Social media is weird. I’ve never had much of a response on twitter, especially from people I don’t know. I suppose I tweet as a way to share my thoughts with friends and family. Or as a way to get something off my chest. I’ve never really thought of it as a platform. But today I had something that has never happened before. People, strangers, interacted with a tweet I posted about the unrest in Baltimore. Now don’t get me wrong it was far from going viral but in comparison to any of my other 689 tweets this one by far has garnered the most attention.
I feel compelled to write to share the journey I’ve been on and the context for the tweet. This is what I wrote, “Why is the violent looting of tea in Boston called a party but protesting a similarly broken system in Baltimore a riot? #BaltimoreUprising” Again far from going viral, it received 14 retweets and 11 favorites mostly from people I don’t know but even more shocking to me were the hurtful even hateful comments I received. Hateful I don’t think is too strong a word. I was called stupid and a #fergtard. Although, none of the responses were explicitly racist, you might say they were colorblind, they certainly had a tone that expressed a racial bias at the very least.
I recognize that my tweet was suggestive. It was simplistic in its analysis of American history and the protests in Baltimore. So here’s the context for my thought.
Last week I was in Boston. I walked the Freedom Trail, drove the route of Paul Revere’s ride and saw the sight of the first skirmish between the British Army and the militia. I read about the brave men and women who resisted the oppressive system and rule of Britain. Celebrated were the men who died resisting the powerful British army in the name of freedom and liberty for all. They believed in the word’s of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Yet, as I walked Boston and read about and saw the sights of this story, I was also reading about another story. I was reading about the story of mass incarceration or as Michelle Alexander’s book calls it, “The New Jim Crow.” It’s a story about “a new system of racial social control.” A story that demonstrates how racially oppressive systems have morphed and adapted over the years from slavery (explicitly racist) into Jim Crow (explicitly racist) into an age of mass incarceration (implicitly racist and explicitly colorblind). Now if that may sound scary, extreme, or overhyped then I can relate. An article I read recently titled, “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” by Dr. Robin DiAngelo who is white, helped me to understand my reaction. Essentially, she says that white folks like myself live in a system that “allows those of us who are white in North America to live in a social environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress. We have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives.” In other words, speaking for myself as a white male, I have spent much of my adult life believing that I’m colorblind and ignoring the racially biased system, which allows me to live with blinders on and makes me defensive and fragile when words like privilege or racism come up in conversation. I remember the first “Race and Faith” forum put on by Project Peace a non-profit in Berkeley and Oakland. It was there that I really wrestled with the idea of privilege that the color of my skin, my economic class, and my education put me in a place of power. It meant that I didn’t have to deal with the same oppressive systems, real fears and struggles that an African American male deals with daily.
As I wandered the streets of Boston, the story Michelle Alexander was telling in “The New Jim Crow” was ringing in my ear. A story that isn’t based on hype or is made up, but based on government policies, statistics and Supreme Court rulings. Consider some of the statistics in Michelle Alexander’s book: “in 2008 the NYPD stopped 545,000 people walking on the street, and 80% were African American and Hispanic. . . African-Americans accounted for 85% of those frisked.” In 1980 there were 300,000 people nationwide in prisons by 2000 there were over 2 million people in prison and by 2007 over 7 million people were either in prison, on parole or probation. A Maryland study discovered that along a stretch of I-95 only 17% of the drivers were African Americans but they were 70% of those stopped and searched. “Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three fourths of those imprisoned for drug offenses have been African American or Latinos.” Did you catch that, the majority of drug users and dealers are white. Did you expect that? Why is this? Because studies have proven that all ethnicities use and deal drugs at almost the exact same rate. Yet, despite similar rates in drug use and dealing, 75% of those imprisoned on drug charges are African American and Latino. The statistics roll on and on. And so do the names of unarmed African American men shot by police and killed: Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott. These are only the familiar ones. And now the death of Freddie Gray because of a spinal cord injury, which has provoked the protests in Baltimore.
How am I to respond to these dissonant stories of American history? A history that is captured in the Declaration of Independence itself which declares all men created equal and then in the same document dehumanizes the American Indians as “the merciless Indian Savages.” Or how about our Constitution that specifically excluded women, Indians and African slaves originally. These competing narratives trouble me. Freedom and liberty for all and a criminal justice system that perpetuates systemic racial control.
Silence is not an option. Every Tuesday on the way home from work, I ride by a house with that phrase in the window in big letters followed by “Black Lives Matter.” Silence is not an option. It’s not an option for me anymore as the blinders of my privilege are slowly being peeled off. And, its painful. Painful because I am filled with shame. Ashamed of my ignorance. Ashamed of my forefathers and mothers in faith who justified slavery with God’s word. Ashamed of the implicit racial bias that I know lies with in me informing how I see others and events. Ashamed of my lack of understanding and oversimplification of the struggles. Ashamed of my privilege. And, I’m angry. Angry at myself for being silent. Angry that there is such brokenness and hate in our world. Angry because I don’t know what to do. I am overwhelmed by these feelings of shame, anger, and sadness. Silence is not an option.
Is the violence, looting and destruction justified? Honestly, I don’t know. How would I react if I felt trapped beneath the weight of an unjust system? Is the violence, looting and destruction right? Does it further flourishing and promote justice? Ultimately, it doesn’t, but the point I was trying to get across about what is happening in Baltimore is that it is an oversimplification to denounce or call it simply a riot or riots. Last fall I walked the streets of Oakland to be a peaceful presence during a protest after the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown case. In retrospect I had no idea what I was doing but I was there. I witnessed looting and broken windows and many of the same scenes from Baltimore. It deeply grieved me to see my city torn apart. But it grieved me even more to walk beside two young African American High School students who needed a forum to express their anger and pain (and were doing so peacefully, loudly, but peacefully). It has grieved me to hear local African American Pastors, young African American leaders, and peaceful protesters share their personal stories of humiliating, sometimes violent, unjust encounters with the criminal justice system. The statistics shared above have faces and names. They are real stories, and real voices that need to be heard and listened to no matter how uncomfortable they make me feel.
I often find myself confused and overwhelmed as I wrestle with my own issues and try to understand what has and is happening in our nation when it comes to race. I don’t think this is about “bad police.” I don’t think it’s really about being pro-police or anti-police. It’s not about whether or not an individual broke the law, stole some cigars or skipped out on child support. It’s really about a system, a broken unjust system in which individuals play a part. It is a system that divides us, that keeps us pointing fingers and casting blame. It is a system that preserves the power and comfort of the privileged and oppresses the minority. It’s about race and class. It’s complicated. It causes harm. These are some of the markers that seem most salient to me and they cause division and oppression.
As a Christian, my faith causes me to call to mind the concept of sin. Sin that is kept in the dark festers (1 John 1). As Paul talks about sin in Romans it is a enslaving power that misdirects our desires and controls our affections. Sin ultimately causes division and is the reason we need reconciliation. In the worldview of Christianity we need a reconciler, who is Jesus Christ (Romans 5 & Colossians 1:19-23). As a follower of Jesus I am called to be like Christ and communities of followers of Jesus (churches) are called to be reconciling communities (2 Corinthians 5:19-21). The way of Jesus according to Jesus himself is “to proclaim good news to the poor. . . to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19) [I am all to aware of the many times throughout history that the church of which I am a part has failed to live this out]. We are a nation in need of reconciliation.
Silence fosters division. Silence creates distance. Silence perpetuates distrust. Silence is not an option. In order for reconciliation to happen we need the voices of protest to be heard. They are voices of pain and suffering. We need to live in the dissonance of our stories and histories in order to find a common narrative. We need reconciling communities where honesty, repentance, confession of wrong, forgiveness and grace abound. We need reconciling communities that join together in solidarity to create just systems that recognize the dignity of all people and increase flourishing for all. These are big needs and they are big dreams.
Needs and dreams that are this big usually overwhelm me, but I have hope. My faith in Jesus Christ gives me hope. Because I believe in a God who is working to put every wrong right. I believe in a God who doesn’t sugarcoat suffering or provide an escape from ugly reality. I follow a God who emptied himself of privilege by taking the form of a servant, who took upon himself suffering, who entered fully into the broken human condition and was condemned to death an innocent man at the hands of a broken biased criminal justice system. I trust in a God who loves people so much that he would cry out from the cross “Father, forgive them.” I love a God who brings life out of death, and who can bring good out of evil. I believe that He is doing that now in the midst of and through pain and brokenness, protest and lament, death and grief, sharing and listening, through stories of personal transformation and voices unsilenced.
