MLK would add the words

Some things bear repeating. Freedom in all its forms, certainly. Freedom from legal discrimination, above all.

"From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form." - The Dalai Lama

Discriminating between oneself and others, considering one another unequal in value and thus, deserving of less or more rights and freedom, is alienating. Alienation is the opposite of what humans naturally seek and need - companionship, love. To work alone is to achieve less; to limit oneself to one perspective - to one life's experience - is to know less. To know less is to be underequipped; to be underequipped threatens survival. So for society to discriminate, to apply laws and respect rights unequally, is to handicap all.

A society is only as free as its most constrained class of citizen.

Our daughter attends a Quaker college. No, we're not Quaker, and neither are 90 percent of her fellow students. Yet we are learning a lot about, and from, their philosophies. Such as a lesson in what "equality" really means. I thought I knew. I thought I had a healthy and respectful understanding of what it means to be "different" or unpopular or poorly understood by what we foolishly call "mainstream society."

A truly free society has no such stream. There is no different. There is you. There is me. There is he. A collection of individuals who are equal and not the same. The more variety and the less that matters, the freer we are.

Just as Sunday's editorial described a similar lesson, I see from the patient and consistent application of the college's Quaker Principles and Practices - going out of their way to hear everyone from janitor to student to president (all addressed by first names as a matter of equal respect) on any issue of interest, free of judgments - that simply assuming one's knowledge of an individual or "group" is sufficient is to limit one's understanding of others. Worse, to assume that any number of people within that defined "group" have the same characteristics, aims, and opinions is ignorant, and harmful.

That is the very definition of prejudice.

Consider teenagers and young adults. The next phase in their maturity begins only when they realize, without feeling threatened or self-righteous, how little they know.

Discrimination and prejudice are like that. To let go of them is to accept that one can never know all, nor enough, to judge another in advance of knowing the person thoroughly, which is unlikely. That first step opens eyes to see, ears to listen, and minds to grow. If society denies one group the level of respect and legal right afforded another, we all suffer the loss not only of freedoms denied, but knowledge lost. Grouping ourselves at all is as limiting.

"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." - Martin Luther King Jr.

That champion of civil rights and their peaceful attainment was not a fixed being. The minister's biography reveals religious struggles and personal growth in his too-short life. These re-examinations of his beliefs contributed to the wisdom of his words, which emphasize respect for the experiences of others and, more importantly, the necessity of equal standing in society for every person.

Were he alive today, MLK would add the words. It's a shame we need to make laws to emphasize equal application, that we are so fearful that prejudice still enters legal, business, and civil relations. Yet it persists along with human fear and ignorance. At first the "words" were race. Then age and disability, preceded by gender, but only of one type. Yes, there are more types and no, it's not up to you and me to define another human being. No more than skin defines the inner person does any other physical aspect define his, her, or their (will English one day have a gender-neutral, singular pronoun?) identity.

You and I can never be what we ought to be - unoppressive and unoppressed - until every person is equally free. Now or later, we will add the words. The common goal of a free society makes that as inevitable as it is necessary.

Sholeh Patrick, J.D., is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].