For those who think the election of Barack Obama means we’ve entered a post racial society, please think again.
If post-racial means that we are a society in which race doesn’t matter, that’s not true. Or if one defines a post racial society as one in which people are color blind, that isn’t true, either, and if a post racial society is one in which money and power is not tied to one’s race, that certainly isn’t true.
And if post-racial means we have finally moved to a time where white police officers do not react out of fear or bigotry when they see black men, we certainly are not there.
All of us remember the Professor Skip Gates case which ended up with Gates, the president and the white officer having beer together, in a kind of “can’t we just all get along?” type of gathering. And, some remember the story of the young African American man who was shot in the driveway of his own home in Houston, Texas by white police officers who thought he might have been a thief because he drove a nice car.
But this week, I read a story about a young high school honor student, 18 years old, who was assaulted and beaten by white police officers in Pittsburgh, Pa., who thought he was a drug dealer. This young man was walking from his mother’s house to his grandmother’s house.
Plainclothes police officers saw him walking, followed him for a bit, and then rushed their car up to him, jumped out, told him to give them his gun and his drugs.
He had neither.
In fact, according to the young man, these would-be assailants did not identify themselves as police officers and so frightened him that he began to run.
He said he thought he was about to be kidnapped.
And so he turned to run from them, and according to reports, fell after running only three steps. As he lay on the ground, they allegedly beat him pummeling his face and pulling out a chunk his dread locks out by the roots.
Wow.
He was arrested and taken into custody where police found that the “bulky object” they thought he had under his jacket was a bottle of Mountain Dew.
The report didn’t say that the bottle was broken, which it would have been since there was such a scuffle …but the young man said he didn’t have said bottle.
He doesn’t drink Mountain Dew.
So, the charges have been dropped, the mayor of Pittsburgh has made a statement, and the incident will be investigated.
Usual procedure.
The young man, whose face was terribly swollen from blows delivered during the assault, is recovering now. He has cut his dread locks. His right eye still looks pretty bad. He had to spend some time in the hospital.
I expect that the police officers will be found not to have been at fault.
Again, usual procedure.
Police brutality is still a major problem, with white officers wailing on black youth. Too often, it’s because some aberrant behavior is suspected. Ironically, the aberrant behavior in these cases are on the part of police officers who act and react out of fear of and maybe intense dislike for, young black men.
This young man had never been in trouble. He plays the viola and attends a prestigious high school for the arts.
Doesn’t matter, though, when power, fueled by fear and racial hatred, is unleashed on the streets from those who are supposed to protect all citizens.
No, we’ve got a ways to go before we can say we are post-racial, President Barack Obama notwithstanding.
Food for thought …
Pastor Smith
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Power Misused
Today I am in Omaha, Nebraska, preaching at Countryside UCC, and then giving a lecture in the evening on the subject, “The Myth of the Post-Racial Society.”
I ask your prayers.
But I ask bigger prayers for the people of Haiti who have been so poorly treated in the aftermath of the earthquake. I finally broke down in tears early in the week as I watched news reports keep talking about the importance of security instead of how the people of Haiti could best be helped.
I wept when I saw the report of how the Belgian doctors left critically ill, post-surgical patients, ordered to do so by their superior, who was worried about security.
Report after report lifted up the word “looting,” as if that was THE thing everyone had to be cautious of. Meanwhile, days were passing by with dead bodies piling up, the injured left stranded with no medical care, and out-and-out survivors with nothing to eat or drink.
Perhaps we would all “loot” were we in that situation.
The scene made me think about how far the world is from being “post racial.” Race matters, no matter what people say. The good people who have traveled to Haiti have good intentions, and will do good things, but their efforts are seriously hampered by their fear of people of color. The lessons of these United States have penetrated foreign borders, and augmented preconceived notions even foreigners have and had of black people.
You have heard me say that perhaps the good that comes out of this is that Haiti stops being the invisible country, that the world has been forced to look at this tiny nation of resilient yet suffering people and be moved to act. Perhaps now there will be help for Haiti to get an infrastructure, and all the things a 21st century so close to the United States must have in order to thrive.
The wrestling for power and control will erupt soon, if it has not already. The great powers will barter for who gets the most control. I am hoping that the people of Haiti will not, again, become objects, things to be manipulated in order to have control.
I am hoping, but I do not know that I am optimistic. The native people of Haiti have been so ignored, and are so in need, that they, in desperation, may cling to whatever assistance comes their way, so they can stop living such miserable lives.
Meanwhile, I will be writing CNN and even NPR, asking them why they kept on lifting up the “looting and danger” that would surely come. I wonder if they are even aware of how much they lifted up their concern.
Maybe you could write, too, I mean if you noticed it and it bothered you.
One thing I know is that there is power in the people. We the people are charged with speaking truth to power. The media is the power; we hold and are the truth.
If we can make them aware of how their reporting is affecting people, impacting them, then maybe we can make them care enough to at least become aware of it and do something to change.
We are the voice for the voiceless. In this case, the voiceless of those Haitians who have lost literally everything. It is an insult to be talking about the possibility of looting when people do not have even a place, a shelter to lay their heads, and when they have no food or water.
I’ve wept enough. Now I write. I hope you will, too.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
I ask your prayers.
But I ask bigger prayers for the people of Haiti who have been so poorly treated in the aftermath of the earthquake. I finally broke down in tears early in the week as I watched news reports keep talking about the importance of security instead of how the people of Haiti could best be helped.
I wept when I saw the report of how the Belgian doctors left critically ill, post-surgical patients, ordered to do so by their superior, who was worried about security.
Report after report lifted up the word “looting,” as if that was THE thing everyone had to be cautious of. Meanwhile, days were passing by with dead bodies piling up, the injured left stranded with no medical care, and out-and-out survivors with nothing to eat or drink.
Perhaps we would all “loot” were we in that situation.
The scene made me think about how far the world is from being “post racial.” Race matters, no matter what people say. The good people who have traveled to Haiti have good intentions, and will do good things, but their efforts are seriously hampered by their fear of people of color. The lessons of these United States have penetrated foreign borders, and augmented preconceived notions even foreigners have and had of black people.
You have heard me say that perhaps the good that comes out of this is that Haiti stops being the invisible country, that the world has been forced to look at this tiny nation of resilient yet suffering people and be moved to act. Perhaps now there will be help for Haiti to get an infrastructure, and all the things a 21st century so close to the United States must have in order to thrive.
The wrestling for power and control will erupt soon, if it has not already. The great powers will barter for who gets the most control. I am hoping that the people of Haiti will not, again, become objects, things to be manipulated in order to have control.
I am hoping, but I do not know that I am optimistic. The native people of Haiti have been so ignored, and are so in need, that they, in desperation, may cling to whatever assistance comes their way, so they can stop living such miserable lives.
Meanwhile, I will be writing CNN and even NPR, asking them why they kept on lifting up the “looting and danger” that would surely come. I wonder if they are even aware of how much they lifted up their concern.
Maybe you could write, too, I mean if you noticed it and it bothered you.
One thing I know is that there is power in the people. We the people are charged with speaking truth to power. The media is the power; we hold and are the truth.
If we can make them aware of how their reporting is affecting people, impacting them, then maybe we can make them care enough to at least become aware of it and do something to change.
We are the voice for the voiceless. In this case, the voiceless of those Haitians who have lost literally everything. It is an insult to be talking about the possibility of looting when people do not have even a place, a shelter to lay their heads, and when they have no food or water.
I’ve wept enough. Now I write. I hope you will, too.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
Monday, January 11, 2010
Racist or Reckless?
The Pastor’s Page
Well, there certainly has been a lot of hoopla around Sen. Harry Reid’s remarks that he made during the Obama presidential campaign.
He said that Mr. Obama would probably win because he was a “light skinned African American who didn’t have a Negro dialect unless he wanted to.”
The media and the politicians went ballistic. Mr. Reid was called racist; Michael Steele, chair of the Republican National Committee, called for his resignation. All day Monday, Reid’s words were reported, and pundits weighed in. Was it racist or not? Should he resign, as Trent Lott resigned after his remarks about how the nation might not have had the problems it had had if Strom Thurmond, a professed segregationist, had been elected president?
It was apples and oranges, folks. Not the same situation at all.
Mr. Reid’s comments were unfortunate, but the words and his sentiment were honest, and I think the words were more a function of when he was raised than him being racist.
When most of us were growing up, the common word for black people was “Negro.” It wasn’t until the 60s that other monikers were offered, including “black,” “Afro-American,” and later, “African American.”
Prior to that, we had been called “colored.”
As long as my grandparents lived, they called black people “colored,” because that’s what they’d grown used to. Older black and white people used “colored,” in spite of the naming game for us being in a state of flux.
It feels like that’s what happened with Mr. Reid. He grew up saying black people were “Negro.” Heck, for that matter, whomever put the new census forms together must be stuck “back then,” because the word “Negro” appears on those forms as well.
He was also saying what most people were thinking. Mr. Obama had a good chance of being elected because he was light skinned and didn’t “sound” like a black person. Reid called that “Negro dialect.”
This nation would never have elected Mr. Obama had he been dark, had he “sounded too ethnic,” and had he sounded too angry. Black people are not allowed to be angry. It is an American commandment.
Mr. Reid must have forgotten for a moment that because he is a politician, he is always under scrutiny. Any laying down of the guard has to be saved for when one is with trusted loved ones. No, he forgot, and said what he said in public, and now, the political world is spinning.
But make no mistake: What Mr. Reid said was not as racist as it was careless. He called himself giving kudos to America on its willingness to elect a black man who wasn’t too threatening. Trent Lott, on the other hand, who was the Majority Whip during the Bush administration, did something far different.
He uplifted and praised Strom Thurmond, unabashedly so, and said that if the elderly senator had been elected president, the country would not have had the problem it had had.
Excuse me? Are you kidding? Thurmond, who, by the way had a daughter by a black woman, was brazen in his segregationist views. Thurmond more than once offered violence as a way to thwart efforts of integration.
Reading columnist Richard Prince, I was also reminded of what racist is, as opposed to ignorant or reckless. Former President Bill Clinton reportedly deeply offended the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, when, during the 2008 presidential race, he called Kennedy seeking an endorsement for his wife. In the book “Game Change,” the same book in which Reid’s statement is found, Clinton is reported to have said to Kennedy, “Come on. A few years ago, a this guy would have been getting us coffee.”
That’s racist.
When I think of Mr. Reid, I think of people even today saying “stewardess” instead of flight attendant, and “record” or “album” instead of “CD.” Sometimes, it’s hard to change with the times when it comes to common language. And, Reid was on the money when he said alluded that if Obama had been dark skinned, there is no way he would have gotten the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency.
I am not surprised that the media doesn’t understand all of this, but I sure wish it did.
All this hullabaloo over Reid was a waste of a good news day.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
Well, there certainly has been a lot of hoopla around Sen. Harry Reid’s remarks that he made during the Obama presidential campaign.
He said that Mr. Obama would probably win because he was a “light skinned African American who didn’t have a Negro dialect unless he wanted to.”
The media and the politicians went ballistic. Mr. Reid was called racist; Michael Steele, chair of the Republican National Committee, called for his resignation. All day Monday, Reid’s words were reported, and pundits weighed in. Was it racist or not? Should he resign, as Trent Lott resigned after his remarks about how the nation might not have had the problems it had had if Strom Thurmond, a professed segregationist, had been elected president?
It was apples and oranges, folks. Not the same situation at all.
Mr. Reid’s comments were unfortunate, but the words and his sentiment were honest, and I think the words were more a function of when he was raised than him being racist.
When most of us were growing up, the common word for black people was “Negro.” It wasn’t until the 60s that other monikers were offered, including “black,” “Afro-American,” and later, “African American.”
Prior to that, we had been called “colored.”
As long as my grandparents lived, they called black people “colored,” because that’s what they’d grown used to. Older black and white people used “colored,” in spite of the naming game for us being in a state of flux.
It feels like that’s what happened with Mr. Reid. He grew up saying black people were “Negro.” Heck, for that matter, whomever put the new census forms together must be stuck “back then,” because the word “Negro” appears on those forms as well.
He was also saying what most people were thinking. Mr. Obama had a good chance of being elected because he was light skinned and didn’t “sound” like a black person. Reid called that “Negro dialect.”
This nation would never have elected Mr. Obama had he been dark, had he “sounded too ethnic,” and had he sounded too angry. Black people are not allowed to be angry. It is an American commandment.
Mr. Reid must have forgotten for a moment that because he is a politician, he is always under scrutiny. Any laying down of the guard has to be saved for when one is with trusted loved ones. No, he forgot, and said what he said in public, and now, the political world is spinning.
But make no mistake: What Mr. Reid said was not as racist as it was careless. He called himself giving kudos to America on its willingness to elect a black man who wasn’t too threatening. Trent Lott, on the other hand, who was the Majority Whip during the Bush administration, did something far different.
He uplifted and praised Strom Thurmond, unabashedly so, and said that if the elderly senator had been elected president, the country would not have had the problem it had had.
Excuse me? Are you kidding? Thurmond, who, by the way had a daughter by a black woman, was brazen in his segregationist views. Thurmond more than once offered violence as a way to thwart efforts of integration.
Reading columnist Richard Prince, I was also reminded of what racist is, as opposed to ignorant or reckless. Former President Bill Clinton reportedly deeply offended the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, when, during the 2008 presidential race, he called Kennedy seeking an endorsement for his wife. In the book “Game Change,” the same book in which Reid’s statement is found, Clinton is reported to have said to Kennedy, “Come on. A few years ago, a this guy would have been getting us coffee.”
That’s racist.
When I think of Mr. Reid, I think of people even today saying “stewardess” instead of flight attendant, and “record” or “album” instead of “CD.” Sometimes, it’s hard to change with the times when it comes to common language. And, Reid was on the money when he said alluded that if Obama had been dark skinned, there is no way he would have gotten the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency.
I am not surprised that the media doesn’t understand all of this, but I sure wish it did.
All this hullabaloo over Reid was a waste of a good news day.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
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