 Aloha, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. This show is the state of the state of Hawaii and I'm your host Stephanie Stull Dalton. Today we have a guest to talk to us about the day we are celebrating because it is January 17th. It's our celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. So for this day, I have a colleague who will talk with us about the meaning of Martin Luther King's Day here in Hawaii, perhaps then also around the world. So I'd like to welcome Dr. Wesley Boykin. And welcome, Wesley, and thank you so much for coming. Hello, it's really my pleasure to be here. Oh, I'm really, yeah. We're really pleased to have you join us for this show on Think Tech Hawaii. And Wesley's from Global Vision Connections, which is international learning opportunities and he has a very large CV, curriculum V and I resume that I'm sure he'd be happy to send you any time when you do see his URL for his website come up. So Wesley, let's talk about the Martin Luther King Jr. Day and let's start with you talking about it from your point of view and its meaning for you and your awareness that has grown with it. Yes, whenever I think of this holiday, I have to go back into past history and think and remember exactly how it came about. All of the struggles and the people involved in trying to get civil rights freedom for people of color, particularly African-Americans, black people who live in the United States. So for me, it is a time of reflection. It is a time to think back on those who paid the way for me to be here, paid the way for all of us to be able to live in a pluralistic society, to reflect back on what it truly means to have and to have not and to know the difference between what's important and what's not important. It also is a time for me to reflect on the future of what works and you still need to be done, how to build more positive relationships in this country, not just in this country, but abroad, how to get people more so than ever, particularly in the current climate, to live together and not just get along, but to really relate and understand and to learn about each other in such a way that my child is your child. Your child is my child and that together we will have a much, much better future in America. Well, thank you for that deep sharing. I know that you're not here in Hawaii with us. I believe you're close to the East Coast and maybe in the snow, even. Sorry about that, but it can be beautiful too. So tell us a little bit about how you celebrate. I know you've been here to Hawaii often and you know it well. So with that context in mind too, we're talking, but tell us how you celebrate the day as you've come to know better how to do that over the years that we've had it. Generally, and I say generally because it did not happen this year, I am currently in North Carolina. I am in the eastern part of North Carolina and the celebrations here occurred on Saturday and Sunday. Consist of the usual activities that I'm familiar with, a program, a reflection through poetry, song, and sometimes dance, and a freedom ride where we simply do a commemorative ride to remember those that actually used to walk and struggle through their walks, like the example of Selma, but we do a freedom ride to make sure that we and our youngs stay connected to those days that got us where we are. But I normally take time to reflect on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King. There are so many. It was sometimes I think about all of the sayings, all of the writings that he did in his brief lifetime and the impact that it is still having on all of us all of these years later, these decades later. So I take time to reflect on those words, what meanings it had at the time, what must have happened for people to be able to project through words, heart-filling projections of what's going to be happening in the future, the dreams of it all and that we have actually made a lot of those dreams out of our reality. But I reflect on the good. I reflect on the good things we must continue to do and what it means to our entire nation. It just, again, it's a major time for reflection for me. It's a time of tears and it's a time for tears of joy and tears of pain because there are so many that gave their lives that did not have an opportunity to see the advances that we have made. Wesley, you know, I often, I don't often, but it did occur to me today that from listening to some of the discussions that are pointing on on the media that what if we hadn't gotten the holiday through? What if we hadn't been able to instantiate this holiday in our national calendar? It's a federal holiday that everybody attends to. Do you think that we would be as imbued with King's wisdom and values and would we be where we are? What had difference has that holiday made? It's a real difficult question for me to answer, Stephanie, because I don't, I see the materialistic, I see the opportunistic advances that have been made, but in terms of people relationship, people respect, love and so forth, I don't know how to answer that. I think when Martin Luther King was envisioning his dream and vision for a future, he talked about his little children and they are not being judged on the color of their skin but the content of their character. I really don't know if our advances have achieved the entire dream. Major parts of the dream, significant parts of the dream have been accomplished, but there are a lot of relational aspects of his dreams that will lead to more fair play and equity and equality of governance as well as through love and all aspects of our daily living that I don't yet know if they have been fulfilled. But where we would be if we had not achieved the holiday status, I don't know if that per se would have made a difference but there was a lot of thinking around making it a holiday. It wasn't just a day of celebration to dance and laugh and have fun. It was envisioned that this holiday could some way touch the lives of all people, particularly those people that are in power, political power, economic power, social power and that they would understand why equality is so important in this country, that they will make sure through their understanding that enduring understanding that they would have greater positive regard for all people, not just my children, not just my neighbor's children, but all children and that the award, the highest compliment would be those people of power at any level in any aspect of society would accept all children as our future, all children as my children. And I think that's where we need to be focused. That's the source of my reflection and that's the source of my dreams for a better future. And no matter all of the achievements we have made, we can see, we can feel through the last few years in our society why we need more and greater leaders with greater visions, more positive visions, more inclusive visions. Well, one contribution of Dr. King seems to be very, very, it's significant, if you will agree, is that the concept of a nonviolent approach to revolution. Is that not huge? And is that going to endure Wesley, especially with regard to what we're undergoing now in our country, what are you thinking about that? What's the chance? Those people who live, breathe and really aspire to be good Christians. That will, the concept of nonviolence will always endure. Reason it must endure and will endure is that in order to make sure it happened, those who are quote unquote real Christians, believe in practicing Christians, have to make sure that they are able to identify those that are just simply Christians by word. We have to focus on the deed. And so I really believe that a greater focus on the goodness of people, their deeds, it will sustain nonviolence and any other community building type efforts to achieve long-term enduring success. But I do believe nonviolence will endure. I do believe that there will still be violence in the world. It always has been, but the approach is based upon good, positive community will prevail. Well, that gives us a bit of a segue. I think since you've traveled internationally and studied other countries and visited and convened there, can you tell us a little bit about what, is there an awareness of Dr. King there and his message? Do you think that, can you talk a little bit about what you know of that? I have traveled extensively throughout the continent of Africa, Asia, South America, as well as Europe. As of late, I have been traveling more extensively in Africa and South America, particularly Africa than any other continent. I can say to you that there is a big gap between the consciousness, the awareness, the understanding of the efforts of civil rights. It's my reality through my learning that I can say that there's a greater level of understanding in the young and many African countries than in the young in America. I'm speaking particularly of African American minorities as well as many Anglo-Americans are the young. They assembled street tests randomly done throughout the country. Several questions, who's Martin Luther King, who's Malcolm Mets, and you could go down the line and you would be amazed at the number of I don't knows that you get. You would be impressed by the deep conversations and questions you get from people of the same age in another culture. Particularly the African nations. They study us, they learn us, and they fully understand the struggle we went through to a greater degree, which leads to tremendous appreciation of where we are now. I think we sometimes forget that America, I'm not many people, but it can occur that in America we forget that we were once a colony. So when you're traveling around as we have had our struggle at that level of that 18th century situation. So others have had it for much longer and are still struggling. Do you notice that there's any more awareness with those countries who are out of colonization and struggling still to get independent and democratic? What do you see going on there? It varies by country, but there's a common thread through them all. Ethiopia prides itself in being the only country in Africa that was never fully colonized. They never became a colony of any of the foreign land. So there's some awareness and pride in them being the birthplace of Christian based upon their history, their teaching and philosophy, the birthplace of Christianity and the birthplace of the Christian church that was never disrupted by or through colonization. So they have a connectedness that some other lands in Africa and particularly African-Americans and many people in America that we don't have. The disconnect here is so great compared to disconnect between now Mediapast and our history, our long-term history. The disconnect is so great here and it is even in those countries that were colonized, they never got disconnected from their past. In fact, I can't think of a single country, there are certain individuals or maybe groups that were totally disconnected from their origin as in America. So there's a greater, there's a big divide in Africa and here. And that is one of the reasons why I started the learning tools with Global Vision Learning Tools is because there is no group of people. There's no group of people. And the United States that are more disconnected from their heritage than African-Americans. No group of people in America has ever been banned from understanding, learning and talking and knowing their history by African-Americans. So once civil rights, Martin Luther King, the era of Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement had quote unquote won, it became more of a celebration of now and where we will go with less reflection on where we came from than who we are. So that disconnect still exists to a great degree. I personally believe based upon all that I've seen and learned that that is partially the reason for the big divide, the differentiated divide within the social indicators, educational indicators and many other indicators in America with African-Americans. Well, can you talk about that a little bit more specifically what that means to people maybe in certain places? What does that actually look like? That African-Americans do not have access to information or have never been afforded information about their origins. Is that the? That's it, but not as simply as that. Whenever I was doing my doctoral work, I did a lot of reading, not just always by choice. My professors had a role in that, reading on some of the theories around the culture of poverty. In my world, my life, I use the term cultural understanding. I use terms like learn helplessness and hopelessness. I use words like community often. That learn hopelessness, learn helplessness exists in large part because people had no idea of their past. It became a point in America where the majority of the people had no knowledge, no awareness of their past other than the immediate past from slavery to where we are. And that impeded their vision of hope for greater connection to their origin. So we had to create a lot of things. Black people in America, enslaved people had to create a marriage ceremony, jump in the broom. We had no knowledge of what it was because it was banned. You couldn't talk about it, you could lose your life. You couldn't speak the language and there were things done to prevent that. So fast forward to where we are now. That sense of learn helplessness, that culture of poverty is compounded by the sense of learn helplessness. Helplessness is helping ourselves at the inability to help ourselves get out of something that we hope for that is more connected, more meaningful. But generally the hopes that we have are built upon this new sense of a culture, not the broad culture that other groups in America still maintain because they were never forced to give it up. And they passed that knowledge, those images, those stories from generation to generation. And that's why you have many groups having pilgrimage back to their motherland. And African-Americans were told to hate their motherland. And you will be surprised at the number of people who will argue with you if you were to use the word African to them. Connection is gone and the hope to connect is a struggle to rebuild. That is astonishing. I shouldn't be astonished, I should have been educated. You begin to feel and see how it impacts learning in our formal learning settings. You begin to see how it impacts community's interaction in areas where people don't feel that they own are really connected. It's somebody else's anyway. So the love, the community isn't the same as if they were part of their own. And by connecting, I reconnecting with the continent of Africa, tribal Africa, people begin to see, well, I really have it better than I thought. Well, see ways of which I can make my home, my community much better. I can refocus, redirect my energies now and think of less of the hope. There are many institutions and many individuals that will still deal with the political hope but we have to deal with community. And it's a combination of the dreams of Martin Luther King, it's a combination of the vision of where we are now as a community by Malcolm X and many others. We thought they were divided so far apart but now fast forward to today, we see how closely connected they were for overall community, not just of African Americans but of all people in America. Well, that is interesting. You take us back to King too. So now, did Dr. King address any of this or was this, there were obviously choices that had to be made about the message and how to focus it, et cetera. But you mentioned Dr. King, did he relate to this immediate culture versus the huge long-term culture that we all have come from? There are scholars who are better able to dialogue on that particular aspect of Dr. Luther King's word than I could ever be. I can only say that in the 50s to 60s and beyond, there were immediate needs that need to be addressed. That, and they did not get addressed immediately, immediate and many times meant one year, two years, three years down the road. But the struggle was real and it was very pervasive and it was immediate at the time. I can say that I like to hope that those conversations took place, that the planning wasn't for if we get bread, what are we gonna do about growing the wheat? I like to think that they talked about making bread but actually getting the ingredients to make the bread and then making the bread as well as growing wheat for the long-term. I like to think that those conversations happened for what I have learned from my reading and my conversations, there were planning for a future beyond the idealistic dreams of one day we will be judged. But we know that Martin Luther King was killed, was assassinated, was murdered far too soon. And we also know that there were many organizations that came about as a result of the successes and the achievement. But we still find ourselves where we are now and we're talking about what we need to do. So that's an indicator as to how much has been done. Yes, yes, and certainly much has been done as certainly we see in his Washington DC, you know, a sculpture where, you know, he's moved mountains, he moved mountains very easily and he managed to be portrayed in that manner which I think is phenomenal. When you're traveling and talking and you're obviously going with others there and some of whom are African-American, do they seek to understand what other countries think of America's civil rights movement? Do you think, and do you find out about what they think of it? Yes, we do, and it varies and some of the opinions are good, some are not so good, but none of them are ugly that I have experienced. Oftentimes, African-Americans get viewed as Americans and whatever associations they have with Americans, sometimes they are transferred to African-Americans. All Americans in some places are rich, period. All of you are rich. So sometimes that is the opinion. Some, Stephanie, I've been in places where people, countries, almost everybody is seen sometimes, so have women. Everybody run up to me asking me for my autograph. So I'm a basketball player and I'm not tall enough to be a Korean and do a jabar, but in certain places, I'm black, I'm tall, I'm slim, I must be a basketball player, give me your autograph. Literally, I hit a long line of about 100 people in Beijing working on their autographs, but to them, I was a mountain. And there are stereotypes even in Africa, some of us. Many people really think that everyone loves rap and that we dance, but for the most part, when we take the time to talk, we visit homes, we visit community centers. We have meetings, convenings with the elderly of the tribes. We go to universities. We go to schools. We always do those things. We participate in the naming ceremony. By showing that level of respect and desire to learn them, we get it right back. By wanting to convene with the elders, we are not leaving this country and I'm not approving this itinerary until there is a meeting with the elders. There is a visit to a minimum of one school and a university and we want to interact. That's why we call it global vision connections and that we want to learn, we want to respect. And you must learn to respect in order to unite. And those are the three key words that we try to convey. And we are learning about them just as they are learning that Wesley Boykin is not a basketball player in America. Wonderful to hear that the Kapuna are high, which we call the elderly in the Hawaiian. They're high on your list for connecting and learning from it. That seems so wise. We're almost out of time. Is there anything else you'd like to say about your organization in relation to Dr. King or just about Dr. King? You're welcome. Yes, the Global Vision Connection works with travel agent. I'm not a travel agent. I'm a planner of educational opportunities, learning opportunities and connecting people with people. But I work with TPT based in California when I do trips to the Middle East, Egypt and countries in that area. I work with our co travel agency out of Chicago when I do West Africa. And for the first time I'm using them to do East Africa, we always leave the group tour, always leave the Saturday after July 4th. No matter what day it is, if July 4th is on a Saturday, we leave the following Saturday. And we range anywhere from 10 to 15 days. This year we would depart, I think Saturday after the 4th is July 9th that we will leave there and we will return around the 22nd, I think we will be visiting Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. There are small groups staying on after Ethiopia instead of coming back to the United States, they would be going to Dubai. And so that's a bonus, mostly for the ladies. We're all eager to get back out there and see the world after all of our containment by this viral threat. So hopefully your trip will be able to go and we'll all be able to join in. So take a look at Dr. Boykin's website and see how much you're interested in going so far away from Hawaii if you are. But I really appreciate, Wesley, you're coming on and sharing on this special day. And I've learned a lot from what you had to say and I think the viewers too will say that they've some new insights from what you've had to say to us. I'm really amazed at how much you have covered in this very brief show. But I really appreciate it and wish you luck. So let's stay in touch and maybe you can come back and tell us a little bit more about it. And I'll sign off as Stephanie Stoll-Dalton, the host for the state of the state of Hawaii. And this is Think Tech Hawaii. And thank you for viewing and mahalo for being here with us. Thank you so much.