Sunday, August 20, 2017

If I were a black man.

White friends: I get it. You didn't own any slaves. As far as you know, your ancestors didn't own any slaves.
It's weird to you that statues matter so much.

Imagine with me being a black man, for a moment. You're walking into a court-room, both the symbol and implementation of "justice" in your land, and you have to walk past the statue of a general who QUITE LITERALLY FOUGHT A WAR to keep you enslaved. What message must that be sending?

If we care about our black brothers and sisters at all, it's time to temper southern pride with a little bit of southern repentance.

Ron Reagan famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

I agree completely with what Krauthammer says about "the original sin of slavery" in this video.

The hue and cry of American citizens who suffered under STATE-MANDATED oppression until the end of the 1960's is that it has been long enough. The message is: "Mr. President, tear down these statues."

I don't have to like it. I don't have to get it. I have to be empathetic enough: no, HUMAN enough,to understand their desire to put an end to this symbology, and this REALITY.

If that means taking down statues, fine.
If that means changing who's on the dollar bill, fine.

We must acknowledge the original sin of slavery in this country,and we must finally take steps to genuinely turn from that legacy.

If I were the devil (in answer to Paul Harvey)

If I were the devil, I'd convince the church that government is bad, and get them saying let's not feed the hungry or care for the sick, in Jesus name, amen. If I were the devil I would convince the church that greed is good and, despite what the bible says, it will ultimately be better for everyone if we convert "woe to you rich" to trickle-down economics. If I were the devil I would have preachers preaching that men should be allowed to rape the earth and poison their fellow men for love of filthy lucre, and standing idols of conservative politics in their very sanctuaries, until small government politics is literally preached as if it were the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Christians were doing horrible things like cutting food stamps and abandoning the working poor, and abandoning the exiles and sending the least of these packing back to where they came from.

And they'd be doing it motivated precisely by their strong desire to be good.

If I were the devil I would make up down and left right until Christians were the ones resisting the effort to expand healthcare access to workers and Christians are the ones who demand expanded military an contracted education and Christians were the ones who elect, as the most powerful person in the world, a man famous for not paying those he owns money, married 3 times; a serial philanderer and the first man to put a strip club in a casino. A self-confessed molester of women and attempted home-wrecker.

If I were the devil, I'd do it exactly like he's doing it, right now...

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Charlottesville NC 2017

I just can't imagine what it's like to be a person of color in America in 2017.

In 2008, you saw Barack Obama get elected president of the United States of America.
I don't know about you, but I thought maybe we'd really turned a corner. Maybe things were truly getting better. Maybe,just maybe, things had actually changed.

Then I watched, mouth agape, utterly dumbfounded as the people I know and love lost their ever-loving minds. The response to that N* in the white house (a phrase I heard more than once) was visceral. White people were terrified. They started believing anything, no matter how outrageous and silly, about him and about blacks in general. Death panels. Kenya. Muslim. Gov't takeover of this and of that. I didn't even know how to argue most of the time, because it was just so completely crazy.

Fast forward to 2016. In a fit of backlash, We The People elect to the highest office in the land a reality TV star who was the first man to put a strip club in a casino and is famous for not paying people the money he owes them, because we wanted a thug to throw out those Mexicans and "restore law and order" to those blacks. 

If it had been a movie plot I would have thought it too unrealistic. I just don't even have words.

And then *they* start crawling out from under their rocks. The "alt-right". They feel empowered. They feel that he is one of them, and that the pendulum of power in America has turned back towards them. They won the election. They have the power.

Every ounce of this is the doing of *MY* people: rural, white, Evangelical Christian people.


I am ashamed.