Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Ahead!
Looking Back
The month of May each year is the month that I look back to the
Brown versus Board of Education decision that was passed in May of
1954. I was twelve years old and anxiously looking forward to turning
thirteen that September. The decision meant nothing to me at first
because I lived in Philadelphia. Living in Philadelphia meant that I
had attended an integrated elementary school, was attending an
integrated junior high school and would be attending an integrated
high school.
Because my grandparents lived in Virginia, however, I understood
clearly the segregation problem in the South. The Supreme Court
decision about the desegregation of public schools, however, made no
day-to-day difference in my twelve-year-old world in Philadelphia. I
did not understand, therefore, what was really at stake, what was
being won and what was being lost in that momentous decision made by
the Supreme Court in May of 1954.
Looking back, however, I have come to learn some very painful
lessons about that momentous decision. The first lesson I learned was
that desegregation is not the same as integration.
Desegregation meant that African American children could no longer
be denied the right to go to schools that were “For Whites Only.”
Desegregation did not mean that white children would now come to Black
schools and learn our story, our history, our heritage, our legacy,
our beauty and our strength!
As a matter of fact, across the years that I have been teaching
graduate school (since 1975), I have tried to get my students to
understand that one of the tragedies about the whole “integration era”
was that African Americans did not understand what integration meant.
Integration means the coming together of equals to the table.
Whites, in a culture of white supremacy, however, did not view us
as equals and still do not view us as equals; so nothing from our
Black or African experience was ever allowed at the table of
“integration,” much less invited or asked to be brought to the table.
Looking back, I saw very early on that many African Americans
meant assimilation and acculturation when they used the word
“integration.” To integrate, however, does not mean to assimilate or
to acculturate!
Looking back, moreover, I learned the difference between
desegregation which was a legal issue (a political issue) and equality
which is a spiritual and moral issue. Desegregation had to do with
legal access. Giving African American citizens access to quality
education, to healthcare, to public facilities, to equal protection
under the law was one thing.
That access, incidentally, is still being blocked. It is being
blocked very sophisticatedly, both in the South and in the North (up
South!), with attacks upon affirmative action, with the “conservative”
agenda and with policies put in place by the Republican Party, which
is the Party for the “have mores.”
Having legal access to schools and public accommodations, however,
does not touch the deeper moral “American” problem, which is white
supremacy! I owe much of my insights on this issue to Lewis Baldwin.
Dr. Lewis Baldwin, a professor of African American studies at
Vanderbilt University, points out a very im****tant truth in his
analysis of George Fredrickson’s monumental work in comparative
history. Fredrickson compares the Apartheid in South Africa with the
segregation here in the United States of America. Fredrickson’s years
of teaching at Northwestern produced two very im****tant works that
deal with the comparisons between the Apartheid of South Africa and
the “Jim Crow” in America.
What Dr. Baldwin (a student of Fredrickson’s) does is point out
the im****tance of Fredrickson’s insights. Dr. Fredrickson helps us to
see that the real nature of the beast has to do with white supremacy.
Baldwin prefers the term white supremacy over “racism” because it is
far more accurate in describing what took place in South Africa and
what still takes place in South Africa. It is also a term which puts
its finger on the pulse of the reality of American thought and
American practice!
“Racism,” in Baldwin’s opinion, is too nebulous a term. It is
slippery and has many different meanings for many different people. I
have even heard misguided (and ignorant) pundits like Rush Limbaugh
and Tom DeLay calling Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and other Black
people racists. I have heard the term “Black racism” and I have also
heard the term “reverse racism.”
[Sic] ideology, the theology, the sociology, the legal structure,
the educational system, the healthcare system, and the entire reality
of the United States of America and South Africa!
Twelve years after Nelson Mandela is out of prison and Black South
Africans control the legal structure in that country; yet, white
supremacy is still in charge. It is “living large and in charge!”
Black Africans do not control the economic systems, the military
or have control over the resources (the diamonds, the oil and the
natural resources that were stolen by the whites who took over South
Africa), and until that changes, white supremacy will still be in
charge!
White supremacy is not a legal problem. It is a spiritual problem,
a psychological problem and a moral problem.
White supremacy controls the economic system in America, the
healthcare system in America and the educational system in America.
Hurricane Katrina has pulled the blinders off of all Americans and
shown us what white supremacy means at its ugly core and what it has
done to the fabric of these “still-yet-to-be-United States” (to use
Maya Angelou’s term). That is what I see when looking back during the
month of May.
Looking Around
Educating our children to the reality of white supremacy becomes
crucial for African Americans and for all Americans. Educating our
children is a term that I use pointedly. I do not mean “training” our
children. That is a part of our problem now.
The misuse of that term ignores the fact that Africans do not
control the military, the police, the legal structure or any of the
means to enforce their race prejudice. To try to get misinformed
whites and blacks to understand that fact is a waste of time.
You end up trying to make a blind man see something that he is
physically and biologically unable to do. The use of the term
“racism,” therefore, makes one enter into an exercise in futility and
causes you to come away from that discussion frustrated, angry and
wanting to do like Langston Hughes’ Jess B. Semple and smash
something!
The term “white supremacy,” however, is much more accurate. White
supremacy undergirds the thought, the order that they might become
more rounded and fully productive citizens in this culture and in this
country. What we need to do, however, is go beyond training and
educate our children!
We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.
We need to educate our children as to the difference between
desegregation and equality, the difference between the legal issues
and the spiritual issues; and the difference between access in this
country as opposed to acceptance in this country!
We need to educate our children about the white supremacist’s
foundations of the educational system, the educational philosophy and
the very curricula that immerses them in a culture of white supremacy
from kindergarten through graduate school! We need to educate our
children how to navigate the dangerous waters that lie ahead of them
in this 21st century.
In navigating the waters, our children need to be aware of the
shark-infested waters and the other predators that live in those
waters.
Hurricane Katrina gave us some im****tant images that are analogous
to the future that our children have to learn how to navigate. When
the levees in Louisiana broke alligators, crocodiles and piranha swam
freely through what used to be the streets of New Orleans. That is an
analogy that we need to drum into the heads of our African American
children (and indeed, all children!).
In the flood waters of white supremacy that our children have to
negotiate economically, educationally, culturally, socially and
spiritually, there are not only sharks in those waters, there are also
crocodiles, alligators and piranha!
The policies, with which we live now and against which our
children will have to struggle in order to bring about “the beloved
community,” are policies shaped by predators. Jesus taught us that
white supremacy – or the thinking that any one race is superior to any
other race – is against the Will of God, who only created one race,
the human race!
Looking Ahead
I look back during the month of May to *****s the powerful
ramifications of the Brown versus Board of Education decision and our
misunderstanding of what the full im****t of that decision meant. I
look around to *****s where it is we are now in terms of the work that
is cut out ahead of us as we educate our children; and I look forward
with hope.
We are on the verge of launching our African-centered Christian
school. The dream of that school, which we articulated in 1979, was
built on hope. That hope still lives. That school has to have at its
core an understanding and *****sment of white supremacy as we
deconstruct that reality to help our children become all that God
created them to be when God made them in God’s own image.
We teach with hope. It is the same hope which would not let Adam
Clayton Powell, Denmark Vesey, Alexander Crummel, Harriet Tubman or
Septima Clark give up. It is the same hope which motivated Martin
King, Rosa Parks, Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Coretta Scott King, Harry
Belafonte and Mary Henderson Wright. I look forward with hope.
We lay a foundation, deconstructing the household of white
supremacy with tools that are not the master’s tools. We lay that
foundation with hope. We deconstruct the vicious and demonic ideology
of white supremacy with hope. Our hope is not built on faith-based
dollars, empty liberal promises or veiled hate-filled preachments of
the so-called conservatives. Our hope is built on Him who came in the
flesh to set us free.
Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/racist-jeremiah-wright-on-white-supremacy
But he’s not a racist. Not much.
Now before you start braying about im being a "racist" Point out the
exact statements tha that you can prove to be false!!
If you can't do that, then be quiet and let a mam come in.
“While the wor****p is always inspiring, the welcome extravagant,
and the preaching biblically based and prophetically challenging, I
have been especially moved by the way Trinity ministers to its young
people, nurturing them to claim their Christian faith, to celebrate
their African-American heritage, and to pursue higher education to
prepare themselves for leader****p in church and society,” Thomas says.
PhD. Tim "White Man Wise"
http://truthabouttrinity.blogspot.com/2008/03/tim-wise-of-national-lies-and-racial.html
The Truth About Trinity United Church of Christ
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tim Wise : Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia
I've been following Tim since I was a youth. Again he demonstrates a
white man who's actually taken the time to look at racial issues
through an academic lens. He needs to visit trinity. Trinitarians
would totally love him! Read the entire article HERE
But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah
Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally
Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having
brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils
about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned.
It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the
unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first ones
uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an
"angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of
particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.
But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce
it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not
be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to
condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the
truth.
Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After
all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" on 9/11? And
didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America"
because of its treatment of the African American community throughout
the years?
Well actually, no he didn't.
Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified,
but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of
chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of
the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive
good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes
around, indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological
grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than
enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit
hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack .
Everything you ever wanted to know about politics,racism, White Supremacy,
and religion,
but were afraid to ask!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RACE_RACISM_AND_RELIGION_2008/
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