My Life in Republicanville - 2

This exchange occurred two days ago.  A really nice white 20 yr old man was making small talk as he helped me back to my car...

White Kid: Have you played Spartacus?

Me: No. I'm not into video games. 

WK: It's super cool. You can buy slaves and fight with them!

Me: 😒. [Sad, blank face]

WK: You can buy up to 8 slaves and fight them. 

Me: 😑. [blank stare]  .. So you can fight with a bunch of people. 

WK: Yeah!

I'm pretty sure he never caught the irony/insult. 

My Life in Republicanville

I recently moved deep deep deeeeeep into the heart of Texas. I've been here less than two days, and craziness has broken out already.  To keep my sanity, I'm blogging the stories for your entertainment.  

This conversation was with a business associate around 10:00 this morning.  The associate, "Lisa," is a middle aged Christian white woman.  

Lisa: I assume u have to know history for ur job. 

Me: some

L: but u have to be careful with that. Think of how they're changing history in our public schools. It's not what our founding fathers wanted. 

Me: 😑

L: I guess it depends on your perspective.  

Me: yeah.  ... You should think of Abigail Adams, who famously said to John, "don't forget the ladies!"

L: I didn't know that, but I really don't know much history at all. 

Me: 😑😒

Extremism in Defense of Liberty...and Oppression

Lately, I've been reading Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion by Herbert Aptheker (1937/2006).  It's the first serious (second generally) history of the rebellion Nat Turner led in 1831.  It's an incredibly easy read, and I highly recommend it.

Needless to say, many things stick out to me from the book.  More posts may come...

For now, Aptheker's writing about "the effects" (i.e. social and legal reactions) of Turner's rebellion captures my mind.  Our best guess is that 60-80 black people joined the rebellion, yet at the time whites estimated as many as 800 armed revolutionaries actively participated and nearly every southern state legislature convened to deal with whites' mass hysteria following the revolt.  After his capture, Turner pleaded not guilty (because he had done nothing wrong) and never said he was mistaken in believing God led him to revolt.  Those facts lead me to my two initial thoughts:

1. Oppressors Live in Constant Fear

We, the people willing to act for social justice, severely underestimate our influence.  One of the false lessons of the Civil Rights Era is that "a movement" requires mass numbers.  I am convinced that movement requires little more than a few people willing to move.  People imposing injustice tend to freak out when directly confronted with resistance.  I am reminded of three biblical stories.  One where Elisha showed his chief disciple the invisible chariots and horsemen of Israel.  The second, when Gideon took a very small army (~300 men) and defeated a much larger army when the enemy soldiers turned on themselves.  And a third, when three lepers marched into the enemy camp only to find it deserted because the enemy soldiers mistook their footsteps for the sound of a large army.  My point, God seems to be suggesting the power of small numbers often in the Bible.

My larger point from Nat Turner is that all oppressors live in constant fear of resistance, even resistance from groups that cannot possibly overthrow systems by force alone.  Men live in constant fear that they will be exposed as vulnerable and not masculine.  Whites live in constant fear that the logic of white supremacy (i.e. justified domination because of superior intellect/morality/numerical majority/etc) will be exposed as a lie [thus The Bell Curve, the Minute Men, the Tea Party, etc].  The rich are petrified of labor coalitions.  The Christian Right is obsessed with "creeping Sharia law." Bush began a war against terror itself.  

We don't often pay enough attention to the fact that emotion is an integral part of every social structure.  Specifically, fear is an inevitable part of every oppressive structure.  That means that one of the contradictions inherent to any system of organization is the emotional vulnerability of the dominant group.  Oppressed people thus always have a structural avenue of resistance, even in the most oppressive and closed systems.

Nat Turner demonstrated that.  For months and even years after his rebellion, whites openly claimed that they could not sleep, were filled with anxiety, and were in failing health due to fear of slave rebellions inspired by Turner.  In fact, several southern governors explicitly stated mass anxiety among whites as the reason for calling emergency legislative sessions in fall of 1831.  This mass anxiety despite there being no clear evidence that a single subsequent rebellion was directly connected to Turner or his co-conspirators.  That oppressors were convicted by their own guilt is proven by two facts: 1) Turner "passed-over" the houses of whites who "did not think themselves better than blacks."  His army only targeted open bigots and slaveowners; and 2) there is some evidence that many poor whites supported the rebellion.  Whites were not afraid they would be targeted for being white; they were afraid because they knew they were targeted for being active oppressors.


2.  Retrenchment Is Not Evidence of Failure

After the Turner Rebellion, whites reacted extremely harshly.  They not only assassinated Turner and his fellow rebels, they also mutilated and murdered innumerable black people (slave and free) with and without trials.  Whites killed at least as many innocent black people as the total number of rebells in Turner's army.  In some cases, white militias lynched black people on the mere accusation of white overseers.  Whites tortured, lynched, and murdered black people without any evidence or even reason for suspicion in states as far from Turner's rebellion (in Virginia) as Louisiana and Kentucky.  Whites tortured innocent black people to the point that whites themselves began criticizing the brutality and fearing they would lose the moral ground in the slaveholding South!  [I cannot imagine the savagery that would move slaveholders even that small step toward compassion.  Our black ancestors are beyond heroic!]  Bunches of municipalities and southern states passed a host of laws tightening restrictions on free blacks and making life even more difficult for slaves.  ... None of this is a surprise, but it leads me to my next point...

For black people, the most obvious immediate result of Turner's Rebellion was increased white oppression.  In other words, black people's lives got worse; in some cases much worse.  Turner, his fellow warriors, and potentially hundreds of uninvolved black people were tortured and killed by whites.  In addition to the rampant mass murder, black people lost [i.e. whites took] the few civil rights they had.  Black people couldn't even legally have church without whites present.  Again, biblical parallels come to mind.  The Egyptians made crazy laws against enslaved Israelites (e.g. making bricks without straw) out of fear of growing Israelite numbers and fear of slave revolt.  Moses left Egypt after reacting to Egyptian cruelty, and the Egyptians reacted harshly to subsequent Israelite resistance once the Exodus began.  ... I bring up the Bible to show that the patterns are old and unchanging.  Oppressors oppress, get scared, generate resistance, clamp down, and ultimately lose.

And here, I think, is another false lesson we have drawn from the Civil Rights Movement.  Activists hesitate too often for fear that their efforts will make life harder for the very people they are fighting for.  This fear among activists is one of the main causes of "analysis until paralysis" and splits among coalitions.  We should understand that activism never causes oppression.  Oppressors do that.  We should not assume that harsh retrenchment is a sign that we did the wrong thing.  Often retrenchment is a sign that mobilization meaningfully challenged oppressors.

Again, the immediate aftermath of Turner's rebellion was death and increased white-on-black terrorism throughout the South.  Not only so, but nearly all the southern abolitionist organizations disappeared following the rebellion.  They reformed in the North, but that meant the thousands of free blacks in the South and millions of enslaved blacks had much less local white support after 1831.  But nearly 200 years later, we see that Turner's Rebellion was a positive and critically important part of the liberation struggle.  If we judged him by the lives of black people in October and November of 1831, we would conclude his efforts a failure on every level.  Now we praise Turner and name city parks after him (e.g. in Newark, NJ).  We recognize Nat Turner, John Brown, and other antislavery rebells as national heroes--certainly heroes among people of color.

Selah.

Gay Men and Blood Donation

So, you may not know (as I didn't until a few years ago), but the government forbids accepting blood donations from gay men.  See a background story here.  Actually, if you've ever read the questions before giving blood, you know that the restriction is on any man who has had sex with another man at any point in life.  Compare that restriction to the fact that heterosexuals who are knowingly having sex with HIV/AIDS positive people are allowed donate a year after their last sexual intercourse with the HIV positive partner.

This blood donation restriction makes no sense!  It's just a way to stigmatize the gay community.  It's biggotry, plain and simple.  Obviously, if preventing HIV/AIDS contamination in the blood supply was the issue, heterosexuals would also face lifetime bans if they slept with an HIV positive person at any point in their lives.

The obvious, and utterly ridiculous, basis for this anti-gay restriction is the outrageous and totally outdated idea that all gay people have AIDS.  I'm old enough to remember when people thought AIDS was exclusively a gay disease.  (Actually, my evangelical friends, we're all old enough as the Rev. Jerry Faldwell and his bretheren continued to espouse that view until his death, if memory serves.)  But that thinking has been completely disproved in every way imaginable!  At this point, believing gays are diseased--with HIV/AIDS or  homosexuality itself--is silly, and more indicative of personal prejudice than anything else.

Like all forms of bigotry, this ban injures the people who support it.  Just as whites are damaged by racism (via limited social relationships, deep seated fears, subjugation to laws designed primarily to control people of color, etc), so anti-gay heterosexuals are willing to risk their own lives by decreasing the emergency blood supply just to stigmatize gays.

I used to donate blood regularly on campus during college.  But it's been more than 4 years since I last did that.  I am unwilling to participate in the national lie that 1) gays don't exist -- thus all male donors certifying they haven't had gay sex, and 2) gays are universally HIV/AIDS carriers.  Recently, I wanted to donate bone marrow.  If you don't know, there is a desperate need for African Americans to donate bone marrow.  I don't know the science, but for some reason, having racially similar donors reduces rejection rates in marrow transfusions.  Again, I volunteered to help meet the desperate need, but the center rejected me because of the anti-gay ban.  I seriously doubt the potential beneficiary of my marrow donation would have made the same decision.  

These Wounds I Suffer in the House of My Friends: Church as Site of White Racism

Continuing the previous post, this week researchers at Baylor University published a study finding that people who were primed with Christian words (e.g. Jesus, Bible, faith, Christ) demonstrated more covert and overt racism against African Americans than people who were not primed with Christian words.  In other words, people who are thinking about American Christianity (or thinking through a Christian frame, the study speculates) feel and express more anti-Black racism than people who are not thinking about Christianity.  The ABP news service, with a quotation by one of the study's authors, sums up the point nicely:

The study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, found that people subliminally "primed" with Christian words reported more negative attitudes about African-Americans than those primed with neutral words.

"What's interesting about this study is that it shows some component of religion does lead to some negative evaluations of people based on race," said Wade Rowatt, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, who led the study. 

 According to Rowatt, there is something about American Christianity that leads to whites' anti-black racism.  Rather than preventing white on black racism, white Christianity actually leads to (i.e. activates, maybe even produces) racism.

The study only subliminally primed people with Christian words and measured the effect of that incredibly minuscule stimulus.  That they found any effect at all is remarkable!  In reality, people are not subliminally primed with singular Christian words; they are overwhelmed with Christian words and symbols.  Extrapolating from the study, each Christian stimulus primes people for anti-Black sentiment.  If people in short laboratory studies in which they "heard" only one Christian word exhibit increased anti-Black racism, how much greater is the effect when people have been in church!!!  Given the flood of Christian symbols around us--crosses, t-shirts with verses, people praying over their food, "blessings" when we sneeze--it is no wonder people of color face white racism everywhere, all the time.

Of course, the Church is not the only central purveyor of white racism.  But the study is important because it indicates two critical things: 1) in the United States, Christianity and white racism reinforce one another; and 2) churches are sites where whites do racial harm and amplify racism.  White churches are not sites of racial harmony; they are places where people of color are wounded in the houses of their white friends (see Zechariah 13:6, from which I drew this post's title).     


I have many thoughts on this subject, but I will save most of them for another time.  Suffice it to say here, the white Church has a lot of work to do if it hopes to succeed at the "racial reconciliation" project many churches have taken up over the last half century.  Having worshiped and served in predominantly white churches, I can give innumerable first hand accounts of the covert and overt racism the researchers found.  In one instance, a white evangelical with whom I was living actually said to me "if you were my slave, it would be fine." My experiences are not unique.  People of color who have taken the leap of faith to join white churches usually find those churches to be houses of racialized pain, and suffer many wounds as a result.  The book, Reconciliation Blues, has many accounts documenting that fact.

These Wounds I Suffered in the House of My Friends...

I credit my mother with the great majority of my Bible teaching.  She bought me my first Bible when I was 14 years old.  She drove me to Bible study for the 2 years following.  She taught me memory scriptures from my earliest days, and so beautifully sang gospel music that I still hum her songs to comfort my soul when it is troubled.  Mom gathered the family for Bible reading and prayer periodically.  She also called me to help pray through the family's toughest times.  My spirituality is mostly a reflection of hers.  Nevertheless, the two verses my father taught me reverberate in my mind as often as all the others.  One verse is about having to show yourself to be friendly if you hope to make friends.  The other is the subject of this entry. 

And one will say to him, "What are these wounds between your arms?" Then he will say, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."  --Zechariah 13:6

 Despite being raised in New Jersey, my father has a Southerner's gift for memorable phrases.  His sayings, like, "What they do with you, they'll do to you" have served me well.  His quotations of Zechariah 13:6 were given like an old country saying, and I have internalized its wisdom accordingly.  The context for Zechariah 13 is God's prophecy of a devastating military defeat for Judah, and the verse itself centers on a false prophet whom the Jews reject.  Again, I never learned the context for the verse.  In fact, I don't recall Dad ever giving a citation for it all--beyond it being in the Bible.  So, I've learned the scripture and used it as folk wisdom.  Even still, the word of the Lord is never void. 

We've all heard the saying, "you only hurt the ones you love."  Standing alone, Zechariah 13:6 pretty much means the same thing, but from the victim's perspective.  Paraphrased, "I am only hurt by the ones I love."  Through my many hours of therapy  :)  I almost exclusively talk about the "wounds I suffered in the house of my friends."  Though the events are years, even decades, old, I spend countless hours rehashing hurtful incidents--incidents that refuse my best efforts to bury them beyond my memory.  Usually, folks had no malice when they hurt me, but the wounds are so deep that I am still tending to them all these years later. 

The scripture speaks to that sentiment.  The wounds the false prophet bares are actually from his mother and father, who attempted to kill him because of what he spoke (Zech. 13:3).  Though no one tried to kill me, the wounds are so deep and obvious to everyone that it appears the wounds came from a murder attempt.  I'm sure everyone relates to that.  We all carry very deep wounds.   

The point being, the wounds we suffer in supposedly safe and nurturing places hurt the worst and mark us for years.  As Paul Simon said in "Graceland", "Everybody sees you're blown apart.  Everybody hears the wind blow."  Simon concludes by saying, "I'm going to Graceland."  My next post demonstrates why the metaphorical "Graceland," i.e. Heaven, represented by the Church, may not be a sanctuary for safety.  When it comes to race, white Churches apparently function as "the house of your friends."