When You Run into the Wall of Injustice, I Get Bruises Too

I remember getting my first ministerial call as I prepared to graduate from seminary. Small town in the heart of Appalachia. The church was beautiful, a traditional Protestant downtown county seat kind of church.

The parsonage was nice … big. It had a large yard with an enormous swing set, new landscaping in the front. And to complete the perfect vocational/domestic idyll, the parsonage sat across the street from the fourth tee at the country club—to which the church bought me a membership.

So, back at the seminary I told my buddies about it … saving the country club part for last. Let’s be honest I was bragging. Looking back, I’m not proud of it. I was twenty-six and insensitive in that obnoxious way young people who figure they’ve got the world by the tail can be.

My pride didn’t even make it through that first conversation with my friends at seminary, however. Because after I finished recounting the glories of my new job, complete with the country club audio tour I wanted so badly to share, one of my friends, Marcus, spoke up and said, “Are you going to take that membership?”

I thought surely this must be a rhetorical question, because … really? Are you nuts? Of course, I’m taking it.

“Good for you. But let me ask you something: Can I come visit you at your new church?”

“You’reracis my friend. Of course.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. Let me ask you another question: If you take me to play golf at your country club, will they let me play? Or will I have to caddy for you?”

Hearing those words hurt my heart. Marcus was my friend. So, it never occurred to me that a country club anywhere, including the South, might accept me but not my African-American friend.

LIke most middle class white kids, it never much occurred to me that a world of injustice exists, one that thrives beneath the horizon of my awareness. I knew about instances of unfairness, but it never occurred to me that those instances were connected on a deeper level.

But what struck me about Marcus’ question—beyond the fact that we still lived in a country where African-Americans could be refused access because of something as uncontrollable as the happenstance of birth—was my casual assumption that if I wasn’t being hurt by it, then nobody was.

For a couple of weeks we’ve watched as the implications of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman fiasco unfold. Without rehashing all the details, it seems clear that Trayvon Martin’s race was more than just a coincidental factor in the confrontation that led to his death.

It would be easy for me to chalk this whole tragedy up to the problem with Stand-your-ground laws, which, as Walter Breuggemann has rightly pointed out, should be unthinkable to Christians—inviting violence as these laws do.

I could very easily look past this case as merely another instance of the breakdown of civility, another rending of the social fabric through an insistence that my life is more important than yours.

But I have dear sisters and brothers who, themselves African-American, see this case as just another illustration of how injustice is embedded in our society. And because they are my sisters and brothers, I have a responsibility to add my voice to theirs in drawing attention to a system that regularly puts a thumb on the scales of justice, disadvantaging people of color.

It doesn’t affect me, though, right? I wasn’t shot. I’m white. I’m generally not in danger of inviting violence because of how I look.

The popular assumption seems to be that we have varieties of injustice, complete with interest and advocacy groups for each. Which interest and advocacy groups dedicate themselves to seeking redress and reform for their particular cause. You take care of your stuff, because I’ve got my hands full taking care of my own.

In such a world, I need not be concerned so much with Trayvon Martin for two reasons: 1) I’m not African-American, so his death doesn’t seem to affect my world, and 2) there are already competent and passionate interest groups taking up his cause.

But beyond the laziness of such casual assumptions about somebody else doing the heavy lifting, the problem with thinking that I don’t have a responsibility to speak out about the racism baked into the American cake is a reality we don’t often name: racism isn’t a thing unto itself, but an expression of the larger problems of injustice and oppression committed by those in power against those who too often don’t have a voice. And that, my friends, affects us all … whether we realize it or not.

“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you,’” (1 Cor. 12:21) is how Paul says it.

I cannot say to my African-American sisters and brothers, “I have no responsibility for you.”

I cannot say to my Hispanic sisters and brothers, “I know they’re ripping your families apart through deportation; I know they’re slandering your character, calling you unspeakable things for having committed the ‘crime’ of seeking to make a better life for those you love—but you should have thought of that before you crossed the border.”

I cannot say to my LGBT sisters and brothers, “I know you’ve felt like everybody’s favorite punching bag (sometimes literally); I know some of you are living on the streets or dying because you can no longer bear the hateful world we’ve made for you, but I’m straight, so I’ve got no dog in this fight.”

I cannot say to my sisters, “I know many of you live in fear that you’ll attract the unwanted attention of violent men; I know that you have to work harder to find a job that will pay you what you’re worth (or as is the case in my profession, that you’ll find a job at all), but you just need to quit being so ‘sensitive.’”

I cannot say to my sisters and brothers who live in other parts of the world, “I know that many of you cower in your homes, afraid of American bombs falling out of the sky; I know that you shrink behind locked doors, waiting for armed men to come crashing through; but if you’d have been smart enough to have been born in our country, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.”

I cannot say to my sisters and brothers without housing or adequate healthcare, “I know you worry about how you’ll make it through, but you’re just going to have to quit being lazy and get a job.”

It’s not enough for me to look after my own interests. It’s not enough for me to remain ignorant of the pain others experience. We’re connected in ways that make injustice a problem for all of us.

And if you follow Jesus, if you seek to participate in the unfolding reign of God, you don’t get to choose which injustices you care about. Racism, being anti-immigrant, homophobia, sexism, militarism, poverty … these are all presenting symptoms of the much larger disease of injustice that is at odds with what God desires for those whom God created and loves.

Here’s the thing: Since I happen to be an activist for a particular cause, I can too easily forget that I have sisters and brothers suffering from different forms of injustice to whom I need to offer my support. But they ought to be able to count on me to stand by their side … even if the issue doesn’t affect me directly. Because if I claim to follow Jesus, then—all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding—it does.

According to Paul, when you run headlong into the wall of oppression and injustice, I get bruises too.

I think Marcus would agree with me.

True Colors Film Screening

Our friends at the True Colors Ministry of Highland Baptist Church are screening the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin this Sunday, February 5th.  If the Super Bowl just isn't your cup of tea, or you're simply looking for an interesting and stimulating activity on Sunday, this is definitely the place to be!  For more information, contact Maurice Bojangles-Blanchard at truecolorsministry@gmail.com. 

The Haves and the Have-Nots and How Things Work in the Reign of God

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

I was listening to a show on NPR the one time, which took as its subject college admissions applications counselors.  Apparently, and I didn’t know this, you can hire someone to help your child fill out college admissions applications, to give her/him the best possible shot at being accepted.  College admissions is a pretty complicated game, played for big stakes.  So it stands to reason that an industry would spring up around helping applicants put their best foot forward.  The catch, of course, is that to avail yourself of these types of services, you have to be able to pay for them.  And, as I gathered from the NPR piece, the whole thing can be rather pricey, leading one interviewer to ask one of the professional admissions counselors if that didn’t indicate some sort of inherent division of access between the “haves” and “have-nots.”  The counselor’s reply caught me up short.  She said, “Well, sure.  But what in America doesn’t cause some sort of division of access between the haves and have-nots?  That’s just the way things work.”

And she’s right, isn’t she?  If you have the money to purchase the help, you have access to places that would be otherwise closed to you.  Who would deny it?  If you have the means to hire someone to put your best foot forward for college admission, you increase your chances of getting accepted.  The whole industry is predicated on the notion that you can get better results from a professional.  But what if you can’t afford a professional to help you fill out the admissions forms?  What if the school you attended was one of the forgotten school systems in rural Appalachia or urban Louisville?

Obviously, there is an inherent division of access between the haves and the have-nots in our country.  Not everybody is starting out from the same place.  Some folks in our country are starting from so far back, they can’t even see the starting line the rest of us started at.  Unquestionably, some people have a head start in life.

Which is why the whole issue of a multi-millionaire white broadcaster—on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—presuming to lay claim to Dr. King’s legacy, sits uncomfortably with me.  The plea for a color-blind society, in theory, makes sense.  But, let’s be honest, we don’t live in theoretical constructs.  We live in the United States of America, where there is an “inherent division of access between the haves and have-nots.”  To say, for example, that college admissions ought to be color-blind sounds good, and fair, and American.  To say that there ought to be no racial preferences sounds equitable.  But what if you were to say that there ought to be no preference shown for a kid whose parents can afford to pay for a counselor to help fill out the applications forms, over a kid whose parents are struggling to pay to keep a roof overhead?  Realistically, you can’t do that, but you see where I’m headed with this.  The playing field can never be level left to itself because there is an inherent division of access between the haves and the have-nots in our country.

What’s my point?  I’m not arguing (at least here) for a legislative action with respect to Affirmative Action (although, I’d be happy to speak with you about it if you want to know how I feel.)  Actually, I want to go deeper than that to talk about how Christians communicate.  If you happen to be a person of color, you hear things like “there is an inherent division of access between the haves and the have-nots” in a particular way.  People of color know who the “haves and have-nots” in our society generally are.  And when they hear someone blithely dismiss the inequities of access with, “That’s just the way things work,” you may begin to understand how the have-nots hear the haves whining about “level playing fields” and “color-blind admissions policies” and “reverse racism.”  It sounds like a sneaky attempt by those with a head start to hold onto what they’ve historically enjoyed.

And here’s the sad part from where I sit as a Christian and as a minister.  Two days ago, as I write this, a wealthy white man, claiming to be tapped by God for the job, led a group of mostly middle class white folks in a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, declaring a desire to restore America’s honor.  Part of what they believe that honor has to do with is a wish for Americans to stop focusing on the inherent divisions of race, and start focusing on achievement.  But here’s the problem: I’ve heard some of those same kinds of good middle class Christian white folk seek to embrace people of color out of one side of their mouths, while uttering genuinely nice sounding things about “equality” and “color-blindness” out of the other side—because they believe themselves to be starting at the same place in the race as the have-nots, never understanding what the have-nots are all painfully aware of—that the starting line begins at a different point for each of us.  Consequently, our brothers and sisters of color are left to wonder whether or not we really do care about racial unity, because we continue to use the code words that keep them at the back of the line, while making ourselves look fair.

We will have no basis upon which to pursue racial unity within the church until we are honest with ourselves about the fact that the playing field is not level, that it’s not just a matter of hard work, that the language we use, the way we see the world will continue to color our relationships.  Clearly, we all want with Dr. King, a country in which our children “will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of the character.”  But what we Christians need to come to terms with is the fact that not everybody in our country is given the same opportunities to develop the kind of character by which Dr. King thought we all ought to be judged.  Therefore, how we speak about our situation affects our relationship to one another.

Until we begin to understand that as the body of Christ none of us can be truly happy while another of us suffers, we’ll never understand the eschatological vision Dr. King was trying to get us to see.  “Color-blind” is the goal, but before it can ever be embodied among us, we must put away the illusion that we’ve already achieved it.  That’s definitely not “how things work” in the reign of God.

By Derek Penwell