Tag Archives: racism

Selma, Ferguson, Madison: Thoughts and links on the film

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I had the chance to watch Selma over the weekend. It’s a powerful film that has aroused controversy over its depiction of the events surrounding the Selma marches. There has been an outcry over its depiction of conflict between LBJ and MLK. As the first attempt at a biopic of MLK (itself something of a shock given his iconic status in 21st-century America), it may open the door for other cinematic treatments of him and the Civil Rights movement. Given that Hollywood’s focus i such films is too often on the “white savior,” telling the story from an African-American perspective is important.

In addition to the strong performances and breathtaking photography, I was moved by the powerful resonances between Selma and our own day. It was eerie, given the GOP’s relentless attacks on voting rights, to watch as African-Americans fought for the right to vote. The tactics may have changed but the effort to disenfranchise is as strong as ever. In addition, events over the last year, from Ferguson to Eric Garner, continue to show that even with civil rights, African-Americans are treated differently by the justice system and their lives mean little to political and economic elites.

There’s still something shocking about the overt racism and violence depicted in the film. While watching, it’s easy to demonize George Wallace and Jim Clark and others who opposed the efforts to end segregation and gain voting rights. Such outward displays of racism have become anathema in our culture. Still, racism is insidious, the challenges African-Americans face in our society are as great as ever, and we need to face the reality that we are as far from a color-blind society and achieving King’s dream today as we were fifty years ago.

A fairly nuanced look at the historical debate surrounding the film (it distorts the relationship between MLK and LBJ) from the New York Times.

Representative John Lewis has this to say

And “Selma” does more than bring history to life, it enlightens our understanding of our lives today. It proves the efficacy of nonviolent action and civic engagement, especially when government seems unresponsive. With poignant grace, it demonstrates that Occupy, inconvenient protests and die-ins that disturb our daily routine reflect a legacy of resistance that led many to struggle and die for justice, not centuries ago, but in our lifetimes. It reminds us that the day could be approaching when that price will be required again.

But now this movie is being weighed down with a responsibility it cannot possibly bear. It’s portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s role in the Selma marches has been called into question. And yet one two-hour movie cannot tell all the stories encompassed in three years of history — the true scope of the Selma campaign. It does not portray every element of my story, Bloody Sunday, or even the life of Martin Luther King Jr. We do not demand completeness of other historical dramas, so why is it required of this film?

My former professor Harvey Cox was interviewed about his friendship with MLK. Harvey used to talk about his participation in the Selma marches in class (including photographs) but there’s a great deal in this interview I had never heard before.

Peter Dreier writes about Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who is not portrayed in the film, but was at Selma, made important contributions to the Civil Rights movement, and was an important interpreter of Judaism to Christian America in the decades after World War II.

Is this your car? “Paper-Cut” Racism in Madison

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Yesterday, we began a conversation about race and racism at Grace Church. Today, Paul Fanlund of the Capital Times wrote a piece about the little indignities African-Americans encounter in their daily lives in Madison. It confirms some of what we heard yesterday.

Grace is blessed to include among our active membership a number of people of color, several of whom participated in the conversation. We began by talking about white privilege and as is often the case, there was some pushback about the concept. But as we listened, we heard some heartbreaking and shocking stories about the treatment of children of color in the schools.

But one of the most emotional moments was when one man asked us, “What does the police officer ask you when he pulls you over in a traffic stop?”

We responded, “May I see your driver’s license and registration?”

“No,” he said. “I’m always asked, ‘Is this your car?'”

That anecdote hit home for us the vast gulf separating the experience of whites and people of color in Madison and Dane County. To be treated suspiciously in virtually every encounter with authority is not just an irritation, it is an attack on one’s self-esteem and reinforces the powerlessness and despair people of color face.

The little indignities experienced on a daily basis are more than a nuisance. They are a daily reminder that people of color, African-Americans, live in a culture in which they can never feel truly at home.

At Grace, as we seek to participate in our community’s conversation around racism and efforts to create a more just community, it is important to begin by listening to the experience of the people of color who are part of our congregation. By acknowledging their voices and hearing their stories, we help to create in our midst the beloved community called into being by Jesus Christ. My hope that even as we reach out to engage others, especially the broader African-American community, we will deepen our ties and common life and serve as a model for others.

 

Resources on Racism in Madison and the US

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In our adult forum today, we’re joining the conversation about racism and inequity that has been taking place in Madison and across the country over the last year. I’m posting here some resources that might help us think about these issues in our own lives and in our community.

First of all, white privilege. Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack” introduced the term: white-privilege

Second,the conversation was jumpstarted in Madison by an article by the Rev. Alex Gee, Jr. That is available here. In the year since its publications, Gee has formed a new orgnizationt, Justified Anger, that seeks to keep issues of race and inequity at the center of our political and cultural life in Madison.

About the same time that this conversation began, the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families released its Race to Equity Report that provided a shocking look at racial disparities in Dane County, WI (where Madison is located). The report is available for download here: WCCF-R2E-Report.

Some books to read:

James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

If you’ve never read it, or if you haven’t read it recently, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a powerful challenge to whites, especially white Christians, who criticized the nonviolent protests and boycotts in Birmingham in 1963. More than fifty years later, in the wake of Ferguson and Eric Garner, its words retain their power and are as relevant as ever. Read it here: king

 

Looking for Signs of Christ’s Coming in Ferguson and Madison: A sermon for Advent 1, Year B

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Almost a year ago, The Rev. Alex Gee, jr. wrote an op-ed piece in the Madison State Journal in which he described his experience as an African American male in Madison, and called on our community to address head-on the issues of racism, inequality, and injustice in our midst. Since then, there have been a series of meetings, a great deal of press coverage, and new energy in the African American community to speak out on the issues that divide us. Continue reading →

A Thanksgiving Prayer

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As we gather at tables, grieving the state of our nation, may we gain spiritual strength for the journey ahead, drawing on the deepest wells of wisdom from those on whose shoulders we stand and the various faith traditions that have fueled their freedom march and continue to energizee ours.

In the spirit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dr. King, may the pioneers of the civil rights movement collaborate with the young leaders in Ferguson, New York City and other cities, and may they impart their knowledge and understanding of nonviolent resistance that is not passive, but is spiritually active with an abiding faith that the universe is on the side of justice, and that, in the end, love will triumph over evil.

May this spiritual strength, fueled by prophetic fire and love, reveal to us our neighbors’ humanity, our own complicity in their suffering and liberate us once and for all from the history that continues to enslave us.

 

From Cornel West and Peter Goodwin Heltzel

An Epistemology of Ignorance: Charles Mills on Racism

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The radically divergent perspectives on reality of blacks and whites are a straightforward reflection of the radically different realities in which they live. Segregation has deep cognitive consequences as well as the more familiar consequences for one’s chances at a good education, home ownership in good neighborhoods, being able to escape gang violence, etc. That doesn’t mean that black majority opinion is always going to be right, of course. But you would expect that those more subject to the inequities of the system will in general be the ones more likely to have a realistic perspective on it. Whites have not merely an unrepresentative group experience, but a vested group interest in self-deception. Sociologists have documented the remarkable extent to which large numbers of white Americans get the most basic things wrong about their society once race is involved. (See, for some hilarious examples, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s “Racism Without Racists.”) My favorite example, from a poll about three years ago, is that a majority of white Americans now believe that whites are the race most likely to be the victims of racial discrimination! If that’s not an epistemology of ignorance at work, I don’t know what would be.

Read it all here.

The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular

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Jesus told the Parable of the Unjust Judge, the writer of Luke tells us, to teach us about prayer, but I think it can tell us something about justice as well. The unjust judge of the parable could be petitioned into rendering justice in a particular case if it were made inconvenient enough for him not to. This realization, of course, we have heard echoed by Malcolmand Martin alike. We should notice, though, what does not happen in the parable – the judge does not repent or reform. He does not become a righteous man. He renders justice to the widow out of pure self-interest, but this does not make him anymore inclined to be just in the next case the widow might bring, or indeed the next case that anyone else brings. There is no amount of pleading, petitioning, or protesting that will transform the judge into a just man. We live in under a state that is at best, indifferent to our problems, and at worst, actively seeking to destroy us. It is good and right that we hound the state into giving us justice, but blacks cannot delude themselves into thinking that the state will ever become justice. There are no laws that can be passed or reforms that can be pursued that will allow us to stop being vigilant. There are no victories that will bring us peace. We will never be able to pound our swords into plowshares, because we will always have to be prepared to fight. Dr. King, our beautiful prophet, was wrong. The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular, not in this life. If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.

 

Wow!

The whole piece by Ezekiel Kweku, is a must read.

National Attention on Racism in Wisconsin

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It’s just coincidence, I’m sure, but two national media outlets have run stories on racism in Wisconsin. The first, in The New Republic, focuses on Governor Scott Walker’s rise to power in Milwaukee. It details the deep racial divide between Milwaukee and its suburbs, pointing out that African-American migration came relatively late to Milwaukee (in the 60s). The political consequences of the divide are breathtaking:

During this period, the WOW counties continued to expand. But unlike suburbs elsewhere, they had not grown more diverse. Today, less than 2 percent of the WOW counties’ population is African American and less than 5 percent is Hispanic. According to studies by the Brookings Institution and Brown University, the Milwaukee metro area is one of the top two most racially segregated regions in the country. The WOW counties were voting Republican at levels unseen in other Northern suburbs; one needed to look as far as the white suburbs around Atlanta and Birmingham for similar numbers. The partisan gulf between Milwaukee and its suburbs in presidential elections has now grown wider than in any of the nation’s 50 largest cities, except for New Orleans, according to the Journal Sentinel series.

And this:

It is as if the Milwaukee area were in a kind of time warp. Like the suburbanites of the ’70s and ’80s elsewhere in the United States, the residents of the WOW counties are full of anxiety and contempt for the place they abandoned. “We’re still in the disco era here,” says Democratic political consultant Paul Maslin. This has affected the politics of the state in myriad ways. The nationwide trend of exploring alternatives to prison hasn’t reached Wisconsin—it has the highest rate of black male incarceration of any state in the country.

The other story focuses on Madison’s Alex Gee and the efforts here to overcome the deep divide between Black and White. It ran on PBS Newshour last night. I think it’s important to see the connections between the two pieces–not in order to praise Dane County and Madison over against Milwaukee, but to recognize that there are deep continuities between the two situations and the political context. Madison and Dane County may be Democratic and Progressive strongholds but the reality of the racial divide calls into question the progressive agenda and politics of many of our political leaders. Their comfortable electoral majorities have resulted in complacency and building coalitions or working with the African-American has not been in their self-interest. The racial divide may not have been exploited here in quite the same way that it has been exploited in Milwaukee, but the results are the same–deep inequities, an unresponsive political system, and white flight.

 

Justified Anger: Town Hall on Racism in Madison

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I attended Alex Gee’s town hall meeting on racism this afternoon. It was very interesting. A standing room only crowd, traffic jams on Badger Road, politicians of all stripes including Senator Ron Johnson came together to listen to Alex speak about what’s happened in his life since his article in December. We learned about the coalition that has emerged in the African-American community and hopes for real change to some of the wide disparities in achievement, economic status, and incarceration.

In the comment period that followed, we heard from people eager to participate, some ideas on what to do, and the need to engage other people of color in this conversation. We also heard about some of the challenges faced by the African-American community–the problems faced by people who are trying to reincorporate into society after prison; problems of under- and unemployment among African-American women, and the absence at this conversation of people from the under-class. We also heard about efforts over the past decades–reports of inequities and racism in Madison going back to the sixties and people who had tried to initiate change in previous generations.

It was heartening to see so many people come together across the great divides in our city. We are separated by class, economic status, and education, and more often than not, we are also deeply divided by our faiths, including divisions within Christianity.

For more information and to get involved in Alex’s emerging efforts, visit the website: http://madisonjustifiedanger.wordpress.com/JustifiedAnger

Christianity and Racism in Madison

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Thanks to the Capital Times and to several courageous African-American leaders, there’s an important conversation about racism taking place in Madison this year. Sparked by some shocking statistics–that Wisconsin has the highest incarceration rate for African-American males in the US. At 13%, it’s double the national average. In Madison, the recent Race to Equity report revealed the enormous disparities in Dane County and Madison:

  • the unemployment rate for African-Americans is five times higher than that of whites
  • 54% of African-American residents of Dane County live beneath the poverty line; the rate for whites is 7.8%
  • around  75% of African-American children live in poverty; the percentage of whites: 5.5%

In December, Alex Gee published an impassioned plea: Justified Anger. In an article that included stories about his own experiences with racial profiling (including in his church’s parking lot), he concluded with a ringing challenge to Madison:

I challenge the entire community to become concerned and involved. I challenge African-American pastors to make their voices and concerns known and hold community forums with politicians to demand action.
I challenge white clergy to address racial disparity and discrimination from their pulpits, challenge parishioners to think and act differently and help sound the alarm of the injustice and inequity in our community. I need those pastors to explain how these systems are perpetuated by the silence of “nice” people.

Gee has invited the community to a town hall meeting to discuss racism and inequality in Madison.

Maria Dixon (Patheos) takes a wider perspective. Looking at the tradition of Black History Month, she challenges American Christians to have the serious conversations about race that are necessary:

Despite our efforts and initiatives to eradicate the conditions faced by undocumented immigrants; the educational challenges faced by the poor; or the inequities of justice and wealth– until we engage in the hard conversation regarding the framework that set all of these conditions in motion—the grand American concept of race–we will be still floundering like beached ideological whales 25 years from now.

To engage in hard conversations requires trust and presence, neither one of which we have in the American Church. Our way of dealing with race is to erase difference by folding it in and objectifying it. Rather than dealing plainly about fears, our biases (past and present), and admitting that race sometimes does play a role in our approach to ministry, we render it totally invisible. Sadly, it is the tendency to make race invisible that is most damning for any chance at honest reconciliation. For erasure is the greatest form of dehumanization in a symbolic culture—for it communicates the belief the object being erased is not viable for productive service nor is it worthy to remembered much less esteemed.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with clergy colleagues, both with Episcopalians and in wider ecumenical contexts about how we might respond. Of course, neither of those conversations included African-American participants. I’ll be attending the town hall meeting to listen, to learn, and to find ways to build relationships.