Unless And Until: Baltimore

Unless and until all lives matter as more than a soundbite and a hashtag...

Unless and until we are so sickened by the site of assault of any kind...

Unless and until equal rights are more than a campaign slogan...

Unless and until everyone has a voice...

Unless and until it stops being, "Would you look at those people..."

Nothing will change. When someone sets a senior center on fire and burns and loots their own neighborhood, businesses owned by people they know, they feel they have nothing to lose. They are disenfranchised to the point that they don't feel like they even live in the same country that they see on TV.

Two blocks from the looting last night are million dollar homes.

Police set up in front of Camden Yards but let rioters destroy their own neighborhoods.

People of all races were dragged out of cars and beaten.

The mayor was silent for five hours, appearing only to look beaten herself and call the rioters thugs.

Please don't misunderstand: I cannot condone anything that happened last night. But my endorsement or the lack thereof is not the point.

People keep quoting MLK, to wit: "A riot is the language when people don't feel heard" (paraphrasing).

But it's more than that. Before they can open their mouths, rioters don't even feel seen. It's The Invisible Man all over again. It's black men disappearing. It's an entire race of people excommunicated from the business of life by the color of their skin. Before we judge the actions of a few (and it was only a few, in relative terms) imagine what you would do if everyday you were told you were inferior and not worth anything, both implicitly and explicitly. Chances are good you can't begin to imagine it. If you are reading this blog (and even as I am writing this blog), you have privilege that is so ingrained it doesn't even feel like privilege. It just is.

Unless and until we can pretend to put ourselves in the shoes of others for just a moment to imagine that they love their children just as much as we do...

Unless and until we are committed to the success of everyone, not as a handout, not as a hand up, but as a journey that we take side-by-side...

Unless and until we are as invested in the future of the whole country, not just a select few...

Nothing will change.

It's not a conservative vs. liberal thing. It's not Christians vs. Muslims. Or us vs. them. It is us vs. our own humanity. Are we humans? Are we separated from the animals by our compassion and ability to reason? Can we not see that this is an issue that goes beyond throwing money at a problem?

Buying a house on a block of abandoned rowhouses is not the solution.

More testing in school is not the solution.

More death and violence is not the solution.

The solution requires nothing less than a cultural shift in attitude on both sides. It almost requires a do-over, a wiping of the slate. When you burn something down, you can live in the ashes, assemble a crude structure to keep the rain off but that will probably fall down again, or build something to last.

Unless and until we get to the core, address the institutionalized nature of deeply held prejudice and remedy the wrongs on both sides, our flimsy structure will come crashing down around our ears. Maybe not in a year or five years or ten years, but maybe today. Or tonight.

We are not these riots. Are we?

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Ferguson

 

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” ~Andrew Boyd~

When bad things happen, really, really bad things, like Newtown, I have a hard time functioning in the world. The morning after Newtown, the first thought in my mind when I woke up was, "There are parents who are waking up to their first day without their children today." A crippling thought.

Generally I have to approach the very worst of the bad by going on a media blackout. I know the basics of Newtown, but for the better part of five days I did not go online, watch TV, or pick up a newspaper. No NPR, no news on other radio stations. Full media blackout. I got to spend time in reflection and with my daughter, feeling immense gratitude and still a nearly overwhelming sadness. When I emerged from the five days of silence, the world was largely unchanged.

But this is not really about that.

This is about Ferguson.

I don't care which side of the fence you land on. It doesn't matter if you feel Michael Brown was killed unnecessarily or if Darren Wilson was protecting himself.

It doesn't matter how you feel about the looting that occurred after the grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson.

(But let's pause here for a moment to correct some facts. To not indict someone does not absolve them of the guilt of the crime. That Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown 12 times is not in dispute. That Michael Brown was not an angel is also not in dispute.The grand jury decided that based on the evidence presented they did not feel that a prosecutor would secure a guilty verdict on any of the potential charges. So they did not issue an indictment)

What matters here that an entire segment of the population feels that, once again, the system of law in the United States has failed to protect them. They feel that the law applies unequally based on skin color, that racism is institutionalized to shift the ever-growing balance of power to the ever-shrinking majority (for now). They feel this so strongly that last night, their powerless rage led some people to burn, loot, and steal, sometimes in their own neighborhoods.

When someone destroys their own home, rends their own clothes so to speak, they have lost all hope.

And again today, the parents of a black son are waking up without their child.

"Seek first to understand, then be understood." Proverbs 4:7 

Ferguson is just a visible, violent reminder of how disenfranchised members of the black community feel. How vulnerable, discriminated against, and powerless.

Ferguson is a reminder of the thousand tiny ways in which the roots of racism are still spreading wide and far.

Until we sit down to understand one another. Until we recognize that "other" is the same thing as "self." Until we realize that the destiny of one affects the destiny of many. Until every child in this country is our child. Until we stop blaming and take personal responsibility for our thoughts and actions. Until we recognize truths about ourselves that are hard to admit.

Until then, there will always be Ferguson. There will always be dead black boys in the street, shot by each other, or white police officers, or black police officers. There will be riots and looting. Mistrust and suspicion.

Until we actually care enough about ourselves to extend that compassion into the world, the universe will continue to crush us. And we will never be free.

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If The South Woulda Won, Things Would Be Different

I'll be honest: there's not a ton of things I will miss about Georgia, and I am a little bitter about it.

This morning as I read about how to buy, cook, and pick the best Maryland blue crabs, I have also been thinking abut the things I will miss. Sicily and I have been talking about it recently, and we have come up with a very short list:

1. A limited number of people

2. Fried Pickles

3. The Georgia Aquarium

4. Kennesaw Mountain

5. Sacred Garden Yoga

That's about it. In 13 years that we have lived here, I have taught probably 750 kids in this community and have never felt welcome, even as I busted by hind parts and spent 80+ hours away from my own family to teach other peoples' kids.

I have kept my mouth shut mostly and tried to understand where people are coming from and have not been afforded the same courtesy (for the most part. With some notable exceptions.).

I have watched from a distance the exclusionary "community" of various Facebook groups in Marietta, the type that continually says, "If you don't like it, leave," and, "That's the way things have always been" (intimating, of course, that because things have always been that way, they are good. You know, like racism and homophobia. But I digress.).

I have broken up with friends who have casually and continually worked the n-word into conversation. Teachers. Of children of all races. Who are referring to their students in this manner while sugary words drip off their tongues during conference week. Sickening.

Sicily was told at preschool when she was four that brown children are supposed to play with brown children, and white children are supposed to play with white children.

I have actually heard the title of this blog post said, out loud, numerous times since I have lived here, and if I never hear it again it will be too soon. Ditto for seeing Jesus fish on the backs of people's cars and billboards reminding me that Jesus will be back and that a baby has a heartbeat in 18 days (the last two are technically north Florida, which is its own kind of crazy that is kissing cousin to south Georgia).

Five days to go.

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