Black Lives Matter

In thanksgiving for the life and work of Julian Bond, who tired of hearing “If only they were all like you.” It reminds me of often hearing from those opposed to LGBT ordination, “But we would ordain you!”

“Black lives matter” is not just wisdom for protesting “issues” of law enforcement. It should be a mantra for all of life.

Black lives matter when there is equal access to prenatal and postnatal care, preschool, decent housing and nutrition, education, healthcare, employment, promotions, advancement, economic opportunities, voting rights, justice in the courts, representation on school boards, law enforcement agencies, city councils, state legislatures, congress, corporate boards, and executive positions in business and government—to name some of the things routinely denied.

Black lives matter when the disproportionate detention and incarceration rate of African-Americans on mere suspicion, manufactured evidence, mandatory minimum sentencing, or low-level drug offenses is reduced dramatically or eliminated altogether.

A pet peeve of mine has been to see black people cast in incidental roles in movies and TV programs (how many black judges can there be?) rather than seeing their characters integrally woven into an ensemble cast, though this has been changing in recent years.

I once worked with a progressive but all-white group who would have agreed that all of the above are examples of institutional racism, and whose members said they wanted to do something about it. But a colleague who had worked with the group far longer than I told me privately, “They all want to address the issue of racism politically, but few, if any, actually have black friends.”

The person observed that institutional racism will only be dismantled as we take racism personally, when black lives matter in our own friendships, families, congregations, work places, working relationships, and social networks.

A white police officer testifying in the O.J. Simpson trial was asked if he was a racist, and he said “no.” I was astounded. I don’t know how any white person in the United States can say they have avoided being taught prejudice to some degree. And we all benefit from white privilege, just as our white ancestors (and not just slaveholders) benefited from black slavery.

I believe our society survives partly because it is graced with the fortitude and forgiveness and sometimes generational forgetfulness of the minorities it has wronged. And most amazing to me are the descendants of slaves who were “owned,” brutalized, raped, and lynched. How can they stand our uppity white domination? How can they stand the undue influence of angry and mean folk trying to undo what progress has been made in redressing past sins?

Those who forgave the deadly, racist shooter in the Charleston church were as Christ to me. Their grace exposed the racism of those who held onto the confederate flag as a way of life. Their grace transformed parts of the country that seemed irredeemable.

Black lives matter.

Related posts:

Stand Your Ground: Ferguson, Washington, Jerusalem

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

A few weeks ago I was stunned by a front page New York Times article headlined,
“1.5 Million Black Men, Missing from Daily Life.”

As troubling as the recent deaths of young black men at the hands of law enforcement have been, they serve as tragic examples of a larger trend of our own “disappeared,” reminiscent of “the disappeared” in the recent histories of Argentina and Chile. 

In New York, almost 120,000 black men between the ages of 25 and 54 are missing from everyday life. In Chicago, 45,000 are, and more than 30,000 are missing in Philadelphia. Across the South—from North Charleston, S.C., through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi and up into Ferguson, Mo.—hundreds of thousands are missing.

They are missing largely because of early deaths or because they are behind bars.

And, the article reports, among the cities with a minimum of 10,000 black citizens, Ferguson, Missouri “has the largest proportion of missing black men.”

So there are disproportionately more black women than black men, a gender gap not found in childhood (nor among whites), but one that widens among those in their 20s and 30s, according to the story. 

Though murders and AIDS deaths have diminished among black men since the 1990s, “rising numbers of black men spared an early death have been offset by rising numbers behind bars.” This does not reflect more crime, but rather, changes in law enforcement, prosecutions, and systemic injustices that have increased their incarceration.

“Where is your husband?” Jesus essentially asked the mixed-race woman at the well. Biblical interpreters have been quick to assign sexual shame to the Samaritan woman for having had five husbands and for living with a man who was not her husband, when it’s just as possible her history was the result of economic need, a high mortality rate, abandonment, and the deprivations caused by political subjugation and racial, religious, and gender prejudices.

No wonder she responded so enthusiastically to the good news Jesus offered.

During the ingathering of saints of the Presbyterian LGBT movement that I described a few weeks ago, my friend and colleague, the Rev. Dan Smith, made the observation that many of the men in our movement have also “disappeared” due to AIDS.

Those who once served as gay Christian role models are unknown to subsequent generations, even as they themselves were deprived of role models of earlier generations by a church that required closetedness and a culture which diminished and incarcerated “sodomites.” And, with the Samaritan woman, “the powers that be” assigned their fates to shameful behavior.

Referencing the Samaritan woman reminds me to add that women may be the most “disappeared” of all—not in real numbers, but in real attention.

I mentioned in the earlier post that LGBT achievement in terms of acceptance may be because we are “everywhere,” but women are also everywhere, and it doesn’t necessarily deter sexism or encourage their recognition and advancement. That Jesus would engage a mixed-race woman in one of the most meaningful spiritual conversations in the Gospels is significant.

Prejudice makes many “disappear,” whether from our radar or from our communities. Jesus could be said to have brought us to “mindfulness” of those overlooked or downright oppressed.

Jesus came for all “the disappeared.”

Also see: “Forcing Black Men Out of Society”

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.