racism ends when we say so…
photo: flickr by OZinOH

I wrote a piece about racism and my feelings after the Zimmerman verdict was released. I was hurt …bewildered but I’m guessing like most of you…not surprised. The blanket of ignorant bliss that covers this country was pulled back. The still raw and very deep gash created by racial division,  again…exposed.

I pressed send and waited for the peaceful dialogue to begin…I trolled Twitter and Facebook. Looking for words of wisdom, another point of view, angry and annoyed outbursts.  What I discovered was two different worlds.  My FB and Twitter accounts are worlds apart..populated by Americans living and experiencing vastly different realities based on skin color.  The disparity was alarming.

My Facebook page is comprised of mostly African-American women.  Many are personal friends that have migrated from my personal page to talk motherhood, infertility, adoption and relationships. My Twitter followers are largely not my in real life friends.  They are women and a sprinkling of men who have connected with me as an infertility survivor, adoption advocate and follower of Christ.

My Facebook friends were outraged. Every other post screamed the injustice felt. I’ve searched on Twitter  the past few days for reaction on the verdict from a mostly Christian community and by and large found nothing.  I got 2 retweets on my blogpost and 1 on the call to conversation. I found a beautiful post from Deidre Riggs…she blogs at Jumping Tandem and as a contibutor for Allume and InCourage. I was delighted to read the comments on her post and will check back for more. Denene Millner of My Brown Baby and Darcel from The MahoganyWay also expressed their frustrations in thought provoking blog posts.   I retweeted all of them. I commented. These were all black women who for the most part shared my pain.  But I wanted to hear the other side. I asked questions in hopes of getting the conversation started on the other end, but….nothing.

I received only one comment on my blog that expressed an opinion very different from my own. I am grateful to Vanessa at Hearts on Guard for sharing her views.  I appreciated the opportunity to hear and be heard by a fellow believer who sees this story from a different angle.

So the question I’m asking is why not?  Have we all entered that space where we collectively sigh over tragedy and proceed with business as usual because we’re all too numb.  This type of injustice…our new normal?  Or is it that the veil of privilege covers the eyes of its constituents…keeping them blind to the alternate reality of the African- American in America.  Our Christian community is staying silent and I don’t know why. Are we hiding the very real fact of racism under the prayer cloth as a way to avoid the communication we fear.  Needing to go there,  we choose instead to pray it away.

Brothers and sisters in Christ – your African-American family is hurting over this and your silence is adding salt to a long  standing wound.

Some church leaders made blanket statements. Refusing to say any names, they tweeted glib comments about “these hard times”. They failed us.  In skirting the issue they displayed cowardice and flaunted the worst kind of weakness.  The church refused to take a stand and its lack of conviction creates a culture of complacency. It is powerless and fickle. It is unproductive.

The church should be at the center of all community building efforts and that can’t happen if we aren’t talking.  We’ll  have to walk this road together…hand in hand or not at all. Christ connects us but we are clearly living in different worlds.  My friends…racism is real…and we’ve got to deal with it.  The bridge building will have to be done by us.

photo: flickr by uusc4all

Since the verdict I realize that most of us (Christians) aren’t talking about it because we didn’t follow this case.  It wasn’t, isn’t important enough and doesn’t register in our world. God is love. I get it.  But wow!  What an aha! moment.  What a terribly sad moment of revelation.  As Christians, how do we travel across the globe desperate to meet the needs of Africans ,Haitians..the sick,the lost…and then choose to remain blind to a very real problem of racism in our own backyard? Our hearts bleeding and filled with compassion for “those” people, those situations.  The thing about integration in the church is that it hasn’t really happened.  We remain segregated.  The black church, the white church with so little room for Jesus, who should be the center of it all. Church, I know we can do better.

I talked yesterday with a friend about the verdict and how it’s been so difficult to process. She is a white woman and openly shared her experiences as a child. She told of racist family members and the perpetuation of the black boogey man in every scary story. She admitted her fear of running into a black  man when she moved from middle America to NYC.   She held back tears as I told her about my deep, core shaking sigh upon hearing the first  child I would raise was a boy.  It’s true….black mothers pray special prayers over their sons – and no one teaches this.  It’s in our DNA…a mournful lullaby from long ago prayed, whispered, breathed over every male child born into a family. She confessed that never has she had an experience that would validate all she’d been taught to fear about about black men – subliminally or otherwise. We went there and I was grateful for it.

I kept glancing at our boys.  They talked and laughed as we shared this moment of confidence and complete trust.  They’ve  loved each other a long time…bonding over Minecraft, email, face-time and Legos. But this weekend, their worlds parted. While her son played baseball and enjoyed the usual weekend flow – I had to talk to my son about how to behave if approached by an officer of the law. How he should not make any false moves, maintain a submissive stance , not reach into his back pack.  For anything.  My boy participated in a centuries old, depressingly sad rite of passage this weekend. He’s 12 and to me ..still ripe with the innocence of boyhood. But  on Saturday…after the verdict…he became a black man and with that, not  so green anymore.

Friends in Christ the floor is open…

what are your thoughts, how are you making sense of this tragedy? are you one of very few African-Americans in your community of believers? are you white with very little interaction with people of color? Do you attend a primarily white or black church?  Did your pastor speak on this topic last Sunday?  what did they say? what…are your thoughts?

and again…the floor is open…