Surrender, White People!: Our Unconditional Terms for Peace by D.L. Hughley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one of the best books I’ve read on the history of racism in America. Much of the factual data presented in the book was news to me and my undergraduate major was American History. DL Hughley intersperses enough comedy to make this an easy book to read. He covers a difficult topic masterfully. i highly recommend this book.
We can’t breathe
It’s been my privilege for the past couple of weeks to be a student once again. I’m auditing a course at nearby Houghton College and thanks to this pandemic and social distancing we are using Zoom. Race and American Christianity is the title of the course and our professor is Julian Armand Cook. i love the course and following last Thursday’s lecture I took Dr. Cook’s invitation to visit his church. I couldn’t make it in person but again thanks to the miracle of YouTube I listened to the service for this Sunday. I decided to look around on the church’s YouTube channel and found Julian’s sermon for May 31, 2020 which followed the death of George Floyd. His preaching is powerful and I wanted to share it and invite us all prayer. We are at a pivotal point in time. Thanks Julian for your invitation and your passion. I invite you to listen to the sermon beginning at 40:25 minutes of this video.
We hold these truths to be self evident
Thus begins the Declaration of Independence that we Americans celebrate on July 4th.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-
Thomas Jefferson
When Jefferson penned these words he was speaking as a free white man. He owned enslaved Africans whom he didn’t consider equals. These black men and women weren’t included nor were their indigenous brothers and sisters of Native Americans ancestry who roamed the North American continent.
Jefferson saw these other Americans as members of separate races and therefore not a part of the self evident truths which he so eloquently wrote about and which we proclaim each year. I’ve come to believe that there are not separate races but one race.
‘The idea of race as a biological construct makes it easy to believe that many of the divisions we see in society are natural. But race, like gender, is socially constructed.”
DiAngelo, Robin J.. White Fragility (p. 15). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.
I would have been affronted by such an allegation a few years ago but I have come to see and believe that I live in a culture that privileges me as a white man. Lately our country has become torn apart once again over allegations of police brutality and white supremacy. Protesters proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” have angered millions of Americans who push back with “All Lives Matter.” White folks are blinded to the truth of over four hundred years of oppression. I hope that this year is a clarion call to end the blight of racism and move forward as sisters and brothers of the human race so that we may fulfill the vision of Dr. King.
“And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” — Martin Luther King Jr.
#BlackLivesMatter #GeorgeFloyd
If you’re an American and you’re not sick of racism and bigotry in this country then perhaps you’re part of the problem. I grew up with a racist who threw one of my high school friends out of our house and called him a black bastard. My friend’s fault was that he had beat my Dad in a game of table tennis. My father would not allow me to play Motown music nor allow me to watch the NBA on our television because according to him I was a “n-word” lover. That was fifty years ago. I bore the brunt of my father’s prejudice because I liked Martin Luther King Jr.
A couple of weeks ago we saw men armed to the teeth with assault rifles and more trying to intimidate the governor of Michigan and members of their legislative body. What did the police do? Damn little. A couple of days ago a black man was apprehended in Minnesota for a non-violent crime and in the process of his arrest he was handcuffed and then choked to death by the police. This was recorded and witnessed by other people. Following that there was civil unrest and the police showed up with riot gear and tear gas.
There is a multi-tiered system of justice in the United States. If you’re white you can show up at a state capitol, intimidate folks you disagree with and not even get a slap on the wrist. But, if you’re black and you protest the murder of an innocent man you get police in riot gear and tear gas.