Metro

DR. KING'

Power Of Self-Determination

Freedom from racial expectation a King legacy, journalist says.

"You declare, my friend, that you do not
hate Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.'
And I say, let the truth ring forth from the
high mountain tops, let it echo through the
valleys of God's green Earth. When people
criticize Zionism, they mean Jews — this is
God's own truth. Anti-Semitism . . . has been
and remains a blot on the soul of mankind.
In this we are in full agreement. So know this: anti-Zionist is
inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so . ."

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Robert Sklar
Editor

W

ith the humility that he
exudes as one of Metro
Detroit's most-influential
journalists, Stephen Henderson reflected
on the uplifting juxtaposition of Barack
Obama becoming president the day after
America honored the memory of our
greatest civil rights activist, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
Henderson, newly named editorial
page editor of the Detroit Free Press, key-
noted the annual Martin Luther King
Jr. Commemoration held at the Max M.
Fisher Federation Building in Bloomfield
Township on Jan. 15, the actual birth date
of Dr. King, who would have been 80. A
student of nonviolent civil protest, King
inspired blacks and whites alike until
silenced by an assassin's bullet in April
1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel
in Memphis, where he had gone to support
the striking sanitation workers.
Martin Luther King Day, a federal
holiday, was celebrated Monday; Obama
became our 44th president Tuesday.
"This is a momentous time for anyone
to be talking about progress and civil
rights:' said Henderson, 38, a Detroit
native who is a graduate of University
of Detroit Jesuit High School and the
University of Michigan.
Addressing 65 Jews and non-Jews who
work in the Detroit Jewish community,
Henderson likened civil rights to "self-
determination and the freedom from
racial expectations." He defined these twin
tiers as "the ability to have others respect
your self-determination, your right to

be who you are and
do what you want to
do, without drawing
conclusions about you
based on your race,
color or creed."
"The ability to
define one's self and
cast one's own destiny:'
he added, "is almost
wholly dependent
on the freedom from
Stephen Henderson: "This is a momentous time for anyone to be talking about progress and civil rights."
racial expectations."
As examples of ste-
sumed to be a crook:' Henderson said.
during the late 1980s, and they expected
reotyping, Henderson
But once "the veneer of his defense
that,
largely
because
of
my
skin
color,
I'd
cited a black man dressed in a sweat suit
melted
in the glare of his spectacular
be
of
like
mind."
and Timberland boots but who may be
misbehavior:'
Henderson said, Free Press
To
their
utter
surprise,
Henderson
the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or one
readers
didn't
hesitate to bombard the
expressed
more
nuanced
and
moderate
dressed in a suit and tie yet could be an
newspaper with real anger.
views about race and racism, the nation's
underachiever. In both instances, you'd be
Kilpatrick "made it tougher for other
economic challenges and the disputes in
infringing on the man's state of self-deter-
African
Americans to escape the confining
the
Middle
East.
"My
determination
to
be
mination if you drew conclusions based
something different was an inconvenience, perceptions that so many others still har-
strictly on his race and apparel.
bor about us," the editor said. nd I must
at best, for them:' he said.
confess, I haven't even begun to think
He added, "I saw this manifest itself in
Coming Of Age
about how this region might recover from
other ways in college, too, and it wasn't
Henderson previously worked as a
always people of another race who brought that awful setback."
reporter, editorial writer and editor at the
Henderson went on to lament a January
racial expectations to the tablet'
Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune and the
2008 column in which he projected that
Knight Ridder Washington bureau, where
Obama is safe enough for white America
Applying Politics
he covered the U.S. Supreme Court from
to embrace his historic run for the White
Henderson turned to Kwame Kilpatrick
2003 to 2007. He stressed that he has
House, but also a threat to the racial neu-
and Barack Obama to further illustrate
enjoyed tremendous opportunity and has
trality that Americans crave. Henderson
how the relationship between self-deter-
never felt that race has held him back.
predicted a dire outcome of Obama's
mination and freedom from racial expec-
He did, though, recall his days as a
campaign. It was the time when African
tations stir our everyday lives.
new member of the editorial board at the
Americans had doubts whether Obama
For years, the former Detroit mayor,
Michigan Daily, the U-M student news-
had paid enough "black" dues and when
now jailed for his part in the famous text-
paper. "The editors had made clear their
white America was concerned about
message scandal, fought what seemed a
desire to bring more ethnic diversity to
Obama's link to a radical black minister in
their staff and had enthusiastically invited valiant battle against racial expectations,
Chicago.
Henderson said. "Because of the way he
me to join," he said. "But they were radical
dressed, the way he talked, the earring he
liberals who'd staked out extreme posi-
wore, he was typecast as a thug and pre-
Power Of Self on page A24
tions on the issues that roiled Ann Arbor

January 22 • 2009

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