Post 76- Ferguson: Where Do We Go from Here?

I was asked to co-lead a town hall conversation entitled, “Ferguson: Where Do We Go from Here?” My co-facilitator was white colleague and the audience was predominately Anglo as well. Following are my opening remarks from that meeting:

Tonight’s conversation is entitled, “Ferguson: Where Do We Go from Here?” I find that title both uncanny and saddening because it’s similar to the title of Dr. King’s last book, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community.” I find it both uncanny and sad because all of these years later we are yet faced with similar options.

I literally woke up this morning thinking about Jazz singer Billie Holiday. In 1939 Billie Holiday released a song that would prove to threaten her career, her safety and even her life. By singing the song “Strange Fruit” she turned a mirror to America, and simply dared to tell the truth. For me that’s fundamental to Spirituality 101…TRUTH. We are to tell it, live it, be it.
So, when I thought about preparing remarks for tonight, I was almost at a loss of words. I am a teacher and preacher by nature and trade, but tonight I am stand as neither, but simply as a human and an American who will attempt to follow the example of Ms. Holiday. I want to simply tell the truth.

This is the Truth as I know it:

1.     People of Color didn’t create racism, but are the ones who have been left to almost singlehandedly dismantle it. We didn’t create it, so we desperately need the help of white folks to get rid of it.

2.     If were to tell the truth, we would admit that our country was founded in the deep recesses of violence, greed, racism and sexism, and that is the American Way. Therefore, “good” people can’t just sit by idly, hoping and wishing things will be different. Just as it was intentionally constructed to be this way, we (people of social consciousness) must be as intentional in deconstructing and then reconstructing a system that doesn’t privilege some at the expense of others. In other words, waiting on someone else to do the heavy lifting simply isn’t working.

3.     Most specifically, in this country black people have been the most reviled, despised and victimized people, quite possibly, the world has ever known. Black lives have always been and continue to be valued less than other lives. Therefore we must settle once and for all that blackness is not scary, threatening, deviant or deficient. Furthermore it not something to be apologized for but something to be celebrated. This is the reason I don’t believe in colorblindness. When I teach this to my students I often pick a female in the class and remark that to say you didn’t notice I was black is like telling this student that you didn’t notice she was a woman. For most women, that would be insulting. To not see my blackness is equally as insulting. I want you to not only see it but help me celebrate it as I help you celebrate your identity.  

4.     This country refuses to allow black people to have moments of collective grief. Examples:

a.     The mention of Slavery and Jim Crow is met with the exclamation of
‘Get over it’...while on 911 we say “Never Forget” and when discussing the Holocaust the marching orders are “Never Again.”  

b.     Another example is when white folks create the ‘cardinal sin’ of interracial conversations. That is, when a person of color suggests they have been a victim of racism, for a white person to instinctually suggest that there MUST be alternative justification. It is an insult to one’s intelligence (because we all know how fair, and just and egalitarian white folks have historically been...right?)

c.      Or when any mention of structural, institutional injustice always leads back to “Black-on-Black” crime, as demonstrated recently by Mr. Giuliani.  When actually most homicide happens intra-racially (for example, 84% of whites die at the hands of other whites but we never hear the term “white-on-white” crime).

d.     Lastly and most recently is how the protest chant and hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is being challenged on social media and thereby changed to “All Lives Matter.” To say that Black Lives Matter is not to say that others don’t, but when you can’t join me in declaring this, but must insist that it be changed to “All Lives Matter” is like running into a funeral and shaming the family for mourning while insisting you, too, have experienced loss. That would be inappropriate, right? Or it’s like running through a Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure while yelling “Hey!! There are other diseases too!!” WHO DOES THAT?

5.     To simply tell the truth is to echo the sentiments of James Baldwin when he said, “to be Negro and be relatively conscious to be in a rage almost all the time.” It is to be in rage, but I might add it is also to be in fear. I am terrified for the lives of my children because the courts have constantly reinforced the idea that if the Zimmermans and Wilsons of the world feel threatened, they consequently have freewill to eliminate the threat….however the problem remains in the fact that blackness itself has been socially constructed as scary, and therefore my identify is seen as a threat by my simply being. Meaning, at any time my children or I can be gunned down in the streets and left for 4.5 hours with very little recourse.

6.     Lastly, I want to tell the truth by stating that black people, as a whole, are an amazingly resilient, creative and tenacious group of people and have proven to be so by the very principle of “survival of the fittest”. If you know anything about the Middle Passage and the Transatlantic Slave Trade then you know the weakest among us didn’t survive. If you know anything about the over 300 years of slavery that followed then you know the weakest among us didn’t survive it. Similarly, slavery was followed by another 100 years of lynching and Jim Crow…and likewise, the weakest among us didn’t survive it. So, if you are black in America you are, by your very genetic makeup, strong and courageous.  However, let’s face it…black people are also fucked up in many, many ways (let’s just tell the truth!) HOWEVER, many if not MOST of those issues are related to the social, economic, and psychological effects of slavery, Jim Crow, the social construction of our identity, as well as the mass urbanization and incarceration of black people…..all of which we didn’t create but of who’s blunt force black people suffer daily to the head of our communities. So, I’ll end where I began….we didn’t create the conditions, therefore we need your help in solving them.

Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, my co-facilitator, and me.