The denial is staggering. My colleagues are weighing in, one by one and then in a rush, commenting on Facebook and e-mails and in messages about their conversations with white parishioners who don’t get it, who are sunk up to their knees like quicksand in white privilege and denial and a worldview that wants to assume that this doesn’t just happen and he must have done something and you don’t know everything and did you read the report? and did you read it as thoroughly as I did, because if you did you wouldn’t be so upset, you wouldn’t be sick and snarling and enraged and disgusted with humanity right now, you’d be the nice, comforting minister I expect you to be.
Forgive me, or don’t. I am indeed sick and disgusted and although a beautiful colleague of mine wrote this afternoon about the need to take hands and sing, I cannot sing and I am keeping my hands to myself because I want to punch something. But my feelings and my comfort and my inability to sing are not what matter. What matters to me tonight is a man named Eric Garner who sold loose cigarettes on the street and as the cops confronted and harassed him this summer, yelled at them to leave him alone. Yelled at them to leave him alone because he wasn’t doing anything. I can’t quote Mr. Garner exactly, but as I remember that he said something about how you all (meaning the police) were looking to make trouble with him, looking to arrest another black man. He was irritated and agitated and then they surrounded him like sharks in the water, methodically and murderously taking him down.
I can’t breathe, he said.
I can’t breathe.
And they held him down and one officer strangled him from behind and they held onto him until he was dead. Someone called it a lynching and I can’t see the difference myself.
He became a martyr in that moment, if you hadn’t considered that possibility. Eric Garner was a prophet who spoke truth to power and that power pulled him down to the sidewalk and killed him right then and there.
And they got away with it.
Brainy white analytical types want this to work somehow in their minds, as they have no life experience by which to process this cognitive dissonance as reality. Â There must be a reason for this. I can practically hear the gears whirring as I watch them try to make sense of what does not make sense for white people, even though one particularly lurid and egregious case after another of police brutality against black men has been paraded out in front of us for months. Â We are Romans sitting in the arena watching gladiators kill slaves (I know that’s not historically accurate – it’s a metaphor) and questioning the dead as they’re dragged away. Â Now, what strategic move did you not make that would have allowed you to avoid that fatal blow? There must have been something. Think.Â
The fatal blow is systemic racism and the compliance and complicity of white America. You think I have any answers? I don’t. I only pray that liberal white Americans can examine their own intellectualized response at this moment and challenge each other to see how harmful it is — how distancing, disrespectful and unfeeling it is.
No one who hasn’t lived it has a sturdy soapbox to stand on from which to pontificate and opine. We only have the perspective of our own context and location, which for most of us is well removed from Ferguson, Missouri. It is not a time for analysis. It is a time for empathic imagining, for humility and sorrow.
Where in America would a white 12-year old boy walking around on a cold afternoon in an unpopulated area and idly waving a toy gun be shot by a police officer literally two seconds after that cop got out of his squad car? Two seconds on the clock. Imagine that happening in your neighborhood.
When it came out in the news today that the officer who killed Tamir Rice had been poorly evaluated by a previous supervisor for his “dismal performance with a handgun,” white Americans said, “Ohhhh.” A dead black child wasn’t enough proof for some of them, you see. They had to have the Officer Timothy Loehmann’s gross ineptitude confirmed by a white authority figure.
White men wave real guns around crowded areas in America and are taken into custody alive. Â Tamir Rice, carrying a toy gun in an open carry state, wasn’t white. His parents are apparently not law abiding citizens, so one Ohio resident suggested to me yesterday (and this is a quote) that it was a good thing that Tamir was “put down before he got a real gun.” Â I fail to see a significant emotional and spiritual difference between the callous bigot who celebrates the murder of a kid and the white liberal who says it’s all really sad, but he shouldn’t have been waving around a gun. Both responses are distancing and victim-blaming: one pathological and the other quite ordinary and therefore, often unquestioned and uncommented upon.
“He shouldn’t have punched a cop,” is what a white man said in the sushi bar tonight about Mike Brown. Â So he obviously deserved to die. I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to start a brawl at the sushi bar.
He shouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He shouldn’t have been big and scary. He shouldn’t have been black.
In my call for empathic imagining, I am going to ask, again and again, under what circumstances, exactly, would any of us accept an 18-year old member of our congregation to be shot dead by the police and left in the street for four and a half hours? Under what circumstances would we not move heaven and earth to get answers from a police chief after such a horrific occurrence? Under what circumstance can any of us imagine tolerating hearing one of our sons described as a raging hulk, would stand for the characterization of our child as some kind of beast by a police officer whose “injuries” sustained at our son’s hands are a pink mark barely visible to the naked eye?
On what planet do we really think it’s acceptable for a police officer to kill a teenager who may or may not have stolen a few cigars from the corner store, who may or may not have behaved in a belligerent way and then have the police chief and governor respond to our community’s outrage over his murder with tanks and tear gas? How would we feel, how would we respond, what would we demand, if there was no official comment or information for the an entire day after one of our teenagers was shot dead in the street?
Oh, they looted.
Oh, they burned down their own property. How stupid is that.
Oh, this guy really knows what he’s talking about. He is so spot on in his scathing critique of the violent and destructive response in Ferguson. Tsk, tsk.
Bad and destructive choices made by some people in Ferguson or anywhere affected by police brutality does not excuse white people from allying themselves with African Americans in the struggle for justice. When justifiably enraged black people take to the streets in violent ways in protest, or in crime sprees or to kill each other, that is not white people’s cue to retire to our armchairs, light our pipes and descend into the comfortable form of white superiority that manifests as condescending intellectual curiosity.
If Johnathan Gentry wants to speak to his own African-American community about the stupidity of looting and the futility of civil rights songs, that is his privilege. There is a conversation that is happening within the African-American community that no white person is entitled to comment on.
I have tried to avoid providing a lot of links to articles that support my points in this post because I know that someone who disagrees with me will only post their own links in retort, and that is a game that white people can afford to play while black men die in the streets. We need to have more respect, for God’s sake.
I realize that this post was a bit confusing. I started with Eric Garner and then I segued to Tamir Rice and then I referenced Mike Brown. Cleveland, Ferguson, Staten Island — who can keep up with it? It all blends together and I have compassion fatigue. I know. I do, too. I have outrage fatigue. But to sit back in the armchair because we’re too tired of reading articles does not honor the witness being borne by the African-American community right now. Perhaps taking to the streets is not your style, or is not possible for you. For many white folks, the longest and most important distance to travel in our claims to be an anti-racist, justice-seeking people may be from our heads to our hearts. Our longest march may be the one that takes us down from the dais of of competitive debate and rational inquiry to the common ground of listening, witnessing, mourning and embracing.
Put down the newspaper and the computer. There are caskets going by.
I just don’t know what to do about it. I have 3 young adult, white sons, and it’s all too easy to put them, in my imagination, in the the places of these black men. But they never will be in their places because they are white. And then for there to be no legal consequences, even.
I just don’t know what to do about it.
Thank you. Well said!
THANK you!!
Cathy, you can go to handsup.or and find a protest in your area, make a sign and go join it.
You can give money for buses and bail bonds and travel accommodations for those who are on the ground or able to go directly.
You can repost these kinds of articles and risk and stand up to the bigots it will call out from your own friends-list.
You can tell your pastor you want your church to take a stand.
You can call your local elected officials and express your disgust if they have not taken a stand.
You can start an initiative to ban the sale of all toy guns.
You can start an initiative to demand a public trial for any officer that uses legal force so that they know that next time there WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.
That’s all I’ve got off the top of my head…maybe it will help you think of what is uniquely yours to do.
Dear PB – Thank you so much for this. I have been part of the chorus of ministers disturbed by the push back from some of my congregation. Things seem to have polarized more since the grand jury announcement. A few people who have been silent are speaking critically about my sermons; some are saying that they feel alienated from their church. One longstanding member said she was thinking of leaving. I do feel torn sometimes between my charge to serve these folks, to meet them where they are – and to speak truth to power, to not soften the message and not agree to limit what we do as a church. I take comfort in the fact that ministers have always had to speak uncomfortable truths, and feel the discomfort of the push back. I was excited to be talking with a colleague who marched in Selma. Being part of the living stream felt great then – now it feels more like white water rapids. This is also part of it, and I have decided I need to talk to our senior colleagues about how they dealt with the push back. I don’t know if I’ll get any advice to follow, but I am betting that hearing their stories will help me. I also take comfort in the presence of my lay leaders who are still leading and carrying the message to their friends, both inside the church and out. I take comfort in knowing that we can be part of some exciting change – and a change this big is going to involve some pain. I am saying all of this *to myself* because it is so hard. Let’s hang in there together.
I posted a comment, but I think it got lost. If it didn’t, please forgive me for the double post. iPhones can be irritating.
First, I need to be honest with you. I don’t like your blog. I’m a black woman and my black children are nearly grown. I joined a UU church when they were small and everyone at church seemed to read your blog, so I did, too. I got a weekly dose of white liberalism and most days I didn’t mind. I felt like I met some good people, or at least like minded people. Some of them are still friends. A couple of them I have grown to love. But after a while, I got tired. The church, the people and your blog (and others like it) wore me out. White liberalism is very racist and paternalistic in its condescension and just like everywhere else in America, me and my children are not really supposed to exist authentically. As long as we occupy the roles that white people expect, and have the opinions and appearance that make white people comfortable, we can all be friends. But then something happens and the mask slips out of place and suddenly everyone’s true self is showing.
But today, two people that I really like posted the link to your blog and I came here ready to slam you. But I can’t. You got this right. And I can’t be mad at you.
You see, I get it. I understand that drive to force this to make sense. I understand that so many people need to believe that things are different now. But when I read some of the stuff on social media and blogs I see people talking without empathy. Talking about black men without empathy. Black men like my father, who I love, who has always taken care of me and protected me and pushed me to be better. A veteran of the Air Force, a civil servant until his retirement. A law abiding citizen. An honorable man. But if he gets stopped on the street, he’s as good as dead and his life is worth something akin to Skittles or cigarettes. All of the dead men and boys that are in the headlines this year had people who loved them and depended on them. But forget about that. Let’s ignore the dead child lying in the street and talk about his “enormous” size and whatever petty crime he may have committed or what this witness said or that autopsy report. And by all means lets keep saying that no one really knows what happened because that’s the point. Right? Right. And you know, if a father and grandfather, the head of a family, is selling looseies, just kill him. Because he’s so damn big and black and we can’t have him profit from selling loose cigarettes. Think of all the tax revenue. Forget about his grieving widow and his children and his grandbabies. They were probably on welfare anyway. His sons are next.
The only way to have empathy is to believe these black men and boys are human beings just like the rest of us. You know, inherent worth and dignity and all that. When I see absence of empathy in these conversations, to me it means that these people, these white liberals, people that I thought knew me, don’t see me – or my children – as human. That changes everything for me. That makes them as dangerous as any Klansman. And then when they try to silence my anger by posting that bit of bible about Rachel weeping, all I want is for Rachel to pick up a gun and strap on a bomb because this is exactly how so-called terrorists are made. Human beings are only going to spend so many years with their faces in the dirt before they rise up and upend the entire system.
Anyway, I’m glad I read this. I’m glad you wrote it. And I didn’t expect to feel that way.
^ To Cathy, above—there are a bunch of amazing resources out there for how to talk about this with family and children, as well as lists of actions and articles to engage even further. (I posted some here bit.ly/FergusonAEM if you scroll to the final section).
Rev. Weinstein—this post is amazing. A friend linked me to it on Facebook and I just had to comment. Thank you.
I agree with everything in this essay; it corresponds with my own observations of the reactions of normally thoughtful and intelligent folks who can’t seem to step outside of their privileged point of view. My only question would be: why is your criticism confined to liberals? Have you just given up on conservatives?
This is THE BEST response from the white side of things I have seen on these situations. Thank you for this.
Well said. Thanks for offering this challenge to the comfortable majority.
Thank you, Victoria, for this important blog post. Like you, I am a white clergy woman struggling with the very issues you raise. Unlike you, however, I have never been able to articulate it this well! Reading this post is JUST what I needed this morning. Again, thank you!
This literally took my breath away. It captured so much of what I feel like I have personally struggled to say. It is also a powerful, appropriate challenge to those of us who identify as white, liberal, ministers serving in largely white contexts. Silence is complicity. Hiding behind a computer screen is not an option. God is still speaking, and not addressing this in our contexts silences God’s radical truth that God is with the oppressed.
A powerful, heartbreaking piece…
My heart aches. My soul aches. I sit here and realize that my 14 year old stepson likes to play outside, often skulking around with a toy gun or running around chasing the other kids at church playing “zombies”. And I realize that the fact that the only reason people may just look at him and see a strange kid and not a target is his skin color. And that makes me cry. It makes me cry for the other parents who have to worry more about their precious babies getting shot because they “looked scary” instead of my privileged worry that people will think my kid is off his rocker. The whole thing is gut-wrenching and sad and heartbreaking and I’m still trying to process what I can do from here. So in the meantime, I hold space. I hold these families in my heart and lift them up to the Universe. And I cry.
Thank you.
Amen.
The sad truth is there are injustices no matter the skin color. You just don’t see the media blasting it because racial division sells news. There have been white boys, one since Michael Brown killed by a black policeman and not one thing has been done about it nor has it been mentioned in the news other than locally. There has be rape committed by hispanic officers against black and white women, but did you see that blown up by media? It’s only when the law breaker is black that we hear them cry foul play. Maybe the black community needs to take a look at the stats, and do something about the rebellion and disrespect that has caused their people to have this reputation and do something to correct it. I am not racist at all..there are wonderful people of every nationality and color but when you look at the static’s on crime in our area it makes everyone leery. Reputation and character makes a difference in how we are viewed in this life, like it or not! Doesn’t matter if you’re black,white,brown, Islamic,Christian,Jewish, satanist, you can be respected, appreciated and loved because you show these same character traits to your fellow man or you can reap the consequences of being the opposite and living selfishly with no regard for anyone else….there is no such thing as “racial profiling”..that’s political word play to stir up strife and racial division. It’s up to each individual to decide to be of good character for themselves and their people.
Well summarized, thank you.
“Our longest march may be the one that takes us down from the dais of competitive debate and rational inquiry to the common ground of listening, witnessing, mourning and embracing.”
Having worked in engineering for 30 years I have a natural tendency to fix things. Being white and male, I have a belief that I have the right to investigate, understand and fix things. It is hard to avoid this reaction. Your words have made me think of myself as a funeral crasher, when what makes sense is to remove my hat and stand in silence.
And be prepared to listen, listen, and show up when asked.
Thank you for speaking truth! The violence, incarceration and death dealt to young black men continue to be the price paid for our unwillingness as a nation to deal with the evils of systemic racism. We wring our hands, we try to rationalize, we say, “What a shame, but there’s nothing we can do.”
But, of course, there are many things we can do. For one, we can name the problem and cry out in anger every time we see racism at work (which is pretty much all the time). We can refuse to be lulled into stultifying fear and complacency by media reports which turn issues of life and death into spectator sports. We can risk losing our undeserved and unearned sense of comfort and ease in order to work for what we know is right. We can talk about issues for which there are no easy answers, knowing that *not* talking about them and *not* acting on them is what helps perpetuate evil, as has always been the case.
We can finally rise up and act like people who really value freedom and not just the idea of freedom.
But to do any of this work, we need to get ourselves out from behind our computer and television screens, out from behind our moldering pulpits, out from behind the beautifully maintained lawns and lines that separate us.
In other words, we must be willing to pay the price ourselves in ways small and large rather than standing by dumbstruck while more young black men pay the price for us.
Thanks, Victoria. Your out loud (written) processing and plea has engendered some of my own. It is way past time for us to address this effectively and powerfully. I know our UU colleagues are on this; I’m also reaching out to the life coaching community I am part of to ask how we make this a part of our coaching.
You are (and we are) not alone.
Mark
Thank you for these truthful, powerful, shattering words. You have given me a way to talk about this when words have failed me. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Thank you so much. This is spot on with what I’ve been feeling after hearing a few disgusted and dismissive comments at my own church after coming back from 2 trips to provide first aid support in Ferguson. One woman said, “oh, well that’s just NONE OF OUR BUSINESS!” when I told her I was planning to go to a vigil for Eric Garner last night.
We have so much privilege that we can choose when it’s our business that people are dying at the hands of police. None of these men chose to be stopped by the police, yet they are 6 times more likely to have a police encounter on an average day than I am as a white person. I am baffled that our congregants can choose ignorance and safety again and again, even to the point of denying the humanity of a 12 year old boy.
Donations to MORE (Missourians Organized for Reform and Empowerment) for bail funds or to GRAM (Gateway Region Action Medics) for handwarmers and first aid supplies and trainings are one way to support from afar. Getting involved in removing felony voting laws that deny African Americans the vote in disproportionate numbers would be a step. Writing a petition to your local law enforcement to ask for better training around mediation, mental health intervention, and deescalation techniques would be a great congregational project. There is so much to do, the only thing you can really do wrong is to not do anything.
Thanks for this clear and passionate response! Cuts through much denial and intellectual “fog” — I think we do “know what to do about it.” Whites created systems of privilege, and racial violence to keep them in place. Whites can choose to change, beginning with owning that reality — really owning it, divesting in it, promoting reparations and affirmative action, and working at every level to transform ways of thinking that explain and justify institutions that hold unjust systems in place, discard the “yardstick” that makes dominating systems of knowledge normative. I believe this needs to be a priority every day in our churches, schools, communities, our families and personal lives.
“Put down the newspaper and the computer. There are caskets going by.”
A long and very good post, but the last sentence says it all.
Thank you thank you thank you. From one white liberal to another. From one colleague to another. Thank you.
Get ready America, the sixties are back and we need to make some drastic changes in every community in America. Law enforcement reflects the community.
Yes. Thank you. “I am going to ask, again and again, under what circumstances, exactly, would any of us accept an 18-year old member of our congregation to be shot dead by the police and left in the street for four and a half hours?
The idea that young people, young black people, should not be *shot* for–for anything, really, in the course of their interactions with police, is part of what I tried to convey to my congregation on Sunday. We mourn for these children as if they were our own.
This recent sequence of events is so stunning to me that I am actually starting to feel afraid. I, a privileged white woman of 71, comfortably retired, am starting to feel deeply afraid about what is happening in the human psyche that allows this kind of thing to keep happening. Of course it is systemic racism, but I wonder about the fear that underlies that. I wonder if there is some collective terror that the human race is facing that is causing people to lash out, to use violence as a first resort rather than a last. This is so disturbing to me that I, too, am struggling not to just turn away. Today my task will be not to turn away.
White silence = White consent!
In a just state, how can there be a wrong place, a wrong time?
I agree with most of your upset save for the target group. ‘liberal intellectuals’. Why? These dismissals require one be neither intellectual nor liberal. Implicit Racists might be a better description (as opposed to Explicit Racists). Casual racists, perhaps. Whatever you want to call it, it has nothing to do with intelligence or political affiliation.
A lot of us ‘liberal intellectuals’ are out there fighting for justice right now. Throwing around poorly-considered labels only serves to divide people who should be working together. Am I mistaken in the belief that minister should be working to build communities and understanding, not burn them?
Thank you. Each time we can chip away at the denial, at the blindness, each time we do that we can take a short, shallow breath. Thank you.
I just don’t know how to respond to this… as a white middle aged woman who abides by the law, I just don’t see myself in any way, in the stories of these young men. That’s why I keep coming back to – “but he punched a cop and tried to grab his gun”. I come back to that because I would never under any circumstances, respond that way to a cop. I would allow him to cuff and take me to jail, for whatever I had done. Maybe because I trust the system… I don’t know anyone who has been assaulted by the police, and I don’t know anyone who has gone to jail or been arrested. That’s just not my circle. So when white people hear these stories, it’s not the “blackness” in the stories that they hear. It’s the “criminal” part. Other than the 12 year old waving around a toy pistol, every time I hear one of these stories, it’s a black man, but it’s also some criminal aspect that the policeman was trying to confront the man about.
What I relate to in the story, is the policeman’s plight who of trying to keep a community safe. (not all of them, of course). So when I think of the poor 12 year old boy with a toy gun, I think, What if I were a cop approaching this scene? I see a man waving a gun… what is a cop supposed to do?
It’s not that I don’t feel sympathy for the plight of black people and the police. I have had enough black friends to know that they are followed in stores, and stopped more often by the police. I get that – it’s real. I just don’t know what the solution is when policemen have to do their jobs too, which is to stop people who they believe are a threat to civil society.
PErmission to adapt and quote a portion of this for worship on 12/7?
“The fatal blow is systemic racism and the compliance and complicity of white America.” Yes. Absolutely. Thanks for this powerful post.
Wow, what a powerful essay/sermon. So much of it resonated with me as my heart aches for all who are killed unjustly. Actually, my heart aches for all who are killed, period, yet this specific issue of cops killing black teens is worse. I was active in the Civil Rights movement in the 60s and 70s and have a continuing interest in race relations and all the bigotry. One of the things that I have concluded is that the problem of racism is not just on the shoulders of white folks. Granted white folks have acted horribly throughout history, and black folks are justifiably angry. But taking that anger to the streets has not helped solve the problem. I am blogging about Ferguson on my blog tomorrow and this thought came to me as I was writing the piece, “It takes a tremendous amount of courage to resist the temptation to let anger rule reason. ”
I will link to your blog, so my readers can get another viewpoint.
“Our longest march may be the one that takes us down from the dais of of competitive debate and rational inquiry to the common ground of listening, witnessing, mourning and embracing.
Put down the newspaper and the computer. There are caskets going by.”
May we all start marching.
My three (white) children are aware of race as a factor in the lives of most people, including themselves. They often accuse people or situations of being “racist” against groups of people, since they haven’t managed to grasp the idea of generalized prejudice and its specific forms like sexism and religious intolerance. But they, like so many of us, simply have no grasp of the idea of systemic racism, the kind that gets handed out and handed down because an entire society is built on its assumptions. It is a hard idea to explain to my children and a hard one to grasp myself. But until all the adults are able to see that for what it is, one one’s kids are going to grow up safer. Thank you for these words.
Thank you for both your eloquence and compassion.
Your comment on the killing of a white Serb in st Louis
By 3 non white teens with hammers a couple days ago
(ignored by most all media)
Would be welcomed
I don’t think I have compassion fatigue yet – I am filled with dismay, horror and outrage,and it tears me up everytime I read about something like this. I don’t know what to do – I’m going to a protest march this afternoon, but do those have any effect on the grand juries and judges who are overseeing the police officers in this country? I am wondering how many white church actually know people who sit on those grand juries, or judges who are presiding over these cases. Will any of those parishioners speak up to those who refuse to judge cops who feel they can kill young black men, and – CHILDREN even – with impunity? I wonder if the only thing that is going to change the minds of these judges who dismiss such actions as “legitimate responses to threat” is personal confrontation. Our demonstrations will have little effect. It’s going to take accosting these people where they live, in their churches, in grocery stores, in shopping centers etcto make this kind of a change happen. White liberals need to “grow a pair” and do just that. but it might also help if white liberals would start demonstrating en masse! The people I’m going to demonstrate with this afternoon are not Christians. Join those of us who are not Christians in the street and show some anger! Your anger will speak louder than ours, because yours is seen as more “legitimate” than ours. I hope all of your parishioners have read this post, and I hope it has some effect. From what I’ve seen in my days in the church, I don’t really have much hope of that.
Yes, thank you. I spent a long time trying to find explanations, and somehow it’s all come crashing down the past few years and I’m furious. Why shouldn’t people be outraged? If it was your kid, it was only after you had him safe at home that you might have told him not to challenge the cop. It wouldn’t be a conversation you would want to have with the rest of the world across his dead body.
As always, PB, you hit the nail right on the head. Thank you.
Thank you for the post. The point that strikes me again and again in this moment is how those who are white get to choose when to engage with racism, while those who aren’t, don’t. As a white, progressive person of faith, I am staying with engagement.
I agree with what you are saying… EXCEPT for the liberal part. But why did you make it about white *liberals*? I have just as many – in fact more (I actually counted the emails and posts) – white conservative friends behaving in this manner.
Thank you. Right on.
Might I suggest that just about any of Tim Wise’s video’s available on youtube regarding White Privilege will support what you wrote above and then some…
Thank you for saying what needs to be said.
Thank you. I needed this.
Steve