Words of Wisdom?

This whole week we have been pondering and reflecting on these well articulated reasons why Black Lives Matter.  They can help us understand that the push-back claim “all lives matter” does not work to help us all become a better people.  In recent years I have become convinced that we who are white are the ones who really have work to do.  That will seem a gross understatement to those who are not white.  It is a “realization” because those of us living under the cover of white privilege and especially those of us living with a progressive or liberal world view may still hold a sense that there’s nothing left to do.  The civil rights movement happened.  Civil rights are a matter of law now, so what could be wrong?  When we find ourselves thinking or feeling this way, we owe it to ourselves to shake it off and remind ourselves that there is plenty still wrong.  The last two items on the list of considerations bring it home for us.

Why at this time must it be “Black lives matter” and not the refrain “All lives matter?”

• Because it’s high time for whites to acknowledge and show solidarity with the indignities, fear, and pain that our African American sisters and brothers experience on a daily basis.
• Because we will never fulfill this country’s founding principles and become whole as a society until we face up to and address our racism and the toll that it continues to take on African Americans, and on all of us.

These last items are a call to a future together as one people in this country.  They hold the potential for making a bridge into a future in which American people really do see the dignity and worth in each human being.  The first steps on that bridge are acknowledging the indignities, fear and pain that our African American sisters and brothers experience on a daily basis.  In our misguided rush to “not see color” and “treat everyone the same” we who are white remain blind to how our fellow citizens who are darker in color are routinely not treated the same.  The simple call is to acknowledge that–to find ways, every day ways, to include in conversations and relationship that we see, we hear, we know that there is suffering for them because of the color of their skin.  And that we stand with them.

Do we hear the call?  Can we begin to imagine conversations in which we find ways to say: I see you.  I hear you.  I can see that you are suffering and that this is being done to you because you are black.  I stand with you.

Taking this move toward acknowledgment of suffering and demonstrating solidarity might feel frightening at times.  It’s a step into a new place for those of us who are white. It’s a step into what our black brothers and sisters deal with on a daily basis.  It also holds the potential for making us into one people.  Ultimately, our racism will destroy us all. Ultimately, our solidarity–if we are willing to create it–can save us all.  Here’s the future I see this bridge of love leading to.  It is the future of One People–the one people whose chose to stand together.

Bob Patrick

Monday’s post of reasons why Black Lives Matter received very high readership.  I want to continue for the next few days reflecting on some of those points and how love can make bridges for us.  Let’s consider the itms on that list again that ask us to consider systemic and institutional racism:

Why at this time must it be “Black lives matter” and not the refrain “All lives matter?”

• Because African Americans are uniquely discriminated against and their lives are uniquely endangered.
• Because young African American men are uniquely at risk of death every time they encounter the police.
• Because the cards are still uniquely stacked against African Americans in this society, and they continue to be uniquely disadvantaged by past and present social, economic, and legal discrimination.
• Because institutional racism and entrenched white privilege are in a far greater position to do harm to African Americans than African Americans are to do harm to white Americans.

I cannot offer a better reflection on these forms of systemic and institutional racism than this very well done educational video.  It deserves 6 minutes of our time and much more for our reflection.  Bob Patrick

Monday’s post of reasons why Black Lives Matter received very high readership.  I want to continue for the next few days reflecting on some of those points and how love can make bridges for us.  Let’s consider the fourth and fifth items on that list again, both of which deal with our collective memory:

Why at this time must it be “Black lives matter” and not the refrain “All lives matter:”

• As an example, almost 600 lynchings of African Americans occurred in Georgia, but only one lynching site is commemorated by a historical marker, and no one has been convicted or accepted responsibility for these lynchings to these days, despite many lynchings having been committed before large crowds.
• As another example, it took South Carolina and Alabama until 1998 and 2000, respectively, to amend their constitutions to remove provisions making interracial marriages illegal. In both cases, about 40% of voters in these referendums voted to retain the prohibition on interracial marriage.

When a lynching, one single lynching is portrayed on television, I have a visceral reaction. I who find it possible to watch almost anything find it difficult to keep my eyes open, my ears open to the sights and horrible sounds of a mob driven by racial fear and hatred destroying the life of a single human being and the lives of those who loved that human being.

So, I cannot fathom 600 lynchings in the single State of Georgia alone.  I cannot fathom the wreckage of fear, hatred and division among peoples that they created and now silently and secretly continue to create.  As I, being a white person, walk past any particular black person–do I know if their ancestor was lynched by the white community?  Is there some change that a relative of mine was involved? I have no way of knowing because we have collectively kept this a secret. There are virtually no memorials to the pain and suffering in large part because they were perpetuated or allowed by the white majority in our communities.  Deeper into the collective secrecy were those laws that made love between black and white people illegal and therefore publicly a shame and a crime.  It forced children of such unions to hide who they were, who their parents were and deeply distorted what ought to have been celebrated:  Love.

But, Love Builds a Bridge.  If we embrace the Black Lives Matter movement and mantra, we begin through the power of love to open up the sealed doors of memory.  That bridge extends into the hearts of human beings and allows us a way to own the ancient wounds, begin to heal them, and to forge a new kind of community.

Families are notorious for keeping secrets about those things that they have been taught to fear and to shame.  Unconditional love keeps the way open for letting go of those shames, those secrets and to build new futures together.

I think a word of warning is appropriate in this reflection on building bridges into memory.  If we are willing to re-member the past, we may find at first angry reactions from almost everyone involved.  White people don’t want to be “blamed for something I didn’t do” and black people don’t want to be reminded of the humiliation and horror of that period of time.  These kinds of reactions, however, only serve to keep memory locked away under the chains of fear, hatred and shame.  We must continue to build the bridges into memory.

Love makes a bridge.

Bob Patrick

Yesterday’s post of reasons why Black Lives Matter received very high readership among those who read this blog.  I want to continue for the next few days reflecting on some of those points and how love can make bridges for us.  Let’s consider the first three items on that list again:

Black lives matter (and not “All lives matter”):

• Because no one in a position of power in this country’s history has ever systematically questioned whether white lives matter.
• Because the statement “All lives matter” is so innocuous as to be meaningless and distracts us from the urgent need to confront the specific and especially lethal brand of injustice that is being visited upon our African American brothers and sisters.
• Because white racism towards African Americans is the seminal fatal flaw of our country, continues to the current day, and has never been fully acknowledged and addressed.

For me as a white person, each of these represent an opportunity to journey into what I am calling some shadowy places.  They are shadowy places because we, as white people don’t talk about racism toward black people openly.  We hold these issues as if in the shadows. Having grown up in the Deep South, I was aware of our own historic role in slavery and the ensuing suffering that the aftermath of slavery forced on African Americans.  I also believed that in places north of the Deep South, there was no racial tension or racism. What I’ve discovered over the years of travelling, of course, is that racism may be worse in other places outside the Deep South in large part because we don’t talk about it, and the South is scapegoated for the whole problem.  Martin Luther King, Jr. himself noted that racism was more deeply ingrained in places in the north than in the south.  The point is not who is more to blame.  The point is:  we don’t talk about it, so how in the world can we ever learn and grow together beyond this thing that shall not be named?

The first two bulleted items move me to consider analogous situations.  Why don’t we have a movement concerned about men’s right to vote or their prospects for success in the market place? Without question it is because men are well represented in the market place and arguably have an advantage over women to this day.  We don’t need to advocate for men’s equity in the marketplace.  There is still much work to be done in our country around women’s rights especially their participation and equitable treatment in the economy, and we seem more capable of recognizing that than we do the equitable treatment of African Americans in all levels of the country.  Black lives matter.

We live in the best nation in the world.  Anyone who works hard can be successful.  All lives matter.  These are generic platitudes that at first glance, sound good–but they set up roadblocks to the shadowy places of the heart that remain unvisited, uninvestigated.

Here’s a way that white folks might begin building the bridges that we need into our own shadowy places.  Take the words “black lives matter” as a mantra for today.  Say it to yourself often today.  Let it guide your eyes, ears and heart as you go through your day in your world.  Keep saying it to yourself.  Be open to where it might lead you, to how it might make you shrink back, to what it might help you hear, to how you might object on the inside at first, to what it stands to show you that you might not have received otherwise.

The fact is, when we travel into our shadowy places, our very presence there sheds a new light on them, and the shadows that seemed so scary dissipate.  We then begin to see what’s really there.

Fair warning, though:  once we see what is in our shadowy places, we become responsible. I am suspicious that this has been the problem all along.  On some level, we already know that, and we are afraid.  On some level, we are morally still children, afraid of the shadows in the closet.  Time to turn the lights on and to grow up, because black lives matter.

Bob Patrick

Thanks to Steve Babb for sending in this collection of considerations.  As I reflect on them, I consider them as a way of building bridges–into my own consciousness and conscience and into the reality of fellow Americans about whom I remain ignorant.  I invite you to use them for such personal reflection and bridge building.

Bob Patrick

• Because no one in a position of power in this country’s history has ever systematically questioned whether white lives matter.
• Because the statement “All lives matter” is so innocuous as to be meaningless and distracts us from the urgent need to confront the specific and especially lethal brand of injustice that is being visited upon our African American brothers and sisters.
• Because white racism towards African Americans is the seminal fatal flaw of our country, continues to the current day, and has never been fully acknowledged and addressed.
• As an example, almost 600 lynchings of African Americans occurred in Georgia, but only one lynching site is commemorated by a historical marker, and no one has been convicted or accepted responsibility for these lynchings to these days, despite many lynchings having been committed before large crowds.
• As another example, it took South Carolina and Alabama until 1998 and 2000, respectively, to amend their constitutions to remove provisions making interracial marriages illegal. In both cases, about 40% of voters in these referendums voted to retain the prohibition on interracial marriage.
• Because African Americans are uniquely discriminated against and their lives are uniquely endangered.
• Because young African American men are uniquely at risk of death every time they encounter the police.
• Because the cards are still uniquely stacked against African Americans in this society, and they continue to be uniquely disadvantaged by past and present social, economic, and legal discrimination.
• Because institutional racism and entrenched white privilege are in a far greater position to do harm to African Americans than African Americans are to do harm to white Americans.
• Because it’s high time for whites to acknowledge and show solidarity with the indignities, fear, and pain that our African American sisters and brothers experience on a daily basis.
• Because we will never fulfill this country’s founding principles and become whole as a society until we face up to and address our racism and the toll that it continues to take on African Americans, and on all of us.