Anyone with some awareness should recognize that race has been an issue from early on in our country---and other countries around the world. As a white guy who has been privileged in many ways, I cannot fully understand what it means to be black in our society. I can care and share, but I still do not really know. In many ways it has been an issue that has been part of my life from the very beginning. I know one thing I can do is to continue to learn and do better.
When I think about my young life, it was very provincial. I would have been racist without even knowing what that meant. In my rural Indiana, there were very few black families. There were signs of segregation, but I would not have noticed them. My family did not hate blacks. But we were not cognizant of the social justice issues that already were in play. I would come of age in the 1960s and surely the race issue became front and center in those days. No doubt, that is when my first real learning began to take place.
Even through high school, there was no significant black presence in my life. On one level, it would be easy to say that I simply did not have to deal with it. On another level, I already was able to ignore it and dismiss it. In college it became much more apparent. I did my undergrad work in North Carolina. I saw my first KKK rally in a field. I was appalled. I was in Greensboro, where the initial sit in at the local drug store by some college students precipitated the whole movement which we now label the Civil Rights movement. MK King, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X and many more became part of the collective consciousness. Legally, we made some progress, but in deeper ways, racism continued---usually in systemic ways.
As we live further into the twenty-first century, the racial issue calls for our involvement in the social justice work to make amends and do better. Murders of George Floyd and others kicked off a summer of unease in 2020. One can hope more folks vow to do better. For the white population, it may mean some sharing in ways we had not imagined. We need to do a better job of listening. We should not assume we know all the answers. Some answers we might not even like.
For sure, the church is implicated in the ongoing race issue. In fact, churches have often been part of the problem. I remember the quip that 11:00 on Sunday morning was the most segregated time of the week! Unfortunately, there probably was more truth in that than we want to admit. We all know most congregations come in one color---not rainbow colors. I am trying to put myself in a position to listen and learn. I would love to take the work of the 1960s to a better place.
One voice I listen to is Bryan Massingale. He is a Catholic priest and theologian who teaches at the Jesuit college, Fordham. He has written on social justice and is a prime voice on these topics in our country. Some remarks from him to a conference of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. Since I am still teaching, I paid attention. Massingale is the author of a well-known book, Healing the Soul of a Nation: The Challenge of Racial Justice. To that group of Catholic educators and non-Catholics teaching in that collegiate situation, Massingale “laid out concrete steps they could take up in this ‘pressing moment’ to help the nation heal from its deep racial divides.”
This is not easy work. Massingale tells us, “Authentic healing and authentic reconciliation require a community to commit itself to the long, slow, painful work of justice.” I appreciate two words he uses in this line. He talks about reconciliation and healing. If racism is a sin, as I believe it is, then that suggests there is some kind of alienation or separation. We can go one step further and say the alienation is two-fold: from God and from our neighbor (especially the African Americans in our midst). Doing the work of reconciliation may be the first step in healing. And the healing doubtlessly will take the form of working for justice.
For colleges Massingale advises, this means a thorough “curricula review and overhaul.” For the rest of society, it means other kinds of things. He has other concrete suggestions for colleges and universities. I am interested in those, of course, but I am also interested in other arenas in society. Personally, it means looking at our own lives and seeing what we can do and how we can do better. Although Massingale puts it in Catholic terms, I can make sense out of it when he says this work “includes a lament and confession of failures and ends with making amends for penance.”
Some of us might complain that this is hard and maybe threatening to us. Some folks at that conference asked the priest and theologian if he despaired? No, he said; he had hope. But hope is not optimism. That makes sense. But he said, “Faith is always a work in progress…” That is hopeful. And then he said one more thing, which brings us to a close.
He said that he had “a deep disappointment in the church and also a deep love; the two are not mutually exclusive.” I like that. I can see how we can be disappointed and, yet, love. Every parent knows this. Maybe God does, too?
Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber. I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s. It was already a famous book by then. I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it. It has been a while since I looked at the book. Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks? I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece. I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation. I wish more people read him and took him seriously. Brooks’ article focused on the 2016 contentious election. He provocatively suggests, “Read Buber, Not the Polls!” I think Brooks puts
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