Trying to Understand This Moment
At 64 I have lived
longer than most. I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. in the Maryland
suburbs. I was 12 when Dr. King was assassinated, the first time when I would
have been aware of black people’s anger. I knew black people before, but being around them was not the same as entering their experience.
In my elementary
school grade level, there were only two black students, two girls. One was a
chubby, extroverted, smiling girl, last name of Banks, (even at that age I
remembered last names rather than first) who had taken acting classes and could
do recitations for us. I was friends with her; she came to my house after
school to play at least once, I remember. The other was a skinny, tall girl,
shy, who seemed to have a stoop in her posture and a slowness to her walk.
Whether it was a physical affliction or a part of her psychological makeup, I
do not know. She was quite a different person from Miss Banks, whom I think
today is probably still the life of the party.
In fifth and sixth
grade we learned to square dance. There were three classrooms per grade level
at our school. The other classes were allowed to have boy-girl square dancing.
Our class was not, because of the presence of Miss Banks and the girl whose
name I have forgotten. That was because boys would have to dance with them and
some parents did not want their sons dancing with black girls (that was not the
word used then). How do I know this? The
teacher said so. Whether she agreed with this or told us because she thought
the parents’ objections were ridiculous, I can’t say; it is strange that she
would tell us, though.
In junior high (7th
-9th grade) I do not remember any black students. In high school,
however, everything changed. It was the height of busing (1970-73) so our
county was redistricted and the children in our neighborhood were sent to a
different school, closer to the District of Columbia, to achieve, I suppose,
more racial balance. Whether it did, I do not know. I just knew I was going to
a different high school than all the neighborhood kids before me had. I was
going to Bladensburg, not Duvall. It really made sense; Bladensburg was
relatively close, which makes me wonder if the white students prior to my group
had not been bused before to keep them in a white school.
At 17 I moved 600
miles away to attend a fundamentalist school in a Southern city. I have lived
near that city now for 47 years, except for one year in southern Ohio. We lived in a “black” neighborhood for eight
years. I tell you this to say I have been around black people all my life, in
different ways. I still do not pretend to understand them or their experience.
I think most people are like me in that regard, and for that reason I wish some
of us would stop acting like we are experts on the lives of black folks. We are
not.
Of course, social media makes us think we all are experts on racism, epidemiology, politics, whatever. And that we should tell everyone about it, like George Costanza's dad.
Most of my life I
have heard (sometimes stupid) white people do the following:
1. lower their voices when they say “black
people” as if whispering meant something, meant what they were going to say
absolved of their racism, or protected from being judged for their ignorant
attitudes;
2. assert that black people had it easy
because of civil rights laws, welfare, liberal whites, or affirmative action;
3. claim they were disadvantaged by
affirmative action (there may be some instances here, but if they were
displaced from one college or job they probably had an easier time getting in
elsewhere);
4. blame black people for all
problems faced by black people;
5. not get the difference between Black
Lives Matter and All Lives Matter (even as dense as I am, I could tell the
difference; however, this is not an endorsement of their platform, especially
if it advocates violence);
6. say Dr. King’s work was invalid because
of his womanizing, well acknowledged now; that he was a huckster on the level
of Al Sharpton and just caused problems (and these same people overlook Trump’s
record with women);
7. stay as far away from black people as
they could.
Now, this is not to
say I have never scratched my head at some things that black people do or say,
some aspect of their culture, that I have never wondered, “Really? Do you
really not see how that might be a problem?” I would be a dishonest fool to say
I like everything about the black culture in America. And I really, really
don’t like being made to feel guilty because I couldn’t control my parentage. I
doubt my ancestors owned slaves; they either did not livein the South before
the Civil War, or they were very poor. Some did, however, fight for the Confederate
States of America, I suppose because they were expected to.
But we are all guilty
of logical fallacy when it comes to race; a good course in logic would help a
lot of our problems. We commit horrible hasty generalization (the basis of
stereotype); we commit the fallacy of composition. Let me explain. If a
basketball team had 10 of 12 players who were black, and 2 white, that would
not be called a black basketball team. Because a certain percentage of white
people in this country are truly racist, that does not mean the whole country
is racist. That would mean that the 13% who are black are also racist, by that
logic.
Is racism a problem
in this country? Of course it is. Is the country less racist than it was? Of
course it is. Do black people still face disadvantages and disparities? Good
grief! We need look no further than the COVID deaths; by any metric black
people were hurt much more by it, for I think multiple reasons: lack of access
to health care, long-term morbidity issues such as heart disease and diabetes
and obesity; and probably that those in nursing homes, where far more of the
people have died than anyone wants to admit, were not up to standard on
protection. Is this all their fault? Or all white people’s fault? Or the
government’s fault?
All of these
questions are extremely complicated, but
my flesh wants to scream, “It’s not my fault!”
I didn’t create this
mess. I don’t discriminate. I treat people equally. I search my heart to ask
“Do I hold ill will against black people because they are black?” and hope I
can say, NO.
YET, if the Holy
Spirit searches my heart, and I listen, that NO becomes less vociferous and
loud and I see the truth.
But .. . even if I
eschew responsibility for this mess, I can’t eschew responsibility to obey God
and his gospel in response to this mess, which, I’d like to remind people,
didn’t start this year. (By the way, I’m far more personally involved with the
Arbury murder than the George Floyd death, by simple geography if nothing else. I understand most of the concern now is over
police brutality toward minorities; Arbury’s death, to me, is more about pure racism and concocted white fear of the black presence and consequent attempts to
justify our concoction—the root of
our sin.)
Whether I don’t want to hear about the
validity of these protests or not, doesn’t matter. I don’t matter and my opinion
and my social media posts don’t matter except to the point I can do something
positive and gospel-aligned in the life of one specific person.
And that’s my
conclusion. Don’t think about millions protesting. Think about the one person
of color in whose life you can make a difference.And stop being a hypocrite and be informed.
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