From Racism to a New Generation?
As a young man I was prone to make some bold statements. Some friends called me “frank” to imply I was brutally plainspoken, not to mask what might be private thoughts of most people. “Real integration will not occur until there are biracial marriages,” I said at one time. This, my outspoken statement of over fifty years ago has resurfaced my deeper inner thoughts, as now a biracial presidential candidate presents himself before our nation. Could it be that Barack Obama, the son of a white mother and black father, has become the preeminent icon for true integration?
When Jane and I attended Easter Service with our daughter and her husband, I observed three biracial families at the Episcopal Church in Rutherfordton, NC. Immediately forward in the pew a white grandmother coddled one of two charming young boys, of slightly lighter complexion than Barack Obama. This scene played out again and again --- if not by biracial marriages, biracial adoptions, -- along with a youthful multitude supporting a black presidential candidacy -- seems to say there is a younger generation that’s more accepting; a racially tolerant generation who has left behind an older racially-prejudiced generation. Could this color-blind youthful society, in the least, be a significant prelude to what’s to come: an improved racial tolerance and a new social justice? Sitting on that church pew I thought: when we come into this world, we have no choice of the color of our skin - black, white, brown, yellow – or to our parents’ ethnicity, work ethic, poor, rich, social status, educated, uneducated, mental faculties -- nor do we have choice of whether we are heterosexual, gay or lesbian. However, we do individually have the choice to be empathizingly understanding, respectful and accepting of all of God’s created children. Even so we should know there is probably some underlying latent bias within most human beings of all races, but how could anyone be so patently bigoted?
Elsie Collins is one of the three African Americans who attend our Centenary United Methodist Church. In January on greeting Elsie during church service, she invited me to come to the Black History Month’s opening celebration at the local Johnston County Heritage Center. I answered, “Yes, I would like to.” In February at the Heritage Center various black citizens greeted me. The only other white citizens present were Heritage staff and Mr. John Booker, a former county commissioner, who had agreed to participate in a drama planned later that day. The exhibits of black history were a vivid reminder of our county’s segregated past when disadvantaged black citizens were shortchanged of public funds and equal opportunity to educate black youth.
As the drama group gathered for photos, I had an opportunity to talk with John McLean. John is the husband of Georgiana McLean, the much beloved choral teacher who taught at the integrated SSS High for 17 years. John and Georgiana are the parents of the accomplished Rhonda McLean, a graduate of Yale Law School who is associate general counsel of Time Inc. She spoke later at First Missionary Baptist Church of her experience (Herald report) as one of the first students of integration at Smithfield High School. No sooner than the newspaper report of her talk was available, questions by some white co-graduates began to circulate that there were differences of those high school days’ remembrances. Remembering differently is probably fair enough, as each ones’ perspective, white/black, is justifiably a difference of opinion because experiences differ in the same setting, era and place. One who is accepting of a new-integration student retains a kinder remembrance than the integrator, McLean, who no doubt with justifiable trepidation encountered those extreme racially prejudice students in the back halls or around the campus, unbeknown to a tolerant, accepting student. This illustrates how each of our memories of those integrational years can differ, and how painful it can be to look back into past shadowy places we had just as soon disclaim.
I have mentioned to some of my friends recently, “Black History is also a part of our White History.” In fact each is integral to the other; in America one can’t be without the other. Since that’s reality, one would think that whites would show more empathy to join with, to acknowledge our past failures and to celebrate our racial achievements and reaffirm our commitment to continuous racial progress. All the more it’s justifiable reason and importance for Black History Month and observing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Day.
The forerunners of racial integration such as Rhonda McLean and her ilk, Prophet Martin Luther King Jr., and leaders Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were courageous personalities of a inimitable moral fiber who had a vision of freedom and social justice for all people.
It was only by the true-modern-day-prophet Martin Luther King Jr. that America gained a significant measure of social justice through civil, nonviolent revolution. Taylor Branch wrote in the Times The Last Wish of Martin Luther King, about King’s last sermon: So Dr. King stood in the pulpit a marked man, scorned and rebuked, beset with inner conflicts. Yet as always, he lifted hope from the bottom of his soul. He urged the congregation to be alive and awake to great revolutions in progress. “I say to you that our goal is freedom,” he cried, “and I believe we’re going to get there because — however much she strays from it — the goal of America is freedom!”
In the Times, Roger Cohen recounts his experience growing up in an apartheid South Africa that helps him comprehend the fundamental racial undercurrents in America. In his Beyond American’s Original Sin: “Slavery was indeed America’s “original sin.” Of course, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” lives on in forms of African-American humiliation and anger that smolder in ways incommunicable to whites.”
Rob Christensen of the N&O writes about Henry Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party Presidential Campaign experiences when he toured North Carolina: "Fascism has become an ugly reality -- a reality which I have tasted," Wallace said. "I have tasted it neither so fully nor so bitterly as millions of others. But I have tasted it. I learned what prejudice and hatred can mean. I learned to know the face of violence, although I was spared the full force of violence. I saw the ugly reality of how hate prejudice can warp good men and women, turn Christian gentlemen into raving beasts; turn good mothers and wives into Jezebels. I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like to see men and women fall victims to the catch words of prejudice and the slogans of hate, even as the poor people of Germany were victimized by the catchwords and slogans of Hitler and Streicher."
Thanks to a more sensitive, upright, respectful generation we have moved away from those blatant catchwords of racial hate. But evidence shows, even in unsuspecting places, no less than a buried prejudice that seeks to be exposed remnants from the dark shadows of our past. Nicholas Kristof writes of our masked prejudices, Our Racist, Sexist Selves. And Kristof in his With a Few More Brains tells of how conspiracy theories are a bane of the African-American community that corrupt the psyche not only of the blacks --- but more over it’s an American problem, the dumbing-down of American discourse. Can a new, more accepting generation counter and outlive the dark shadows of our past, with a new wellspring of social daylight?
We have come a long way since the days when uncle Henry sat on the backdoor steps to eat his lunch as the white family sat around the dinning-room table --- and aunt Vera sat at the kitchen table while the white family sat at the dinning-room table. Nevertheless, some of an older generation may be content that our perpetrated indignities lay dormant or even deny them, while ignorant or insular opportunist make political hay.
Little known or remembered, in 2007 the U. S. Congress bipartisanly passed a resolution apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans, and likewise states including North Carolina, Alabama and Virginia. While these broad resolutions are essential, the confessions they represent are sinful misdeeds of an ancestry that now only their descendents, we, can take personal responsibility henceforth for man’s contrite and reconciled hearts.
Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening says, “ Our unrepentant sins of racism still poison our body politic. How do we overcome both the persistent prejudice of the majority and the resulting victimization culture of minorities? How do we both create and trust real opportunity? How do we move beyond easy multiculturalism by doing the hard work of racial justice and reconciliation?
And how do we navigate the new waters of multiethnic communities and conflicts in neighborhoods across the country? America's newsreel isn't just in black and white anymore; bloody Technicolor conflicts between racial minorities are the tragic new addition to the landscape of racial strife in the United States. With race, we have original history and new history. How do we both recognize and affirm America's new multiracial family photo, but also never forget the particular sin of slavery and its aftermath of crushing discrimination, by taking responsibility for the unique experience of African Americans in the United States?”
I would be remiss in any comments about racism not to acknowledge the responsibility of all sides. There is an ongoing quandary within the black community about how to deal with these challenges. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an interview with Bill Cosby in The Atlantic’s current issue, ‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’, writes candidly about some contradictions within the black community. She comments:
“Last summer, I watched Cosby give a moving commencement speech to a group of Connecticut inmates who’d just received their GEDs. Before the speech, at eight in the morning, Cosby quizzed correctional officials on the conditions and characteristics of their inmate population. I wished, then, that my 7-year-old son could have seen Cosby there, to take in the same basic message that I endeavor to serve him every day—that manhood means more than virility and strut, that it calls for discipline and dutiful stewardship. That the ultimate fate of black people lies in their own hands, not in the hands of their antagonists. That as an African American, he has a duty to his family, his community, and his ancestors.”
There is a responsibility from all communities for racial progress. Jonas Salk said, “Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.” Indeed that’s the best heritage we can leave for our children generations to come: a legacy of justice in which peace can flourish in our land and be an example for others around the world. It is the responsibility of all: “whites reaching out to blacks,” “black reaching out to whites,” and all races reaching out to one another.
Elsie Collins, an African American, in my church, awakened my racial consciousness when she extended to me an invitation to Black History Celebration. First it is the church where there could and should be a conscience, a more in-tune racial thoughtfulness. Jim Wallis, referencing Corinthians, says, God reconciled himself to us through Christ, entrusting his message of reconciliation to us; therefore, we are the ambassadors of Christ to be reconciled to one another. That begs the question, where for many generations has the conscience of the white church been for racial reconciliation? Of course it hasn’t been completely devoid, but certainly, for what I know, it has not many times been the spiritual voice of racial conciliation; oft times we become enclave, forgetting a larger community and a larger world exist. We could show more compassion for racial healing, such as promoting Black History Month or recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Day. I understand that these may be difficult issues for some to address but they are critical to racial healing, progress, and our personal and community’s well-being, contributing to a more salutary climate.
Dr. King said, “Sunday morning worship service was the most segregated hour of the week.” After forty years that’s still true. Wallis quotes Dr. King: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” Our muted voice to speak our moral sense of right and wrong makes us complicit to the sins of immoral injustices. In our efforts to be the conscience of the state, expand our Christian values into the public square and to span the vast cultural chasm between white and black communities of faith, we have the responsibility to do better.
Can we do better? Yes we can, if it’s only by symbolism or little things, a beginning. At one time my church exchanged choirs and preachers for one service during the year with one of the local black churches. That may be a good idea to revive. Another suggestion would be to have a group of participating churches that send three to five members to visit opposite-race services once a month. Call the groups: Jesus’ Ambassadors, Ambassadors of Faith, or The Jesus Squad. The good news of goodwill ambassadors could go a long way to improve racial relations in our community --- walking into new-culture experiences of conciliation and out of the dark shadows of our past.
As a young man I was prone to make some bold statements. Some friends called me “frank” to imply I was brutally plainspoken, not to mask what might be private thoughts of most people. “Real integration will not occur until there are biracial marriages,” I said at one time. This, my outspoken statement of over fifty years ago has resurfaced my deeper inner thoughts, as now a biracial presidential candidate presents himself before our nation. Could it be that Barack Obama, the son of a white mother and black father, has become the preeminent icon for true integration?
When Jane and I attended Easter Service with our daughter and her husband, I observed three biracial families at the Episcopal Church in Rutherfordton, NC. Immediately forward in the pew a white grandmother coddled one of two charming young boys, of slightly lighter complexion than Barack Obama. This scene played out again and again --- if not by biracial marriages, biracial adoptions, -- along with a youthful multitude supporting a black presidential candidacy -- seems to say there is a younger generation that’s more accepting; a racially tolerant generation who has left behind an older racially-prejudiced generation. Could this color-blind youthful society, in the least, be a significant prelude to what’s to come: an improved racial tolerance and a new social justice? Sitting on that church pew I thought: when we come into this world, we have no choice of the color of our skin - black, white, brown, yellow – or to our parents’ ethnicity, work ethic, poor, rich, social status, educated, uneducated, mental faculties -- nor do we have choice of whether we are heterosexual, gay or lesbian. However, we do individually have the choice to be empathizingly understanding, respectful and accepting of all of God’s created children. Even so we should know there is probably some underlying latent bias within most human beings of all races, but how could anyone be so patently bigoted?
Elsie Collins is one of the three African Americans who attend our Centenary United Methodist Church. In January on greeting Elsie during church service, she invited me to come to the Black History Month’s opening celebration at the local Johnston County Heritage Center. I answered, “Yes, I would like to.” In February at the Heritage Center various black citizens greeted me. The only other white citizens present were Heritage staff and Mr. John Booker, a former county commissioner, who had agreed to participate in a drama planned later that day. The exhibits of black history were a vivid reminder of our county’s segregated past when disadvantaged black citizens were shortchanged of public funds and equal opportunity to educate black youth.
As the drama group gathered for photos, I had an opportunity to talk with John McLean. John is the husband of Georgiana McLean, the much beloved choral teacher who taught at the integrated SSS High for 17 years. John and Georgiana are the parents of the accomplished Rhonda McLean, a graduate of Yale Law School who is associate general counsel of Time Inc. She spoke later at First Missionary Baptist Church of her experience (Herald report) as one of the first students of integration at Smithfield High School. No sooner than the newspaper report of her talk was available, questions by some white co-graduates began to circulate that there were differences of those high school days’ remembrances. Remembering differently is probably fair enough, as each ones’ perspective, white/black, is justifiably a difference of opinion because experiences differ in the same setting, era and place. One who is accepting of a new-integration student retains a kinder remembrance than the integrator, McLean, who no doubt with justifiable trepidation encountered those extreme racially prejudice students in the back halls or around the campus, unbeknown to a tolerant, accepting student. This illustrates how each of our memories of those integrational years can differ, and how painful it can be to look back into past shadowy places we had just as soon disclaim.
I have mentioned to some of my friends recently, “Black History is also a part of our White History.” In fact each is integral to the other; in America one can’t be without the other. Since that’s reality, one would think that whites would show more empathy to join with, to acknowledge our past failures and to celebrate our racial achievements and reaffirm our commitment to continuous racial progress. All the more it’s justifiable reason and importance for Black History Month and observing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Day.
The forerunners of racial integration such as Rhonda McLean and her ilk, Prophet Martin Luther King Jr., and leaders Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were courageous personalities of a inimitable moral fiber who had a vision of freedom and social justice for all people.
It was only by the true-modern-day-prophet Martin Luther King Jr. that America gained a significant measure of social justice through civil, nonviolent revolution. Taylor Branch wrote in the Times The Last Wish of Martin Luther King, about King’s last sermon: So Dr. King stood in the pulpit a marked man, scorned and rebuked, beset with inner conflicts. Yet as always, he lifted hope from the bottom of his soul. He urged the congregation to be alive and awake to great revolutions in progress. “I say to you that our goal is freedom,” he cried, “and I believe we’re going to get there because — however much she strays from it — the goal of America is freedom!”
In the Times, Roger Cohen recounts his experience growing up in an apartheid South Africa that helps him comprehend the fundamental racial undercurrents in America. In his Beyond American’s Original Sin: “Slavery was indeed America’s “original sin.” Of course, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” lives on in forms of African-American humiliation and anger that smolder in ways incommunicable to whites.”
Rob Christensen of the N&O writes about Henry Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party Presidential Campaign experiences when he toured North Carolina: "Fascism has become an ugly reality -- a reality which I have tasted," Wallace said. "I have tasted it neither so fully nor so bitterly as millions of others. But I have tasted it. I learned what prejudice and hatred can mean. I learned to know the face of violence, although I was spared the full force of violence. I saw the ugly reality of how hate prejudice can warp good men and women, turn Christian gentlemen into raving beasts; turn good mothers and wives into Jezebels. I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like to see men and women fall victims to the catch words of prejudice and the slogans of hate, even as the poor people of Germany were victimized by the catchwords and slogans of Hitler and Streicher."
Thanks to a more sensitive, upright, respectful generation we have moved away from those blatant catchwords of racial hate. But evidence shows, even in unsuspecting places, no less than a buried prejudice that seeks to be exposed remnants from the dark shadows of our past. Nicholas Kristof writes of our masked prejudices, Our Racist, Sexist Selves. And Kristof in his With a Few More Brains tells of how conspiracy theories are a bane of the African-American community that corrupt the psyche not only of the blacks --- but more over it’s an American problem, the dumbing-down of American discourse. Can a new, more accepting generation counter and outlive the dark shadows of our past, with a new wellspring of social daylight?
We have come a long way since the days when uncle Henry sat on the backdoor steps to eat his lunch as the white family sat around the dinning-room table --- and aunt Vera sat at the kitchen table while the white family sat at the dinning-room table. Nevertheless, some of an older generation may be content that our perpetrated indignities lay dormant or even deny them, while ignorant or insular opportunist make political hay.
Little known or remembered, in 2007 the U. S. Congress bipartisanly passed a resolution apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans, and likewise states including North Carolina, Alabama and Virginia. While these broad resolutions are essential, the confessions they represent are sinful misdeeds of an ancestry that now only their descendents, we, can take personal responsibility henceforth for man’s contrite and reconciled hearts.
Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening says, “ Our unrepentant sins of racism still poison our body politic. How do we overcome both the persistent prejudice of the majority and the resulting victimization culture of minorities? How do we both create and trust real opportunity? How do we move beyond easy multiculturalism by doing the hard work of racial justice and reconciliation?
And how do we navigate the new waters of multiethnic communities and conflicts in neighborhoods across the country? America's newsreel isn't just in black and white anymore; bloody Technicolor conflicts between racial minorities are the tragic new addition to the landscape of racial strife in the United States. With race, we have original history and new history. How do we both recognize and affirm America's new multiracial family photo, but also never forget the particular sin of slavery and its aftermath of crushing discrimination, by taking responsibility for the unique experience of African Americans in the United States?”
I would be remiss in any comments about racism not to acknowledge the responsibility of all sides. There is an ongoing quandary within the black community about how to deal with these challenges. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an interview with Bill Cosby in The Atlantic’s current issue, ‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’, writes candidly about some contradictions within the black community. She comments:
“Last summer, I watched Cosby give a moving commencement speech to a group of Connecticut inmates who’d just received their GEDs. Before the speech, at eight in the morning, Cosby quizzed correctional officials on the conditions and characteristics of their inmate population. I wished, then, that my 7-year-old son could have seen Cosby there, to take in the same basic message that I endeavor to serve him every day—that manhood means more than virility and strut, that it calls for discipline and dutiful stewardship. That the ultimate fate of black people lies in their own hands, not in the hands of their antagonists. That as an African American, he has a duty to his family, his community, and his ancestors.”
There is a responsibility from all communities for racial progress. Jonas Salk said, “Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.” Indeed that’s the best heritage we can leave for our children generations to come: a legacy of justice in which peace can flourish in our land and be an example for others around the world. It is the responsibility of all: “whites reaching out to blacks,” “black reaching out to whites,” and all races reaching out to one another.
Elsie Collins, an African American, in my church, awakened my racial consciousness when she extended to me an invitation to Black History Celebration. First it is the church where there could and should be a conscience, a more in-tune racial thoughtfulness. Jim Wallis, referencing Corinthians, says, God reconciled himself to us through Christ, entrusting his message of reconciliation to us; therefore, we are the ambassadors of Christ to be reconciled to one another. That begs the question, where for many generations has the conscience of the white church been for racial reconciliation? Of course it hasn’t been completely devoid, but certainly, for what I know, it has not many times been the spiritual voice of racial conciliation; oft times we become enclave, forgetting a larger community and a larger world exist. We could show more compassion for racial healing, such as promoting Black History Month or recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Day. I understand that these may be difficult issues for some to address but they are critical to racial healing, progress, and our personal and community’s well-being, contributing to a more salutary climate.
Dr. King said, “Sunday morning worship service was the most segregated hour of the week.” After forty years that’s still true. Wallis quotes Dr. King: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” Our muted voice to speak our moral sense of right and wrong makes us complicit to the sins of immoral injustices. In our efforts to be the conscience of the state, expand our Christian values into the public square and to span the vast cultural chasm between white and black communities of faith, we have the responsibility to do better.
Can we do better? Yes we can, if it’s only by symbolism or little things, a beginning. At one time my church exchanged choirs and preachers for one service during the year with one of the local black churches. That may be a good idea to revive. Another suggestion would be to have a group of participating churches that send three to five members to visit opposite-race services once a month. Call the groups: Jesus’ Ambassadors, Ambassadors of Faith, or The Jesus Squad. The good news of goodwill ambassadors could go a long way to improve racial relations in our community --- walking into new-culture experiences of conciliation and out of the dark shadows of our past.
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