Winner of Karita Hummer's Silver Pen Award
Reposted from Friends of Justice Word Press:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/throwing-jeremiah-down-the-well/
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Friends of Justice
Throwing Jeremiah down the well
March 24, 2008 at 5:28 pm (Uncategorized)
Last year, the Jena saga revealed a disturbing perception gap between white and black Americans. The controversy sparked by brief snippets from the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright provides another indication that black and white Americans have a fundamentally different understanding of the great nation we all call home.
Bill Kristol’s column in today’s New York Times typifies the response of white America. Kristol refuses to expose himself to the African American perspective on either the past or the present. The state of race relations is quietly and consistently improving, he suggests, largely because black and white America don’t talk much.
I guess that’s why Kristol printed Charlotte Allen’s “Jena” story in which Alan Bean comes off as a self-promoting race baiter, black America’s concerns about equal justice are dismissed out of hand, and the revisionist history cobbled together by Jena Times editor, Craig Franklin is swallowed whole.
Message: it’s okay to have a national conversation about race so long as conservative whites do all the talking.
Like all preachers, Jeremiah Wright sometimes gets his facts wrong. The US government didn’t invent AIDS to cripple blacks and gays as some, including Wright and Bill Cosby, have asserted. The well-worn notion that crack cocaine was introduced into poor African American communities to neutralize the poor black people is also a gross simplification of a complicated story. Poor people are uniquely vulnerable to contagions of every kind; gross economic and educational inequalities have consequences.
So where does this tendency to demonize white America originate, and why are black and white Americans so quick to believe the worst about one another?
The answer, my friend, isn’t blowing in the wind; it’s hidden in the pages of history books–not the sort of history-lite we encounter in school history classes, I’m talking about the work of serious historians willing to face sober facts.
White America has an insatiable desire to be lied to about race and racial history. Black America hungers and thirsts for the truth, no matter how painful it may be. If black preachers and intellectuals sometimes exaggerate white transgressions, their white counterparts are inclined to minimize and deny.
A few days ago, at the conclusion of a charming ceremony in Grand Prairie, Texas, I became an American citizen. As I recall, 362 newly minted Americans left the building gripping little American flags and precious citizenship documents.
We sang God Bless America and the Star Spangled Banner and we repeated the Pledge of Allegiance with hands held over our hearts. I choked up on more than one occasion–this is powerful stuff, even for a Canadian transplant. While we waited for the ceremony to begin, I read every word of the little pamphlet containing the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights that I had been given.
The America described in these materials is an experiment in freedom, equality and justice. The America referenced in the course of the citizenship ceremony was quite different. This America is a mighty empire. “You will soon be a citizen of the most powerful nation in history,” one speaker told us, “Isn’t that awesome!”
Well, yes, it is awesome. But for lovers of liberty, it is also a bit frightening. I did my doctoral dissertation on W.O. Carver, professor of missions and world religion at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville between 1898 and 1954. Carver frequently lamented that with each major war, America’s standing army had increased in size and influence and the flame of American liberty was left to burn a wee bit lower. Power and liberty have never been on good terms.
American exceptionalism, the idea that America is God’s last and best hope to the world, is a staple of white America civil religion. White America conveniently forgets what black America remembers all too well. Hence the racial perception gap revealed, this time, in the reaction to Jeremiah Wright.
Those of us who read our Bibles on a regular basis cannot be surprised by the tone of Wright’s comments. He sounds a great deal like his namesake, the biblical prophet. Consider this brief excerpt from the 38th chapter of Jeremiah:
. . . Jeremiah was saying to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, He who stays in this city (Jerusalem) shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out to the Chaldeans (the Babylonians) shall live; he shall have his life as a prize of war, and live. Thus says the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon and be taken.”
The response was immediate:
Then the princes said to the king, “let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.” King Zedekiah said, “Behold, he is in your hands; for the king can do nothing against you.” So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mire, and Jeremiah sank in the mire.”
Does any of this sound familiar? Listen to Jeremiah Wright’s comments in their entirety and you will understand why Barack Obama chose to sit under his teaching. Wright is a man of loving compassion who preaches like a prophet only when harsh circumstance demands it.
This is why Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas will be honoring Rev. Wright on March 29th. The Divinity School is on the campus of Texas Christian University. The University has washed its hands of the affair. Free speech is one thing, a university spokesperson says, but the university would not be so reckless as to hand an award to a person as controversial as Jeremiah Wright.
The Divinity School, to its credit, has resisted the temptation to throw Jeremiah down the well, even though several graduates say they are prepared to renounce their alma mater over the matter.
“Contrary to media claims that Wright preaches racial hatred,” Brite representatives say, ”church leaders who have observed his ministry describe him as a faithful preacher of the gospel who has ministered in a context radically different from that of many middle class Americans.
In refusing to throw this latter day Jeremiah down the well, Brite Divinity School has maintained its commitment to biblical authority. Handing the award to a lesser, but less controversial, candidate would have been tantamount to trampling on the cross of Jesus Christ–another outspoken prophet who suffered for his candor.
The specific accusations flung at Jesus by false witnesses were intensely political: claiming that he, not Caesar, was the true King of the Jews, and threatening to tear down the temple in Jerusalem. Like the sermons of Rev. Wright, the words of Jesus were cherry picked from their original context, yet his accusers were essentially right–the preaching of Jesus has always constituted a grave threat to the Roman Empire . . . and to every other empire that has ever existed.
These insights are standard fare among biblical scholars, but they become rank heresy when they enter the pulpit. There are exceptions of course. No one excoriated Billy Graham for saying that if God didn’t judge America he would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. But then, Graham was talking about sexual sin, not racial sin. href=”http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/NationalLies.html” mce_href=”http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/NationalLies.html”>Tim Wise has recently pointed out, white Americans have a curious understanding of their national history. We don’t deny the fact of slavery or Jim Crow or community lynching, we just don’t like to be reminded of these things and often speak as if they did not exist.
The white conservative historical narrative describes a glorious and godly nation striding majestically from glory unto glory as brave white people founding a brave white nation. As a practical matter, black people don’t enter this story until the mid 1950s, and it has been straight downhill ever since. Black people, the white conservative narrative states, are whiners. While they should be thanking their luck stars for the slave ships that carried them to such a wonderful place, they insist on bringing up ancient indignities and rehearsing lamentable anachonisms. We have moved beyond racism, the white conservatives say–end of story! People like Jeremiah Wright who insist of stirring the turds of history are whiners, at best, and traitorous terrorists at worst.
In America, we bury the losers and move on.
No empire built on myths, however glorious, can long survive. Those who refuse to learn the lessons of history, as the wise man said, are doomed to repeat them.
Last week, a woman in Washington DC directed my attention to a book on “Sundown towns”, all-white communities that have historically excluded black people, often with signs reading, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.”
My research into the history of Tulia, Texas made me familiar with the concept. James W. Loewen (a blessed exception to the white stereotype I have been developing) has built a career around unearthing unpleasant bits of Americana (I first stumbled across his work in the excellent, Lies my teacher told me.) This review of Dr. Loewen’s book on Sundown towns provides an excellent primer on the kind of historical detail white Americans studiously ignore.
Barack Obama has accused his pastor of holding a static view of America–a nation that does not and cannot grow and mature. There is a modicum of truth here. For most black Americans, the latter half of the 20th century was a time of significant, even sweeping, change. This is why Bill Kristol thinks black folk should shut up and move on.
Unfortunately, for the least fortunate 20% of black America, change, though undeniable, has not always been for the better. If suburban nirvana is the American heaven and prison is our version of hell, the poorest Americans are moving in the wrong direction and people of color have been disproportionately affected.
I am not suggesting that Barack Obama emphasize this point–not if he wants to be elected; but somebody needs to say it. The inequities of the present are firmly anchored in the past. Ergo, if we refuse to talk honestly about the past, ain’t nothin’ gonna get better no time soon.
In times of crisis we inevitably haul our prophets out of their muddy prisons. As the hand of God continues to scrawl across the American wall, we may soon find ourselves turning to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his spiritual kin, for guidance.
Alan Bean, Friends of Justice
Note from Publisher for this repost: Karita Hummer
This post was selected to be reposted, and given the Silver Pen award, because it reminds us so well, so articulately, of what Jeremiah Wright has been so rightfully angry about, all these years: the duplicitous two Americas. Alan Bean rightly lauds the Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas for their plan to honor Rev. Wright for the totality of his teachings and sermons. It would behoove us all to listen to Rev Wright's sermons with an open eye and ear, so we can truly comprehend the plight of the other America which still lives in the shadow of the more affluent America. Essentially, Rev. Wright was decrying the two Americas, and so should we.
Karita Hummer
Edwards Democrat
