“Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible – this is a new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Just today news came out of a supposed “prank” that took place over Halloween in tiny Lahoma, Oklahoma, just west of Enid. As the article states, “Cary Sharp was caught on camera dressed like a member of the Ku Klux Klan at a Halloween party on a property in Lahoma. It was a bonfire and the photo shows torches and a cross but Cary Sharp and his friends insisted no cross was burned despite flames being visible behind it in the photo.”
Cary Sharp, as it turns out, is married to Teresa Sharp, who happens to be the mayor.
Now, we could write this off as simply another dumb idea from a couple of guys who just acted inappropriately. And there’s a measure of truth to that. But it is also indicative of a deeper thread of truth. If two dudes sitting around a campfire decide to treat history and race in this manner, especially in such a public way, what happens to individuals or, worse yet, groups of white males making decisions that really do matter? What is at work subconsciously in the minds of both these guys in small town Oklahoma and the ones who make decisions about sentencing laws (which are demonstrably more punitive to people of color) or ones who make decisions on who gets to rent or buy houses? What about what goes through the mind of a cop who feels threatened in a routine situation or, more insidiously, what goes in to making him or her feel more threatened in the first place?
While a part of me knows that it is a stretch to equate the stupidity of actions in Lahoma with the very real and present danger to black lives in this country, I am aware that race and racism operates at a very subconscious level and that we do not always make our racial judgments intentionally or with malice of forethought. Instead, racism lives in us, like a parasite, and it makes it’s presence known in what we think is OK, or funny, or “just jokin’ around.” It also makes it’s way known by living symbiotically with “whiteness”, power and privilege tied up with the color of our skin, all neatly wrapped in a culture and social structure that supports one person over another. That is connected, I’m afraid, to a person using such blatantly racist imagery and not “realizing” the hurt it would cause.
As we head into fall, and soon into Advent season, there is a task at hand for us as a church. The church I serve, Fellowship UCC, was born from the spectre of racism as a split from Second Presbyterian in the 1950s on the issue on membership for a black family. And while that was a seminal event, the people who formed the church were not free from it. For it was only a few years later that this same church voted the other way on membership for a black family. Still, despite those inconsistencies, present in all of us, we are a church that holds justice as a primary value. We are a church that prides itself on inclusion, a job that is never, ever done.
And the next chapter of that work is still, sadly, on race. But it is the work for us to do, as people raised to believe that we are white. It is not for people of color to come and explain what we are “doing wrong”, but for us to investigate our own past, to educate ourselves on what has passed for “normal” all these centuries and to finally come to terms with the “original sin” of America – racism.
On Wednesday nights we are reading Mr. Coates book, Between the World and Me, and we are beginning this process of investigation. We will continue to do so, but I think we will need to find more and more ways to do this as a church. The world must face these issues that continue to divide and fracture us, or we will tear each other apart. And where better to start this work than the church?