12/2
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| on the street |
Incident
Leaving Morningside Park, I hear shouts through a bull horn. I want to know what’s going on. I see a crowd walking up Manhattan Avenue. Go across to see. My glasses steam up as I walk so I take off my mask. The crowd is now in front of Mamie’s Spoonbread restaurant. The theme is “Support Black business everyday, not just Black Friday.” The owner is coming out to a round of applause. I want to take a picture but two young white women on bikes have cut in front of me, blocking me off. “We’d really like you to put a mask on,” they say. I apologize and pull up my mask. Just then a young athletic looking Black man pulls up on a bike right in front of me. “What’s your problem?” he says. “What?” I say. “What’s your problem with what’s going on here? Don’t you support what’s going on here?” “Jesus Christ,” I say, “of course I do. I live here. This is my neighborhood.” He looks me over again. “Well, okay then. ...When you show up somewhere, introduce your self, ask some questions, you know?” As he bikes off, I hear one of the women say into her cell phone, “False alarm…” ???!!!! The crowd begins to move down the street. I see a whole posse of motorcycle police circling the intersection, waiting, The crowd is in the street, “whose streets? Our streets…” One of the bike women comes over to me, “Look, I’m sorry. You had a look on your face like you didn’t like what we were doing. You can’t be too sure..” I say, “I was just trying to figure out what’s going on. I live here. This is my home..” ‘Well, anyways, sorry…” and she bikes off.
I remember seeing the man passing out campaign literature during the election wearing his "Unfuck the world" sweatshirt. We so need to do that...
I continue up Fredrick Douglass with such a mix of emotions. Upset that I lost my cool, wishing I could have been total zen about the whole thing. Had a deeper, more meaningful conversation. Upset that two young white women thought I was a racist and the man assumed I was before I said a word. That I actually felt something like fear for a moment. Something I have never felt in living in Harlem. Keeps running through my head. I think about posting about it. Like an open letter saying, “Look I get it, but what if I was just some ordinary person? What would I think or feel? Is that what you want?” But I decide that would be uncool and play into the reactionary critique of the movement. I still want to say to those young women, “I was arrested for protest before you were born…” It’s hard to let go of it.
I bring it up at our weekly family ZOOM. “Ah, you were profiled!”says my oldest. ‘Think about it,” he says, “old white man, no mask, mustache and goatee, only thing missing is a MAGA hat.” My younger son talks about the kind of harassment Black Lives Matter marchers have experienced. And at times they are violent, "Assumptions?” they say, “Black people put up with that every day of their lives.” Which of course I know. Regarding the police, all agree that after taking the summer off as a kind of “Work stoppage/job action” protest against the mayor, the police are back with a vengeance. There were almost as many cops on bikes as marchers.
I also bring the conversation to my Underground group. After agreeing that sometimes when intently trying ti figure something out, my face takes in a certain gorgoyle-like aspect, the conversation turns serious. They recalled Jesus’ two parallel and contradictory quotes, Matt. 12:30 “Who is not for me is against me” and Luke 9:50 “Who is not against you is for you..” And all the way back to Moses and the “uncertified”prophets, Numbers 11:29 “ Would that all God’s people were prophets.” We are so clearly not one people. Not even with the faith community.
Russ recalls not understanding the difference between a Bishop in a Black denomination and those in white hierarchical denominations with Episcopal governance. And getting called out on it.
Steve P quotes Ibrahim X. Kendy as saying “People aren’t racists, action and policies are.” This leads to a conversation about racism. I had grown to accept a difference between prejudice and racism with racism being prejudice plus power, with power being definitive. Therefore, Black people due to lack of power, could not be racist by definition. And an expression like “reverse racism” would be a non-sequitur. Steve P says Kendy would disagree with that. And that racism and prejudice are inseparable. (But indistinguishable?)
We talk about guilt vs, responsibility, In Jewish- Christian dialogue, when we studied the Christian roots of anti-semitism, defensive Christians would always respond, “Well, the people who did that weren’t real Christians.” Sorry, Once we’re under the tent with the same banner, we are not guilty, but we are responsible. Likewise, even though we personally did not own slaves, we bear responsibility for our community and its life. To live in a community by definition requires us to be responsible for correcting the past. As Rick Ufford- Chase says, there is no legitimate Church mission without serious attention to repararations.
Dre is fascinated by the way white people talk about racism. He doesn't think about it, he experiences it. And encourages us to think about actions more than thoughts. How love pushes us beyond right and wrong.
The book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson comes up again, with the idea that caste is the bone and racism the muscle.
Steve H says it’s like a house with a hole in the roof. Doesn’t matter whose fault the hole is, we’ve got to stop arguing and fix it. And our collective house has a gaping hole in its roof.
In that direction, Steve P talks about the work of Don Shriver, the 13th President of Union Theological Seminary recently celebrated in a new book, Christian Ethics in Conversation. (https://wipfandstock.com/christian-ethics-in-conversation.html) A Southerner, Shriver brought an unshakeable commitment to the work of reparation to all that he did, especially in bringing scholars like James Cone and Cornell West to Union.
That’s a long journey from my street corner incident. But a good one.
****
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| Israeli knockoff |
Today I wore my same Steeler hat because the game originally scheduled for Thursday night got changed to Sunday to Monday night then Tuesday night then Wednesday afternoon as Covid positives rose in Baltimore. Reaching 20 players…including the quarterback. The Broncos had all 4 quarterbacks out and had to start a rookie wide receiver who hadn’t played quarterback since freshman year of college. And Santa Clara has told the 49ers they cannot play or practice there forcing them to move their operations to Phoenix. Such is big time sports in coronavirusworld.
My t-shirt is one of my favorites. My son brought it from Israel. I love the missing “H” in ‘pittsburg,” the Hebrew letters, the misunderstood color scheme of logo and graphics. Quirky. And beautiful. The game finally was played.
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