In 1967 I learned through TV and comments in my dorm that Martin Luther King, Jr. was going to Atlanta, GA on August 16, 1967. There he gave is famous speech: “Where Do We Go From Here?

I was quite surprised when I received a call from the radio station I had worked for in Chile asking me to cover the demonstrations. I did. I talked a little about how this Baptist pastor and leader of civil rights and promoter of nonviolent civil disobedience had gained many followers. I also talked about how, in the last 2 years, he was opposing the Vietnam War and started a big campaign against poverty. I ended my report talking about how people, like waves on the sea, chanted on the streets, “We shall overcome”. Yet they have not, in spite of the election of a black president in 2004. The gap between people of different colors and well-to-do people in America seems bigger because of the Democrats. They insist on promoting and encouraging the race-hating system they have always promised to fix but they keep it alive for their own interests.

Being in Georgia in 1967 was interesting. I, unexpectedly, found myself surrounded by people who hated others based on the color of their skin. Later, in Texas, I learned that I was considered brown or Hispanic just because I was born in South America. A friend from Spain, however, a real Hispanic to me, was considered Caucasian. Go figure! Since I was born in Chile but one of my grandfathers was from Belgium and the other came from a French-origin family, I become an “Other” in all documents that ask for race from then on.

However, when I started attending a church in Miami, one very devoted and prudish lady approached me during the break between Sunday School and the service, and asked me if I wouldn’t prefer to go to a Spanish-speaking Church with my “own kind.”

These kinds of reactions to my, obviously, non-American origin caused me much pain for a long time. I was often hurt by the lack of acceptance of my accent, my slightly tan skin, and my high academic achievements, which seemed to cause real problems for some of my classmates at the university.