I've recently posted two pieces that were inspired by songs I'd been listening to, specifically "War/No More Trouble" and "Biko" from the Playing for Change album, "Songs Around the World."
For those who aren't familiar with this incredible and inspiring project, Playing for Change is the name given to on-going work that began in 2002. Mark Johnson and Whitney Kroenke, wanting to capture "the heartbeat of the people," traveled around the United States with a mobil recording studio, asking the different musicians they met to record the same songs. The result was the documentary film A Cinematic Discovery of Street Musicians.
In 2005, Johnson was walking down a street in Sana Monica, California, and heard the soulful voice of street musician Rodger Ridley singing the Ben E. King classic, "Stand by Me." Johnson asked Ridley if he would mind being recorded as part of an international collaboration, and Johnson ran off to get his recording equipment. A phenomenon was born.
To date, more than 200 musicians from around the world -- some quite well known yet most not -- working in a kind of collaboration that was not only impossible until recently, but entirely unthinkable. While the music is truly incredibly, he videos are perhaps even more so as they show us the international exchange.
Playing for Change is not just about the music, though. At least, not just about the music you and I can buy. On it's website it describes itself like this:
Playing for Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music. The idea for this project came from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.
[...]
The true meansure of any movement is what it gives back to the people. We therefore created the Playing for Change Foundation, a separate 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to building music and art schools for children around the world, and creating hope and inspiration for the future of our planet.
Projects like this give me hope. And music like this gets my spirits soaring!
This past Friday I wrote about how I was touched by the lyrics of a Bob Marley song, especially the way it is interpreted by the international musicians who came together under the auspices of the Playing for Change project. I noted how Marley's song, "War" caused me to reflect on the idea, the ideal of "colorblindness." Today I'm talking about how the Peter Gabriel song "Biko" feeds into my understanding of the Black Lives Matter / All Lives Matter discussion.
The song is about Steven Biko, the South African anti-apartheid activist about whom Nelson Mandela said, "they had to kill him to prolong the life of apartheid." There's a stanza in the song that has always struck me powerfully:
When I try to sleep at night, I can only dream in red;
the outside world is black and white, with only one color dead.
When I hear people who say that we should come together not under the banner "#BlackLivesMatter" but, rather, "All Lives Matter," these words often come to mind. As a person who sees himself as white, and who is seen by others as white, I am part of a group that has a very limited view of what life in the United States is like. The problem -- a problem -- is that we assume that what we see as the way things are is the way things are for everybody. Because of this, we often think that anybody for whom things aren't like this is doing something wrong -- they're not working hard enough, or they're sitting around waiting for handouts, or their anger over things past is getting in their way today, or that they get something out of their "victim" status and don't want that to change.
The reality, though, is that the way we folks who are seen to be white is decidedly not the way it is for people of color generally. And people of color are soon going to be the majority of people in our country. We nonetheless should not lose sight of the fact that apartheid was the law of the land in South Africa in spite of the fact that Blacks made up the vast majority of people in the country. It's not the numbers, it's the access to power. (But I digress.)
While it is certainly not true that African Americans (and other people of color) are the only ones who suffer, or are the only ones arrested for crimes or killed by the police, it is absolutely true that the preponderance of people who do are not people who others would see as white. This is a fact that has been, and is still, virtually invisible to the "mainstream" view of life in United States. And many, many people in that "mainstream" see the stories on the news giving major crime a black face and think that there's something wrong in the African American community. The reality is that there's a systemic problem in our country's core that has intentionally (and quite successfully, I might add) created conditions within communities of color that are just right for the growth of this "problem."
So while I go to sleep at night and dream in technicolor, I fully believe that there are people of color who "can only dream in red," and who wake up to a world when more often than not it's people who look like them who are ending up dead.
But I see some hope. I'm a preacher, so hope is something of an occupational hazard. (Or gift.) What I see is that for whatever reason(s) conditions are such that more and more of us who understand ourselves as white are having our eyes opened to this "other" reality that has long gone unseen among us. More and more folks are seeing this "other" truth about our society and are coming to the conclusion that things absolutely have to change.
So there's this other stanza in "Biko" that speaks to me:
You can blow out a candle, but you can't put out a fire.
Once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher.
May it be so, and may that fire be a cleansing fire that burns all that must be destroyed if the world so many of us dream of has any hope of growing.
I've been listening once again to some of the great music on the original Playing for Change Album, Songs Around the World. (And if you don't know about this amazing project, both where have you been and please go check it out right now. I'll wait.)
One of the songs they covered is Bob Marley's "War/No More Trouble." (Those two songs are often tied together.) As I'm listening to it lately I find that it's pulling together some of my thoughts about the idea that "colorblindness" is the ideal and that talking so much about race and racism actually exacerbates the problem. Check out these lyrics (which I've written to reflect the fabulous phrasing of the Playing for Change version):
Until
the philosophy that holds one race superior
and another
inferior
is finally
and permanently
discredited
and abandoned
everywhere is way (me say war)
until there are no longer first class
and second class citizens
of any nation
until the color of a man's skin
is of no more significance
than the color of his eyes
everything is war (me say war)
Note that it doesn't say, "the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes." That's what the advocates of colorblindness would say. (And they'd likely quote Dr. King's famous affirmation of a world in which people are "not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." See? Even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. says that color doesn't matter!
Well, not exactly. What Dr. King said was that he has a dream that one day that such a society will exist in which the color of one's skin doesn't matter. "Dream" indicates that it's not yet a reality; "one day" reminds us that it's not so today.
And Bob Marley wrote, "until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes ..." Until... I have a dream that one day...
And that's the problem (one of them!) that I have with the assertion that we should be acting as if this were a "colorblind" world. Because it's not. And, ironically, the only way to get to that promised land is for folks like me who think of themselves as white to see what people of color see and live with every day -- it is not that way now. Only by seeing clearly how it is do we have any hope of getting to the place where it should be.
And I believe that we will be able to get there one day. That one day people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. That one day the color of a person's skin will be of no more significance than the color of their eyes. One day. But the dream will remain a dream unless and until the reality of how things are is recognized, truly seen, and deeply understood by those of us who people see as white (who are, for the moment at least, still the majority of people in this country and who absolutely are the architects of our country's dominant -- and dominating -- culture).
