Helpful Hints on Race

As I finish reading Sophfronia Scott’s recent book, The Seeker and the Monk, I was delighted to see a chapter devoted to the issue of race.  I have come to know Sophfronia personally---at least the beginning stages of a friendship.  She is an African American woman who is quite bright and very much a citizen of the world.  And yet, I also know her hometown in a fairly depressed area of old industrial Ohio of steel mills and the like.  Somehow, she made it out of what for many folks would be double trouble---her racial background and her zip code---to graduate from Harvard.  She is an exquisite writer.

Her book is a dialogue she has created with my favorite monk of the 20th century, Thomas Merton.  Merton died in 1968, long before Scott was born.  I could have known him, but our paths were not destined to cross.  Like Scott, I only know Merton from his writings and from what some of his friends---now pretty old---share about him.  Like Scott, Merton speaks to me at multiple levels---head and heart.  I am intrigued how she has created this dialogue which convinces me she and Merton would have been fast friends.

Merton was amazing in his comments on the race issue.  As early as the 1930s, you can see him surface this concern for black folks.  His concern for race was trumped by other issues as he entered the monastery in Kentucky in 1941.  However, in the 60s he returned to the theme and wrote some very insightful things about race.  Even Scott is amazed by his commentary and insights from his perspective of a hermit white monk in the hills of Kentucky.  

She entitles her chapter, “Helpful Eyes on a Hopeless Issue.”  Even on the first page of that chapter, I knew I was in for a good experience.  She notes, “Talking about race means, among many things, sharing our fears and frustrations about our place in the world, about how people are treated, about a hope for better opportunities that never seem to materialize.  In other words, it’s about dignity, respect, a shared humanity, and ultimately, our hearts and soul.” (135) Reading these words made me think about Scott and I meeting in person for the first time.

It was a lovely summer day when we met at the edge of my college campus.  It turns out, her husband is actually an alum of the college---small world!  As we walked on to the campus involved in the normal beginning chit chat of an emerging acquaintance, we chose to sit on a bench and enjoy the breezy day while in the shade of a tree that might well have been there when the college was founded in 1845.  

Spending a couple hours with this remarkable woman makes it easy to understand her comments about dignity, respect, and our shared humanity.  I felt this and hope, in turn, she did too.  I appreciate Scott’s experience and wisdom, which is different than my own.  As an African American younger woman growing up in an older, industrial city, her experience does not parallel mine as an Indiana white guy growing up on a farm in an earlier age.  The racism of my younger years was much overt than it is today---for the most part.  And yet, I question almost anything I think I might know.

That is why I appreciate Scott’s vulnerability and willingness to share.  At one point, she quotes Eldridge Cleaver, a Black Panther Party member more my own age.  With him in mind, Scott says, “I don’t want to be a rigid flame of indignation…I want instead a way of resisting racism so that I don’t become what I behold.  I don’t want my life weighed down by anger, hopelessness, and resentment.” ( 139).

And then she asks poignantly, “How do I do that Thomas?”  This is how her dialogue with Thomas Merton ensues.  She talks about her biracial son, now a teenager as well as sharing a story about a black Catholic priest from Louisiana, August Thompson, who asked Merton how to respond to his racist bishop.  Merton’s counsel is nonviolence.  He was steeped in Gandhi, King and others from that nonviolence tradition.  That is where Scott and I both want to be, too. But this is a challenge.  We all know we live in a society prone to violence---whether it is a policeman shooting a black man in the back as he runs away or the other way around.

At one point in this chapter, Scott poses a challenging question: “What does rule me?” (143)  I am not sure I have ever been asked that point blank!  She cites the writer, Robert Vivian, who contends “we all have immortal wounds: events in our lives we simply cannot get over.” (143-4)  Scott confesses her wound is betrayal.  I am not sure what mine might be.  I have something to ponder and to pray about.  

Scott finishes by recognizing she does not have all the answers---and neither did Merton.  I love her conclusion, “I don’t know what to do either.  But the fact that we’re here in this same place of not knowing is a really good place to start.” (147)  It is not the end of the story, but it is a really good place to start.  I want to join Scott and Merton in this place. If enough of us go to this starting point and try to leave off our egos and prejudices---so far as we can---and begin to dialogue, we have a chance.

This is a very helpful hint on race.