“Black Lives don’t
just Matter. Black Lives Inspire. Black Lives Spread
Wisdom”
So you
know where I am right now? In the swamp
of change. Life as I know it is
inadequate and my world view has to change.
I am a product of white privilege and that has to change. Last time I was here, I was struggling with
the issue, in the church, of the leadership of women. I was raised with a powerfully biblical
mandated privilege of authority over women.
Took years of practical experience and intense personal imagination and
growth to recognize and begin to grow out of it.
So here
it comes again. It is going to sound naïve,
it is going to sound forced, it is going to sound half-baked, but that is my process
of growth. I have found myself
struggling with whether I should even post this, much less advertise it. The plan right now is to split the difference,
post but not advertise… Chicken? Maybe.
So here goes.
It may
seem inappropriate for a white man to talk about tokenism. But since it is a strategy of white
supremacy, it is one that needs to be talked about. What do I mean? Let me pull out a media reference from my youth,
from the television show “Good Times”.
Situation comedy placed in the Chicago public housing projects. One scene in particular comes to mind.
Michael
Evans, the youngest sibling, shared with his father that there was an African in
the crew of Christopher Columbus when he “discovered” America. John Amos-who played his father-was both
amazed and pleased at this knowledge.
And it is an important thing to know.
But when its done right, a ‘token’ like this can forestall how much more
needs to be done.
The
sign that is the title to this post speaks deep truth. It goes far deeper than just a conversation
about policing and minority communities.
Because, if we stop there, privilege continues to exercise its
power. It can be granted that black
lives are important. It can be granted
that all lives are important (when it is recognized from the positions of power). But if it can be taken that far and no
further, well, it does not challenge white supremacy so much as allow privilege
to redefine the terms and limits of the relationship.
“We”
(and it churns my gut to be inclusive in that way) can work it to our advantage
that offering a peaceful compromise will allow “us” to set the terms of a
cultural renegotiation. And when we put
the police officers on trial in Minneapolis, when we come to terms with the
protests that continue to rock the nation, we can perhaps tamp things down to
the uneasy ceasefire that has defined race relations since the Civil Rights
Movement without making fundamental changes.
At
least that is what I see from the ‘seat of privilege’.
Until our
cultural foundations shift, or are shifted, this could be enough, for the
status quo.
But the
status quo is racist. In the 1960’s it
was Martin Luther King Jr. who insisted to Nichelle Nichols that she remain on the
original Star Trek series because THAT is where change could be seen by the
television audience. And yet the piece
of television racial history carried away from Star Trek is the first interracial
kiss on network television. Not that
this moment did not have profound importance for the interpersonal
sensibilities of the nation. But the
Science Officer or the Engineer or the Helmsman or the Navigator would take
over command when the Captain went galivanting.
What about the episode where the Communications Officer, the one trained
as the first line of contact to another species, took command? That never happened.
Yes, I
probably should have prefaced that with a ‘nerd alert’.
It
would be an interesting task to ask people to consider who inspires them. Black Lives Inspire, but now many whites can
follow through with a challenge like that?
Black Lives Spread Wisdom, but how many of us can take that much beyond
Martin Luther King?
How
about the moment when Mohammed Ali was systematically pounding Ernie Terrell,
taunting him with “What’s My Name?”
Terrell had referred to Ali as Cassius Clay during a pre-fight interview
and that is where Ali made his stand, that he would not respond to his slave name. I would like to say this is a story I have
known and been moved by for much of my life instead of only recently finding it
out.
Now,
there are a whole lot of other issues that surround this fight. A system that pits a black man against a
black man in this battle, the environment of 1966 (year of my birth), and a
dozen other intersecting circumstances.
But Ali had a line and none could cross it. That is powerful. The moment of greatest regret I see in his
life is when he was placed in a no-win situation and had to distance himself from
Malcolm X.
I have
learned wisdom from his life. The choices
he made, in religion, in his career, in his life, I find myself looking them as
battlefield choices in the war behind the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. And it may be politically incorrect to speak
in ‘violent’ vocabulary now, but we are not yet in a place where we can all sit
down and have a beer together to work things out.
If
white privilege can get away with making a token gesture to satisfy and appease
those we have privilege over, we will.
But our souls are in peril until the day that we break that cycle and
see the true worth of all humanity.
Rev. Peter Hofstra
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