Beating back the demon of white supremacy
From D.W.: Our democracy is fragile. Many people have known that much longer than I. It’s held together too often by polite agreements about norms, and traditions, and a shared understanding of equal representation. Sometimes, when those polite accords are tested, or when we discover that our understanding was maybe not so shared, we create laws to enshrine them. And we think it’s fine for a while. Our privilege allows us to forget that there are those in our country who were never part of the agreement. Never protected by the norms or safe in the traditions. And the laws that we believed were sacred apparently don’t mean much when the forces of supremacy have become the very thing that was supposed to uphold those laws.
What we saw in the Callais decision by the Supreme Court, and what we’re seeing in the legislature in Tennessee is not mysterious. It’s not complicated and it’s definitely not new. It’s the bruised and wrinkled hand of white supremacy that has been pushing violence and disenfranchisement since the beginning. It’s louder now than it’s been in a while. More obvious. But this is just the most recent, disgusting manifestation of a decades long project to re-segregate and re-enslave our brothers and sisters and we can’t let it. I don’t have the answers, but I know that, as Rachel taught me, whatever the path forward is, it must include love.
Oh, and I didn’t forget about you moms, either.
Facebook. April 12th. 2021
It’s disgusting the lengths people will go to in order to hate black people. And brown people. And anyone else who isn’t a white cis/het male. It makes me want to tear my hair and claw my face. This shit has to stop.
Help us, Jesus.
Facebook. January 25th. 2017
Some of us may understandably believe that we all have the same rights. And on paper, that is kind-of-slightly-not-total-bs. However, given the historical and verifiable facts that equal rights have been granted but not applied socially or culturally--and in some cases (Voting Rights Act) directly undermined by Congress, or directly preached against from pulpits in churches and rostrums in civic auditoriums (basic human rights--you know, like for actual humans who have been enslaved and treated as less than human or are refugees or call God by a different name or have lady parts or want to marry the people they love, etc), or marketed and defended with the same zeal as the 2nd Amendment (with beer and breasts and lots and lots of money and ink and sparkling zeitgeist and so much shiny, patriotic rage), they do not make us equal.
Equal rights will never amount to equal privilege until we all understand the difference.
Who will you listen to today? How will you hear their words? How will you allow your heart and mind to be softened, rather than hardened? How can you participate in conversations that are honest, and about dialogue and understanding, about how to bring in facts that aren't just about scoring points or shutting down other opinions? Or maybe you're totally down with building more walls, calling people names, and pretending that this is all normal and fine and just a tempest in a teapot and everyone needs to just calm down. That makes me sad, and I get it. I really do.
And that is the definition of privilege--that I get to be tired of hearing people cry for freedom and kindness and equality, because it isn't MY problem, that I get to change the channel on the tv or delete the app or the account or block the feed, or be hateful in a comment or dismissive or reductive or offer "alternative facts." And that is absolutely bs. And I won't accept that behavior from myself. And because I love you, because I know the depth of kindness that you have spoken into my life, I will not accept that behavior from you, either. I don't judge you for doing it, and I won't be ugly. But I will say truthful things and remind both of us that we must do better, for all our sakes', and for the sake of those who are without voices and are suffering because of our silence, dismissal, minimization, or our cult-like worship of our own precious little status quo.
Grow Christians. August 16th. 2017.
Parenting Well in a World Gone Wrong – in Charlottesville and Beyond
Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. – Joshua 24:15
We live in a world gone sideways. And it’s been that way since the day we walked out of Eden.
King Solomon told us 3,000 years ago that there’s nothing new under the sun. I have to remind myself of that when I see the faces of angry white men with torches marching in the darkness. I think about you, parents and grandparents and godparents and other grown folk who love and are raising children, and what you have to talk to them about breaks my heart. But none of this is new. We may be periodically lulled into believing that slavery, Jim Crow, and the Klan are fever dreams from which we have been cured, but these are the tares the enemy has sown into the wheat. These hateful weeds have killed far too many people, and the body count continues to rise.
I remember many conversations with my father about racism and the ugliness he grew up seeing. When his high school in rural west Alabama was integrated in the late 1960s, violence shut the entire district down for three weeks. A young black woman lost her life. My father and his brothers stayed at their public high school while many of their white friends and neighbors fled to private schools. He was called reprehensible names by people he’d spent his whole life believing were friends, but this was nothing compared to what those false friends did to the black kids at Choctaw County High School. It grieved my father to his heart, and I’m not sure he ever fully recovered from the hate and ugliness he saw. He left high school a full year early and left the Deep South as soon as he finished his bachelor’s degree.
I wished for him to be here and explain the horror unfolding in front of me on Saturday. I wished to crawl into my dad’s lap and have him tell me that despite all evidence to the contrary, everything was going to be ok. But I know this much is true: Dad never lied to me. And he wouldn’t have lied to me about this, either.
Beating back the demon of white supremacy is going to take more bravery than we realize—and it will continue to cost lives and relationships. But it must be beaten back, banished to the lowest hell from whence it came. And it is going to take a lot of marching, candlelight vigils, calls to our elected representatives, and prayers on prayers to do this. In pursuing this kind of peace and justice, we will lose friends—but we might also gain our souls. We may become estranged from family members or be unfriended or unfollowed or have people say ugly, mean things right to our faces.
But telling the truth that we are each and all made in the image of the living God is that important. Holding up our end of the Baptismal Covenant, wherein we promise to seek and serve all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves means that we call hate by its right name, that we do not equivocate in order to maintain the status quo. The status quo is costing people their lives. Your kids need to know that. I need to know that. We all need to deal with it. And that is hard.
I may not know much, but I do know that love wins. Always. I don’t understand the mystery of how that happens, but I know that it does. Love has never not won, so far. And it will win again. This victory starts and finishes with Jesus, and we are in the midst of it.
In the coming days, many of us will march and hold signs and sing songs and be in the big middle of loud, loving action. Some of us will write letters to the editor or make phone calls or create lesson plans. Still others will be the legs of prayer the rest of us stand on, steadying and nourishing us with the love of our community. All of us have a job to do in responding to hate with love, and we are tasked with making our response one that comes from the depths of our hearts.
Loving like this may cost some of us our lives, our jobs, or our positions in communities or workplaces. Are we willing to do this for Jesus, and for the love of his people? Your family, my family, all of us together as the family of God—we have a job to do. Our job is to love this strange and sideways world into the dream God has for us to be together—one family joined by one love.
How will you and those you are raising find a way to be in the midst of this hard place we’re in? How can we help you do this work? We have to ask these questions, because the ways we choose to answer them will change the world—and provide the soil of love and hope in which we grow each other and our love for Jesus.
Facebook. June 17th. 2021.
One of my favorite sounds in the whole wide world is listening to my mother, godmother, and grandmother laugh together. I’ve been bathed in this sound all evening and my heart is so full.
