How uncomfortable am I willing to be?

Photo by Eyasu Etsub on Unsplash

We have been lamenting what’s been called the unnecessary deaths due to COVID19. Yet even more unnecessary and grievous are the continued deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement. We come yet again in grief, now over George Floyd of Minneapolis. 

There is no justice for George Floyd. He is dead. The only justice to be achieved is equity in the enforcement of the law and the training critical to discernment of action. Our society continues to broaden the racial divide in uneducated judgment and an unexamined posture of our institutionalized attitudes and reactive behaviors. How can we ever expect to change without examining the unrealized spiritual and moral corruption accumulated over decades and centuries of mistreatment and white normativity? 

Can we not imagine a beloved community? Can we not imagine a communal home without abuse, without someone being told they are not deserving, without having to earn rights that are claimed as inherent by the dominating group? Can we imagine a society that takes responsibility for the rights of ALL its citizens? Such imaginings look like a dream in the midst of our nightmare.

Four officers have been fired. Will they be convicted? Would I be convicted of failure to protect the life of another had I been there? Bystanders to the situation feared for George’s life even as they feared for their own if they took action to defend him. What risk will I take against injustice? How uncomfortable am I willing to be?

 I wish I had better words. I wish I could actually DO something with this pounding in my chest as my fingers pommel my computer keys. I may be judged for my words. I know there are those who don’t share my concern. Then let us talk. For without listening, without talking, without sharing experiences, we will never learn. We will remain in our unreflective and biased opinions. 

 I invite you to listen to these words written by Whitney M. Young Jr. in his book “To Be Equal”…

For at this moment in history, if the United States honestly drops legal, practical, and subtle racial barriers to employment, housing, education, public accommodations, health and welfare facilities and services, the [African American] still will not achieve full equality in our lifetime…more than three centuries of abuse, humiliation, segregation, and bias have burdened the African American with a handicap that will not automatically slip from his shoulders as discriminatory laws and practices are abandoned. The situation is much like that of two men running the mile in a track meet. One is well-equipped, wears track shoes and runs on cinders. The other is barefoot and runs in sand. Seeing that one runner is outdistancing the other with ease, you then put track shoes on the second fellow and place him on the cinder track also. Seconds later it should surprise no one to see that the second runner is still yards behind and will never catch up unless something else is done to even the contest.  (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), pp. 22-23[1]

I am doing what I can to learn. To listen to my neighbor whose experiences are vastly different from mine and every bit as real. And as I release my preference for comfort so I can learn, I hope to understand what I can do to be In this together…

[1] Howard Thurman, The Luminous Darkness (Richmond: Friends United Press, 1965), p. 93.