In Memoriam; In Hope

It was one year ago today that an 18-year old young man and his friend were walking down the middle of a quiet street that weaves through apartment buildings and one-story homes.  He had been a credit shy of graduating with his class, but had just completed the necessary work and had been awarded his diploma about a week before.  He was scheduled to begin studying at a technical college a few days later.  Everything changed when a police cruise stopped that Saturday afternoon and told the young men to get onto the sidewalk.  What happened in the next 90 seconds is still a matter of contentious debate.

The official version of events -- the version that led a Grand Jury to decide not to indict the Officer involved -- is that one of the young men struggled with the Officer through his car window, trying to get his gun.  This led to the officer's gun being discharged, the two young men turning and running, and the Officer leaving his vehicle and giving chase.  After a moment the fleeing men stopped and turned toward the officer who then, in fear for his own safety, fired his gun multiple times.  Six bullets struck the young man, fatally wounding him.  Less than 90 seconds after Officer Daren Wilson first encountered Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson on Canfield Drive that Saturday, Brown lay dead.

Many of the elements of this official narrative continue to be in dispute.  The initial altercation may have been instigated by the way Officer Wilson first ordered the young men out of the road and onto the sidewalk.  The first acts of physical aggression may also have been on the Officer's part, and there are those who maintain that Michael Brown's hands were in the air in an obvious stance of surrender when he was shot.  

What cannot be disputed is the local and national response to these events.  In many ways the killing of Michael Brown -- an unarmed Black teenager -- at the hands of a White police officer catapulted the subject of the killing of young Black men into the national consciousness in a way that few things had.  Throughout the country protests sprang up -- some with elements of violent rioting; most with calm determination.  Even this became part of the discussion:  Why was the eruption of group violence in Black communities almost invariably called a "riot" when mass violence in white communities -- the turning over and setting on fire of automobiles by mobs of fans after a sporting event, for example -- were usually not?

The #BlackLivesMatter movement, which had begun after the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, took on a new visibility and a new intensity.  For many White Americans the shooting of Michael Brown created a new-found awareness of the issue of the murder of Black men (and women, and children) at the hands of the (often White) police.  And while this particular case is what sparked the conversation, in many ways it's details are not what's most important.  Certainly, for the sake of justice it matters precisely what happened that Saturday morning in 2014.  The Grand Jury's determination not to indict Daren Wilson is not the same thing as a a verdict of innocence and as long as there are unresolved questions there will be no peace for Michael Brown's family and friends.

In terms of the larger issues of the killing of young Black men at rates that far exceed any rational explanation, the specifics of the events of that day become somewhat less important.  That's because the issue from that perspective really isn't whether or not Officer Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown.  What matters most is that Michael Brown joins a long list of other men and boys:

Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Aura Rain Rosser, Tanisha Anderson, Roshad McIntosh, Darrien Hunt, Ezell Ford, Omar Abrego,  Kajieme Powell, Vonderitt D. Meyers, Jr., John Crawford III, Cary Ball Jr., Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Eula Love, Amadu Diallo, Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Malice Green, Tyisha Miller, Sean Bell, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell ... 

I'd originally collected those names for a blogpost I wrote back in December of 2014, and as I said then,  the list could go on ... and on ... and on.  And you'll notice that not all of those on the list are men and boys.  The rallying cry has been "Black Lives Matter" rather than "Black Male Lives Matter" because this systemic  and systematic devaluing of Black lives does not really favor one gender identity over another.  Yes, Black men (and boys) are killed and incarcerated at extraordinarily out-of-proportion rates, yet Black women, too, and Black transgender folk certainly face this too.

And it's important to remember that the devaluing of Black lives is not a new phenomena.  To this list we could add the names:  Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Lamar Smith, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Virgil Ware, Jimmy Lee Jackson and so many others who were killed during the so-called Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 60s.  (The Southern Law Poverty Center has a website dedicated to "Civil Rights Martyrs.")   We could add the nearly 4,000 Black men and women who were lynched between roughly the late 1880s and the late 1960s. (A recent study reported that the number exceeded previous estimates.)  And then there are the estimated 2 million Africans who died during the Middle Passage, and all of the enslaved Africans who died on these shores since those first 20 Africans were brought to Jamestown in 1619.

It might not seem that these earlier incidents have anything to do with those going on right now.  (It's probably easier to think this if you're White than if you're Black.)  Yet none of this could have happened -- not then, not now -- if the lives of people of color were valued as much in this country as the lives of White people.  Let that sink in.  The "black lives matter" movement is really not a response to the recent examples of young Black men being killed by police.  Rather, it is a response to centuries -- hundreds of years! -- of evidence and lived experience. 

It is most certainly true that all lives matter.  When Walter Palmer shot and killed Cecile the lion in Zimbabwe recently, the national and international outrage was intense and instantaneous. Non-human life matters.  All lives matter.  Yes.  Yet at this moment in history there appears to be a crack forming in the shell of blindness which surrounds those who are part of of the dominant culture.  We -- straight, white, cisgender men of a certain socio-economic position -- are used to having our experiences, our reality, projected back to us as reality.  Our history, our lives, are the norm, and it is possible to go through one's whole life without ever quite understanding -- or even considering -- that other people's lives might be very different.

Yet today the mainstream media reports seemingly every week about the killings of one young Black man after another.  Over and again people of color tell their stories of living a far more danger-filled life than most White people could even imagine.  And it seems -- just maybe -- that a crack is appearing in that shell of blindness.  After Grand Juries declined to bring indictments in the killings of either Michael Brown or Eric Garner, a hashtag appeared -- #CrimingWhileWhite.  White people were understanding that the experiences they'd had with law enforcement officials were vastly different than those people of color have on a daily basis.  People were getting it.

50 years ago White America was shocked to see images of police with fire hoses and German Shepherds viciously attacking peaceful Black protestors.  The Civil Rights movement changed -- not immediately, but ineradicably.  Perhaps the events of the past year will create a similar shift.

Pax tecum,

RevWik


Update:  One sharp-eyed reader noted that while the lists of names I cited included a fair number of women and boys, much of the text referred to violence against Black men.  I had intended by their inclusion in the lists to be clear that this is not a gender-limited problem, yet it appears I was not as clear as I'd hoped.  I have, then, gently edited this piece since it's original posting.
 

Riots or Uprisings ...

In 1784 Thomas Jefferson published his Notes on the Sate of Virginia.  In his chapter on slavery he proposes that slaves should be emancipated and then put on boats and sent back to Africa.  He rhetorically asks himself "Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?"  He then answers himself with these words:

"Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race."

Take a moment to read that again.  Isn't this what we're seeing in Baltimore, and Seattle, and Chicago, and Ferguson?  "Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites" coming up against "the thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained," along with "new provocations"?

Malcolm X said:

"If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, that's not progress.  If you pull it all the way, that's not progress.  The progress comes from healing the wound that the blow made.  They haven't begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there."

Some are beginning to say that we should really think of these "riots" as "uprisings."  Angry people, with "the thousand recollections of the injuries they have sustained [along with] new provocation," are responding not just to any particular specific instance of injustice, but to all they have endured and continue to endure.  Some are responding with control and strategy; others with unbridled rage run rampant.

I've also seen on the Internet this summation of the situation:  Black people are literally saying "Stop killing us!"  And there are people saying "But ..."  I can't imagine -- as a white person I really can't imagine -- how that feels.  But I can't imagine that it doesn't count as a "new provocation."

So what are we to do?  I guess that depends on who we mean by "we."  On April 29th, Salon.com published Julia Blount's article (originally posted on her FaceBook page) "Dear white FaceBook friends:  I need you to respect what Black America is feeling right now."  We -- and by this I mean white Americans -- could begin by reading things like this.  The Unitarian Universalist blogger Kenny Wiley has written some wonderful things on his blog "A Full Day."  (His perspective, by the way, is that of an African American Unitarian Universalist millennial male.)  For a brutally honest big picture view of the background to what's happening pick up Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow:  mass incarceration in the age of color blindness.

Better than -- or, perhaps, in addition to -- reading is talking with people.  Again, to the primarily white folk who read this blog, talk with people of color you know.  And maybe better than "talk to" would be "listen to."  Listen to what they are thinking and feeling about all of this.  (And by "this" I don't mean just Baltimore, nor even just issues of police violence and the inequities of our justice system.  I mean anything having to do with the ways people of color and whites are treated differently from one another -- that thing called "systemic racism.")

If you don't know any people of color, you could talk with other white people.  But don't allow the conversation to fall into easy assumptions.  Question and, then, question again.  Challenge -- both the person with whom you're talking and yourself -- to see things from outside of your experiences of "normal."  Try to imagine the issues from as many different perspectives as you can.  Push yourselves to try to make sense of the things you can't understand and defend things you disagree with.  Broaden your perspective.

If you don't have people of color in your life with whom you can talk about these things ... ask yourself, "Why?"  See if there are things in the way you're living your life that are keeping you from making connections with African Americans, Latino & Latina Americans, Asian Americans (which, of course, encompasses a widely dispirit group of folks!).  Look for ways to begin putting yourself into situations where you can meet folks who don't look like, think like, you.  Tread lightly here, naturally.  You certainly don't want to create a single, token, "Black Friend."  Nor do you want to too soon assume the intimacy and trust that talking about race-related issues with someone of a different race requires.

For a moment I'm going to directly address Unitarian Universalists;  If you're a FaceBook user you might want to check out UUs Resisting New Jim Crow & Mass Incarceration, and Allies for Racial Equity.  (Consider joining that later one!)  For all of us: are you yet a member of the NAACP or the National Urban League?  Things to think about ...

Is what we're seeing in Baltimore and elsewhere a case of "riots" or is it an "uprising"?  I think the answer to that will rest mostly on our -- white -- shoulders.  Our brothers and sisters of color are giving voice to their outrage, their grief, their anger, and their exhaustion.  If it is to be more than that -- if it is to be a full-bodied, long-lasting assault on "the way things are," then it's going to take the involvement of those who most benefit from "the way things are."  As this blog puts it so well:  racism is a white problem.  But maybe, just maybe, we can come together not just to calm this violence but to eradicate its root cause and, so, avoid Jefferson's predicted, "convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race."

RevWik

eyes wide(er) open

I recently read two descriptions of African American experience that really caught my attention:

"Their blackness alone was license enough to line them up against walls, to menace them with guns, to search them roughly, beat them, and rob them of every vestige of dignity."

And,

"A black man could be walking down the road, minding his own business, and his life could suddenly change by meeting a white man or a group of white men or boys who on a whim decided to have some fun with a Negro."

Was I reading a blog post written since the events in Ferguson, Missouri once again brought a conversation about race to the national consciousness?  Not exactly.

The first was written by the historian Joel Williamson in his book The Crucible of Race; the second passage is found in Dr. James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree.  Neither author is referring to the realities of 2014.  Instead, they're writing about the realities of the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries.  Notice anything about their descriptions?

Much of white America has absolutely no idea how different our experiences and those of people of color in this country have been.  Absolutely no idea!  Oh, yes, we  know that slavery was bad, and that segregation was hard, but look at the strides we've made since then!  There's even a black man in the White House!  And didn't Martin Luther King dream of a day when color wouldn't matter?

No.  He didn't.  He dreamed of a day when people wouldn't be "judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  That he said.  But he never said that we should all become "colorblind" (as if such a thing were possible).  He never said that at all.

Much of white America has absolutely no idea how different the America we live in is from the America that people of color know.  Why can't "they" just put it all behind them?  Really?  Why can't "they" just move on from the past and stop blaming race for all of "their" problems?  You've heard this, right?  I mean, you've heard people saying this for real.  No jokes.  Hell, you and I may have said it at one time or another, too.  (Or, at least, thought it.)  But anyone who says -- or even thinks -- such a thing has absolutely no idea what we're talking about.  No idea at all.

Let's take lynching -- the subject of the book by Dr. Cone that I've just started reading recently.  No one likes to talk about it much, but most liberal/progressive folk will say, if asked, that it was a terrible thing.  We'd all agree with that, right?  And we'd all agree that such an awful aberration should be left behind in the past.

By one count, at least, from 1882-1968 there were 4,743 lynchings in the United States.  3,446 -- 72.7% -- were of black (mostly) men.  It might surprise some to know that not all lynchings were of black people -- 1,297 white people were also lynched.  It's worth noting, of course, that "Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching ..." (according to the site Lynching Statistics for 1882-1968.)

So ... it was bad.  right?  But much of white America has absolutely no idea how bad.  Did you know that some of the reasons people were lynched included being homeless, injuring livestock, looking "suspicious," and even for skipping rocks!  (A word of warning, if you follow the preceding link you'll come to a site with "10 Outrageous Reasons Black People Were Lynched in America."  The images are graphic and disturbing.)  Just as today, black Americans knew that for absolutely no reason at all they might not come home at the end of the day.  "Their blackness alone was license enough ..."  Dr. Cone notes that the threat of lynching was almost more intimidating than the lynchings themselves.  

But oh how horrific those lynchings were.  Crowds gathered.  Families gathered.  Mom, dad, and the kids would spread out the picnic blanket and make a day of it.  Photos were snapped with people standing near the corpse like fisherman stand proudly with the marlin they'd just caught.  Portable printing operations were set up so that postcards could be made on the spot.  Sometimes the day, time, and place had been advertised; crowds of up to 15,000 -- that's fifteen thousand -- people came out.  How do you "get over" something like that?

A lot of this I knew.  You may have, too.  In a not-too-graphic way it's touched on in history class.  I'd even heard about the crowds.  But there's so much that I didn't know.  So much that I had no idea about.  I didn't know that many of these lynching victims were also burned, and often burned alive.  I didn't know that people from the crowd were invited to cut off body parts to take home as souvenirs.  And that this torture could go on for hours before the hanging itself.  How does anyone "move on" from experiences like these?

Especially -- especially -- because these experiences have not been left in the past.  In August -- August of this year -- a 17-year old boy was found dead, hanging from a swing set.  His death was pronounced a suicide, but the FBI is now investigating because there are elements to the story that don't quite add up.  The last lynching may not have been in 1968.

African Americans who might be reading this post are probably now thinking to themselves, the last lynching may not have been in 1968?  May not?  Is this guy serious?  And they'd be right.  Because in the final analysis lynching was never so much about a particular technique for murdering someone, but about sending a particular message by doing so.  And that message was not hard to decipher -- black lives don't matter.  Black women and men are not the equals of white women and men.  And they never will be.  Don't even try; don't get any crazy ideas about equality or anything like that.

In Dr. Cone's book he draws the obvious -- though largely unexplored -- parallel between crucifixion and the practice of lynching.  He quotes Paula Frederickson from her book Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews:

Crucifixion was a Roman form of public service announcement:  Do not engage in sedition as this person has, or your fate will be similar.  The point of the exercise was not the death of the offender as such, but getting the attention of those watching.  Crucifixion first and foremost is addressed to an audience.

The same is true of lynching.  And it can be argued that the same is true today of the phenomenon of police violence toward people of color.  Yes.  Of course there are times when lethal force is required, and police are working in an incredibly tense environment.  All of that is true.  Yet it is also unarguably true that when the use of deadly force is 21 times more likely when an African American man is on the receiving end, something else is at work.

Michelle Alexander argues quite persuasively in her book The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness that America's "war on drugs" is, at heart, a new expression of the same impulse that fueled segregation.  If you haven't read her book -- read it.  And then look for the parallels between then and now.  As William Faulkner famously said, "The past is never dead.  It's not even past."

My eyes continue to be more widely open.  I know -- I am afraid -- that they will need to be even more open still.  There is so much that I don't yet know, but that doesn't mean it's not part of the discussion.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

the need to wake up

This morning I am still wrestling with what I can do in the wake of the New York Grand Jury not to indict Daniel Pantaleo who has been accused of killing Eric Garner this past July.  They reached this decision despite there being video evidence of Officer Pantaleo using a banned "choke hold" on Mr. Garner, audio of Mr. Garner repeatedly telling the officer that he couldn't breathe, and the coroner ruling the death a homicide.  How could all of that not even warrant a trial to determine the facts more conclusively?  And with this decision coming on the heels of a similar decision in the case of Darren Wilson's alleged murder of Mike Brown, and within the context of the literally hundreds of cases of fatal encounters between young black men and law enforcement personnel ....  I'm wrestling with what to do.

I mean, I got up this morning and had to get my kids off to school and I had to get to work.  And while my job as a parish minister allows me a great deal of flexibility in how I use my time, I still have things that I have to do that have nothing to do with addressing racial inequalities in our culture.  (Not to mention disparities between gender expressions, economic status, sexual orientation, differing abilities, etc., etc., etc.)  And later on the dog has to be taken for a walk, and dinner has to be cooked, and Peter Pan LIVE! is on NBC tonight.

I don't really mean to be flip and, yet, I do want to drive home how easy it is for me -- as a liberal, white, heterosexual, middle class, well-educated man -- to put all of this other stuff behind me and return to my life "as normal."  And see, that's the thing -- as a white man I have been taught in so many ways, both explicit and implicit, that my life experiences are "normal."  I am free to choose where to go, and generally feel safe when I get there.  I won't be stopped by the police for no particular reason -- like, for instance, walking with my hands in my pockets on a cold day in Michigan.  I can even try to break into my car when I've locked myself out and no one will bat an eye.  Why?  Because I'm a white man and that means I'm given the benefit of the doubt, there's an assumption that I'm okay.  

But if I were black?  World famous scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested in his own home because a neighbor had seen someone "suspicious" trying to break into a house.  Gates had forgotten his keys, and even though he had already changed into his bathrobe by the time the police arrived, and he could prove that the house was, in fact, his, he was still arrested.  As with Brandon McKean in Michigan, it seems that in the eyes of many, at least, black = suspicious.

Let me change that a bit.  I said, "in the eyes of many," yet even good liberal, non-racist folk will often hold their purses a little tighter, or cross the street, if they see a group of young black men walking down the street toward them.  It's not intentional.  It's not even conscious.  Racism is part of the air we all breathe and, as well all now know, even non-smokers are affected by second hand smoke.  We are all -- even the "good ones" of us -- infected by second hand racism.

If I were a person of color I would have no choice but to look at, deal with, the reality of racism in our culture.  I would be reminded on a daily -- perhaps even hourly -- basis of the systemic disparities which tend to put me at a disadvantage in innumerable situations.  I honestly and truly can't fully imagine what that would be like.

Because I have white skin.  So I have the choice to look at all of this or not.  I have the freedom to step away from my discomfort and into the safe normalcy that is whiteness.  I can choose to live in a world where racist actions are anomalies and where racists are a dying breed.  I can choose to live in a world where so much progress has been made that the President of the United States is an African American man.  This is a large part of what's meant by "white privilege" -- I have the privilege of being able to make these choices.

But here's the thing -- if I can choose to close my eyes and turn my back to these realities faced so regularly by people of color and nearly never by me and people who look like me ... well ... then I can choose not to, as well.  I can choose to keep my eyes open; keep my ears open; keep my heart open.   I can recognize the experiences of people of color as as real as mine even as they differ, even as I can recognize that some folks seriously love hip hop even though it doesn't sound like Beethoven.  And then, well then I might actually even start listening to hip hop and discover its incredible rhythmic and poetic complexity.  Similarly, when I come to recognize that there's a whole other world that I never have to experience, I can choose to begin to experience it as best I can ... stepping out of my safe bubble, taking what I'll call "racial risks" (the risk of saying or doing the 'wrong" thing), really listening to the experiences of people of color, and standing in solidarity with folks who have for too long had to stand alone.

What should I do in the wake of the recent Grand Jury verdicts?  Perhaps the first thing would be to wake up and open my eyes.  Then I can try to wake up as many people as I can.  Who will you wake up>

Pax tecum,

RevWik

to look clear-eyed and what's happening all around us

I am angry.  I'm heartbroken.  I despair.  I feel impotent.  My heart keens and my soul is screaming.

Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Tamir Rice in Cleveland.

Akai Gurley in Brooklyn.

Aura Rain Rosser in Ann Arbor.

Tanisha Anderson in Cleveland.

Roshad McIntosh in Chicago.

Darien Hunt in Saratoga Springs.

Ezell Ford and Omar Brego in Los Angeles.

Eric Garner, Kajieme Powell, Vonderitt D. Meyers, Jr., John Crawford III, Cary Ball Jr., Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Eula Love, Amadu Diallo, Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Malice Green, Tyisha Miller, Sean Bell, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell ...

I could go on, of course.  I could go on, but I'd have to go on, and on, and on.  The Stolen Lives Project has collected data on over 2,000 cases of people killed by law enforcement in the 1990s alone.  (You can put a face to some of the names here.)

Were all of these people people of color?  No, but the vast majority were.  The incidents of violent interactions between law enforcement and citizens skews overwhelmingly along racial lines.  (And a Google search on the phrase "racial disparities in police violence" yields more evidence than any reasonable person could need.)

Were all of these people innocent?  Of course not, yet there are far, far too many cases of innocent people being beaten or shot by police officers, and of these the victims were predominantly young men of color.

Law enforcement personnel have an extraordinarily difficult job.  They must decide -- often with virtually not time -- how to respond to threatening and seemingly threatening situations.  I would not want to do what they have to do, and I do believe that the majority of police officers are good people trying to do good things and are not secretly "gunning for black people."

Yet we live in a culture that still considers white, heterosexual men the norm and which casts people of color (and women, and homosexuals, and ...) as Other.  Brown skinned men, and in particular young brown skinned men are seen as "dangerous" and "threatening" by white skinned people -- consciously or unconsciously.  Think of how typical it is for a white person to feel ever-so-slightly apprehensive when they see a black man walking down the street toward them.  It's unconscious.  It's instinctive.  It's reinforced by countless means, both subtle and overt.  (And by "countless" I really do mean that there are far too many ways to count that reinforce these stereotypes.)

And, so, in this context -- the real world in which we live -- it almost doesn't matter if, in any particular case, the shooting is "justified;" there are always exceptions.  But the pattern ... the pattern is where the problem is.  It is the pattern of unjustifiable police targeting of people of color for violence that leads to the cry, "Black Lives Matter!"

It seems to me that one would have to be willfully looking away not to see what is happening.  And, so, I am angry.  I'm heartbroken.  I despair.  My heart screams and my soul is keening.  And I feel impotent.  What can I do -- a straight, white, middle class, well-educated, minister ensconced in a bubble of privilege?  What can I possibly do from here -- from my own lived experience -- to make any kind of change?  Joseph Osmundson and David J. Leonard, in an essay on Huffington post, name "12 Things White People Can Actually Do After the Ferguson Decision."  It is well worth reading, and all thinking white people should not only read it but follow all the links, as well.

The other thing I can do -- and you can do, too, if you find yourself in the privileged position of being white in this society -- can take advantage of our white privilege and speak up ... speak out.  The world -- okay, let's be honest, the white world ... the dominant world -- listens more closely when a white person speaks out.  And if you're a white male, all the better.  So, if you need to, pull your head out of the obfuscating fog and look clear-eyed and what's happening all around us.  (Just because it's not your experience does not mean it's not happening.)  And then talk about it.  Post on FaceBook and Twitter.  Bring it up at holiday parties (a risk, sure, but nowhere near the risk of "walking while black" has become).

Prove that black lives matter.  Prove that all lives matter.

Pax tecum,

RevWik