As a white mother of two black children ….

On July 19, 2016, Kate Riffle Roper posted this essay on her Facebook page.  It is worth a read for us all.[1]

Racism exists. It is real and tangible. And it is everywhere, all the time.

When I brought my boys home they were the cutest, sweetest babies ever. Wherever we went, people greeted us with charm and enthusiasm. Well, not all people and not everywhere. But, to me, they were the “wacko” exceptions. I thought to myself, “Get over it.”

Now my boys look like teenagers. Black teenagers. They are 13. Let me ask you these questions. Do store personnel follow your children when they are picking out their Gatorade flavors? They didn’t follow my white kids. Do coffee shop employees interrogate your children about the credit card they are using to pay while you are in the bathroom? They didn’t interrogate my white kids. When your kids trick-or-treat in, dressed as a Ninja and a Clown, do they get asked who they are with and where they live, door after door? My white kids didn’t get asked. Do your kids get pulled out of the TSA line time and again for additional screening? My white kids didn’t. Do your kids get treated one way when they are standing alone but get treated a completely different way when you walk up? I mean a completely different way. My white kids didn’t. Do shoe sales people ask if your kids’ feet are clean before sizing them for shoes? No one asked me that with my white kids. Do complete strangers ask to touch your child’s hair? Or ask about their penis size? Or ask if they are “from druggies”? No one did this with my white kids.

Did you tell your kids not to fight back because they will seen as aggressive if they stand up for themselves? Have you had to honestly discuss with your husband whether you should take your children to the police station to introduce them to the officers so they would know your children are legitimate members of your community? Have you had to talk to your children about EXACTLY what to say and not to say to an officer? Have you had to tell your children that the objective of any encounter with police, or security in any form, is to stay alive? It never occurred to me to have these conversations with my white children. In fact, it never occurred to me for myself either.

There is no question that my boys have been cloaked in my protection when they were small. What I did not realize until now is that the cloak I was offering them was identification with my whiteness. As they grow independent, they step out from my cloak and lose that protection. The world sees “them” differently. It is sweet when they are adopted little black boys so graciously taken in by this nice white family. But when they are real people? Well, it is not the same. And they still look like little boys. What happens to them when they look like the strong, proud black men I am raising?

The reason why the phrase All Lives Matter is offensive to black people is because it isn’t true. Right now, in America, my black children are treated differently than my white children. 

So when you say All Lives Matter as a response to the phrase Black Lives Matter you are completely dismissing the near daily experience of racism for those with pigment in their skin, curl in their hair and broadness of their nose.

I am posting this so you can see the reality I have witnessed and experienced, because, frankly, I didn’t believe it was true until I saw it up close, directed at two souls I love, over and over again. So, please, use this post as a pair of glasses to see the racism that surrounds you. Then we can actually make progress toward all lives being valued and cherished.

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[1] http://www.racialjusticeallies.org/as-a-white-mother-of-black-sons/

Deportee

Woody Guthrie was America’s troubadour in the 1930s and 1940’s, writing songs for common folk that are standards and have inspired singer/songwriters from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen.  Everyone knows, and likely has sung along, to This Land is Your Land.

Guthrie wrote songs supporting unions, silly songs/children’s songs and even a song criticizing “Old Man Trump.”

Guthrie had a real soft spot for migrant farmworkers, and the trials and travails they endured.  So, when he read about a plane carrying migrants being deported back to Mexico, and saw that the story named the pilot and crew, but not the Mexican passengers, he was moved to write a poem, “Deportee”:

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

On 28 January 1948, a DC-3 plane carrying 32 persons, mostly Mexican farm laborers, including some from a guest worker program, crashed 20 miles west of Coalinga, California.  The crash killed everyone aboard the plane.

Some of the passengers were being returned to Mexico at the termination of their bracero contracts, while others were illegal immigrants being deported. Initial news reports listed only the pilot, first officer, and stewardess, with the remainder listed only as "deportees." Only 12 of the victims were initially identified. The Hispanic victims of the accident were placed in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California, with their grave marked only as "Mexican Nationals"

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"[1]

It is very likely that Guthrie was a bit unfair to the press, but he was spot on the attitudes of the majority in the country, who looked at the migrant workers as lesser beings.  Martin Luther King, Jr. has said “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

 

And we should respect those who do their job – whatever it is – well and with honor.

 

______

 

Thanks to my nephew, Jamie Ness, a talented singer/songwriter in Duluth, for insights into this song.[2] 

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[1] To hear The Highwaymen perform the song, click here. 

[2] For a sample of Jamie’s music, click here. 

Combat racism and bigotry at every turn

Excerpts from an editorial in America magazine.  For the complete article, click here. 

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... In the face of bigotry there can be no ambivalence: We must denounce in sure and certain terms all forms of white supremacy, anti-Semitism and violence, which stubbornly remain a part of the American experience. We must also acknowledge that this legacy of racism and oppression manifests itself today in unjust social and economic realities that tear at our nation’s social fabric and put lives, especially the lives of people of color, at risk. “We stand against the evil of racism, white supremacy and neo-nazism,” a statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said over the weekend. “We stand with our sisters and brothers united in the sacrifice of Jesus, by which love’s victory over every form of evil is assured.”

We join the bishops in condemning these odious ideologies of oppression and remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s clarion call for action: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” We also harken to the words of St. Ignatius Loyola, that “love manifests itself more in deeds than in words.” Above all, then, now is the time to act, peacefully, in our churches, our local communities and legislative bodies and, particularly, in the human interactions of our daily lives. For all Catholics, but especially white Catholics, taking these actions may require deep and even painful conversion: “History, like prayer, matters when addressing the deep roots of racism in the Catholic Church and in Catholic families,” Michael Pasquier wrote in America in 2016. “[But] thinking about the past and kneeling in prayer can be a lot easier than living in the present and turning faith into action…. [As white Catholics] we will have to admit to some terrible sins, sins that we were born and raised into, sins that we have kept alive in what we have done and in what we have failed to do.”

The way forward is not … to pile hate upon hate. The way forward is the way of the penitent and prophet. We must act boldly on behalf of those who are persecuted, or who are in danger of persecution. But we must proceed in humility, from the lived acknowledgment that we are sinners redeemed in Christ and that we are called to reconcile in turn. Christian duty requires us to clearly name and denounce evil. It requires us to act against that evil at every turn. It also requires us to seek to love the evil-doer and not to give up hope that they may realize their errors and seek redemption. That will be, perhaps, the most vexing work of all.

The just world we are called to create will require from each of us nothing less than the radical acts of love and mercy to which the Gospel testifies. Let us ask then for the abundant grace to act, in peace, for justice. Let us pray, let us plead, for the courage to act now.