forward are encouraging, but the overall progress is rather disappointing.
We need to rend our hearts not our garments, but until that happens we will just have to settle for laws that endorse Dr. Kings idea that "Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."  To abolish a law that forces states like Mississippi, Alabama and Texas to get approval before they tinker with who can vote and how they can go about it, is a lot like trusting Wall Street to judge what is safe to do with our money... oh yeah we did that.  Well then it's like letting insurance companies dictate how doctors can treat patients... oh yeah we did that too.
Sorry Martin, I guess we haven't really come that far.