Living in coronavirusworld 221: Incident, reflections on racism

 

12/2

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.

                                                                                                        ****

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.

Oscar short films 2018: How we live now

2/22

My friend Beppe and I have a tradition every year during the Oscar run up time of going to the  Independent Film Center to see the Oscar nominated  Live Action Short Films. Freed from the need to produce massive box office revenue or fill feature length running time seems to open up creativity and allows the filmmaker to simply tell their story as seems natural. The five films every year always come from a variety  of countries with a broad spectrum of film style. 

This year had a surprising difference.....for of the five films dealt with social issues in striking ways, perhaps a commentary on how we are living now.  The one comedy, "The Eleven O'Clock"...is a well written clever comedy asking us o figure out which character is a psychiatrist and which is a patient who believes that he is a psychiatrist. There's plenty familiar to laugh at for one who's ever been through the therapy experience.

The first film is "De Kalb Elementary" (U.S.) Watching a film begin with a would be shooter taking out an assault rifle in an elementary school is almost unwatchable during the week that we once again faced a public school shooting in Parkland, Florida. The sad reality, any time this film would be seen would have the same tragic context. Part of what makes the film so disturbing is that director Reed Van Dyke's story proceeds with the knowledge that we know how this story will almost always end in our experience. He further disturbs us by taking us into an empathy for the clearly deeply troubled potential shooter. Tara Riggs as the administrator keeps us completely rapt as she tries to connect with the young man with the gun.

"The Silent Child"(UK) takes us into the world of a deaf child and her tutor and poignantly and painfully makes the case for the necessity of sign language as the most appropriate means of communication for deaf students and how our educational system fails our students by not providing interpreters. Watching Maisie Sly as Libby blossom then retreat again into isolation is profoundly moving.

I should have picked up immediately what "My Nephew Emmet" was all about. It's sense of place is immediately established and the tone and cinematography is reminiscent of last year's "Moonlight." When I realized we were into the Emmet Till story, my heart sank. I knew where we were headed. We are thrust into a world ...and forced to experience the sense of powerlessness .... where whites impose their cruel and violent will on African Americans. We never see what happens to Emmet. Only the face of his uncle who knows what will happen. This is an important film to watch and wrestle with when you realize that this is the "Great" that our current President wants to return us to.

Finally, the joint German-Kenyan film "Watu Wote: All of Us" takes us to the border of Somalia and Kenya as a gang of Al Sha-baab rebels who take over  a passenger bus and try to separate the Christians from the Muslims. the Muslim passengers immediately move to protect the Christians and challenge the rebels understanding of the Quran  and what being a faithful Muslim means. In a time of rampant Islamophobia, this film makes a dramatic witness as to what shared humanity is all about. It's moving to realize  that the film is based on a true story. 

That's where we live now. How we live now. No escape in these short films, but inspiration for theological reflection. Take your church group, your book club or just some friends. See the films. Have a conversation. It's where we are. How we live. "All of us."

"Get Out": a review

4/11

Another valuable resource...

An important resource in our ongoing conversation about white privilege is the new film Get Out by      Jordan Peele. As opposed to the traditional dramas and documentaries of last year's Oscar worthy films and the shimmering beauty that was Moonlight, Get Out breaks new  ground in the horror genre. More appropriately, like the classics Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary's Baby before it   (and TV's The Walking Dead), Get Out is better described as social horror. Like George Romero's Night Of the Living Dead in the sixties, Get Out holds up a mirror to the current state of interracial relationships in our society. And what the eye sees  is pretty scary.

From its cold open with a lone black man stranded in a white suburb, we realize that  the news over the last year or so has changed our idea of what scary is. You can't see this lone black man lost in white suburbia without thinking Treyvon Martin, and so the horror begins.

The basic frame is a visit to the white suburban parents by an interracial couple. From there it's a journey into the heart of elite white liberal land with occasional appearances by strangely docile African Americans. Part of the painful reality of the film is that the true monsters are not Deliverance style rednecks loosed by Trump's election.  They are instead white liberals, like the father who would have "voted for Obama for a third time." We're deep in Hilary country here.  And Get Out is brave enough to go there.

 Peele touches all the right buttons from the painfully hip father and his use of "My man" and "thang" to the old white golfer  who "knows Tiger" to the TSA black friend who humorously (and presciently) warns about going to "white girls' parents' houses" and "  the "sex slave thing." Even the psycho bro brothers' absent minded yet menacing play with his lacrosse stick has a resonance.

Get Out eventually earns its horror benefides by going all Grand Guignol in the last reel. I'm really not interested in going into detail or spoiler alerts at this point. You can find that elsewhere.  But before we get to the horror finale, we get schooled through brilliant metaphor as to the historic impact  and continuing deforming reality of slavery in the US. The bottom line is that after blood soaked struggle for survival, our hero sees what should be the salvific sight of police car lights. And our heart sinks. Because we know. You'll have to see the film yourself to see how it turns out.

To really understand this movie, go to an urban movie house. Maybe your closest Magic Johnson theatre. Let your body and spirit experience the sound of the reaction to the redemptive violence of the final act. Really feel that. That's where we are. One could say that this movie comes from an auteur who believes our situation is hopeless. Except that this movie was shared with us,

The ongoing work of deconstructing white privilege is a long and continuing project. Get Out is a valuable resource.....the most important movie yet this year...in that project. Allow yourself to be shaken.