The Power of Solitary Brooding

I was struck this week in reading how Howard Thurman talked about solitary brooding, and I realized I was there, brooding deeply. I find that because so much is going on, so many things that “were” seem to be on the verge of disappearing, that I brood more than I once did.

When one broods, it can be a sign of being depressed, or it can mean that one is giving a situation deep thought, musing over something or some things that demand a deeper delve in order to understand. My brooding falls into the latter category. I am not depressed. Rather, I am trying to make sense out of what is going on and what it will mean for those who are already oppressed. I am engaged in what Howard Thurman called “solitary brooding,” and it feels like the absolutely right place to be right now.

In my musings, I had a thought: that if the government continues its shift toward fascism, it won’t be so different a life for Black people. Black people brown and poor people, have always lived under absolute rule where the rulers have been more concerned about keeping themselves in power than in empowering “the least of these.” Black people in this country have learned to navigate the waters of fascism. “Making a way out of no way” has been about sidestepping the intentional barriers to life and dignity that this government has always put before us.

Black people have learned to brood, and yet to survive. Oppressed people in general have learned that skill, but Black people, who have always been under the thumb of white supremacy have learned it in a unique way. Those who are supporting the move away from “democracy” have deluded themselves into believing that the people in power care about them and will go to extraordinary lengths to protect them, but they will not, and just as so many people whined about being told to wear face masks during the pandemic so as to protect others from getting sick, they will whine as they come to understand that their privilege will be sharply curtailed and controlled. They have not stopped to brood, or to think, about what is ahead of them. They are unable to see themselves being oppressed by power, and yet, it is before them.

Thurman said “The test of life is often found in the amount of pain we can absorb without spoiling our joy.” Clearly, Black people in this country have passed that test over and over, in spite of the pain that has come just from being Black. In this country, we have often retreated to deep spiritual places, alone, so that we can brood and hear the voice of God. In our brooding, we allow ourselves to identify and then empty out the malignant despair that seeks to take us to depths from which we will not be able to emerge. We instinctively know that we cannot remain “there.” And so we listen to that voice, encouraging us in spite of us having to continually duck from the toxic darts of white supremacy. We inhale the Holy Spirit and exhale joy. In spite of all that this society deprives us of, it cannot take our joy. We celebrate life and make life happen in spite of the efforts of the society to make us stop believing that there is such a thing as victories against our foes. It is in our celebration that we regain our strength and resolve to go forth and that decision in turn feeds our capacity to celebrate. We live out the truth of the beatitude as recorded in the book of Luke: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

It is in our brooding that we make room for the Holy Spirit to wash our muddied spirits and moisturize our dried out souls. In our brooding, we share the space with ancestors who lived before us and left us spiritual drops of hope and joy, gifts from God that they knew they would have to pass on to us. We must take the time to brood, to think about where we are and to remember that the God of our ancestors has never abandoned us. We must remind ourselves of that truth.

Those who have never had to do that type of brooding are not able to understand why and how an aggrieved people can still laugh and shout and sing. When their privilege gets threatened, they are more apt to panic than to be still…and brood, and their inability to do that feeds their despair.

We do not know what is before us, but we have a feeling that difficult days lie ahead. Would that we would continue to engage in solitary brooding so that we can connect with the Holy Spirit and be strengthened for the journey, whatever direction that journey may take us.

Amen and amen.

Trump, Racism, and God’s Grace

“America, America, God shed his grace on thee!” Those are words from the song “America the Beautiful” that we all learned in elementary school.

Well, if America ever needed grace…and salvation…it is now.

Donald Trump won the Nevada primary. He will most likely be the Republican nominee for president. Though my politically astute friends try to calm my fear that he will win the White House, I am not so sure. America’s racists are on a roll, and they are not about to stop.

Donald Trump says that he will “make America great again.” That’s merely a euphemism for putting white supremacy back on top. It’s a euphemism for making it so that black and brown people are under the foot of the Empire, denied of justice in the courts, fair treatment in housing, education and employment. America’s white people are afraid of losing power, plain and simple. Some say they are angry because of the economy, but the biggest issue for them is that the numbers of black and brown people are steadily increasing. They are afraid that their base is getting smaller and smaller, and with that, their power, their capacity to oppress “the least of these.”

And Donald Trump says he will make it all better. He is giving them pablum and they are eating it like starving children in underdeveloped countries eat when they are finally given substantive food.

I read a troubling article this morning, about Trump and the so-called “Central Park 5” Trump was on the case, calling for the five black teens accused of raping a white woman, to be convicted and put to death. Actually, his statements seemed more to ask that they simply be killed. (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york?CMP=share_btn_fb#_=_)

What Trump said and did in that case was appalling and troubling …but not for people who still believe in vigilante violence when it comes to black people accused of doing something to a white woman. When it was proven that the teens did not rape the white woman, and the charges were dropped, Trump was furious, and was even more furious when the city of New York awarded the young men, collectively, $41 million in damages.

This is not a man who believes in justice for all people. He is clearly racist, and openly so. He is unabashed in what he says and believes, and he knows he has a large group of Americans, mostly white but not completely so, who are with him.

They want the America of the past, where black people stayed in their place. They don’t care much that America’s “exceptionalism” came mostly from this country’s boast that it was a democracy where everyone could come (pluralism) and make good on “the American dream.” (capitalism). Racists never ascribed to that claim. They were clear that America was to be the land of opportunity for white, property-owning men. Colored people were not worthy of having full citizenship. They were merely the tools which white men would use to make this country the powerful country it became.

They were to be used, not respected.

Trump is singing their song. He is sounding like George Wallace and Ross Barnett and Sam Bowers and other racist demagogues. His being in the White House, his followers believe, will provide a calm to the rising tide of multiculturalism in this country. They believe he will bring things into normalcy in the White House.

They celebrate, it feels like, that he will be like President Woodrow Wilson, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who had screenings of The Clansman and Birth of a Nation in the White House.

So many white people are not disturbed at all at what Trump says because he is speaking to the pain they have felt as white oppression has been steadily addressed. They would not think it bad that not only was Woodrow Wilson a member of the Klan, but so were four other presidents, including Warren G. Harding, who was actually sworn in a KKK ceremony that was held at the White House. Calvin Coolidge allowed cross burnings on the steps of the capital and also allowed KKK parades in the nation’s capital in 1925 and 1926. Trump’s followers are not disturbed at this history, nor, I would imagine, would they be rangled if Trump said he was a member of the KKK. (http://www.thetrentonline.com/revealed-5-us-presidents-members-racists-cult-ku-klux-klan-photos/)

They are just tired of “the coloreds.”

White people of the ilk I am describing have been mortified that a black man has been in the White House, his wife dancing on popular television shows, letting little black children inside those hallowed walls. Many white people believe that America was created to be a “white man’s country,” and all these people of color are messing up what is “supposed” to be.

The media must be in sympathy and in agreement with Trump and his ideology, because from the beginning, they allowed Trump so much free air time – this to the most wealthy man of the bunch running for president. They put his foot on the first rung of the ladder. If he couldn’t come into their studios, they interviewed him by phone. The American media has done much to usher in a racist, hate-filled man, showing that it is not objective at all. They let America hear this demagogue over and over ..and they hardly challenged him.

There is an important chink in this argument, however, that we have to consider. Trump is not only winning with racist white people. In Nevada, he got a big swath of the Hispanic vote as well. According to reports, 45 percent of Hispanics there are Trump supporters, that in spite of his stance on immigration. (http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/24/entrance-polls-trump-dominates-latino-vote-in-nevada/) Does that mean that they do not care about Trump’s open racism?

So, now, here we are. Trump most probably will get the Republican nomination. He will continue to be a bully and a political thug, much to the admiration of his followers. Evangelicals have shown that their love for God leans toward maintaining their view of God in a white-ruled country. They have shown that the words of Jesus, for Christians to be forgiving and to care for “the least of these” have little to do with their religion. And America’s “silent majority” is showing that what they believe in is America’s mandate to be white. If a bully will keep it that way, so be it.

What does God’s grace look like in a situation like this? It is clear that my understanding of grace, and that of whites and others who ascribe to racism, are two different things.

A candid observation …

Why Doesn’t Donald Trump Take Out Another Full Page Ad?

By now, the news of the $40 million settlement from the city of New York being given to the Central Park 5 is old news. The five men, all black and Latino, who were teens at the time of the rape of the jogger, were accused, convicted and thrown into prison despite their claims of innocence. They were completely exonerated after the real rapist confessed and his DNA was the only DNA found on the victim and are out of prison, but one can only wonder what their lives have been like since being released…and what their lives will be like as they move forward. Some will never accept the fact that these men were/are innocent, in spite of the confession of the real rapist.

Which brings me to the issue I’ve been struggling with for a while. When the boys, who were accused of “wilding” were arrested, the city of New York and indeed, the entire nation was outraged. That these black and Latino men would be so primitive, so savage, was insulting to the conscience of the nation, it seemed. Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in a New York newspaper and wondered out loud, in print, where the death penalty was.

That the rape was troubling is understandable; that it was so brutal is disturbing…but what is troubling is that the nation is not as incensed at the wrong done to these young men as it was at the thought that they had raped that unfortunate woman. The Ken Burns documentary, “The Central Park 5,” showed a rape of a different sort: the rape of innocent young black and Latino men, forced into making confessions, and then being railroaded through a trial and thrown into prison with little effort to hear them, believe them…and look for the real rapist. (http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/)

Black, brown and poor people have been “raped” by the justice system in this nation since the beginning of our existence. In spite of touting the fact that the United States has the greatest justice system in the world, the fact is that when it has come to black, brown and poor people, justice has seldom worked. In the case of black people, the race card has been played as a matter of course. A black person accused of any crime has been presumed to be guilty even going into a trial; a black person accused of talking to, accosting or threatening a white woman has been decided to be guilty and the courts have refused to exonerate them even when it is clear white women have lied about their supposed experiences too many times. In many cases, the justice system and white community have colluded and brought not justice, but horrific injustice to innocent black people. I just finished Fire in the Canebrake by Laura Wexler, the story of the “worst mass lynching” in the history of our nation. Four people, two black men and two black women, were lynched…and their families never got justice. In Gilbert King’s book, Devil in the Grove, justice for four black men, falsely accused of raping a 17-year-old white girl, was elusive; they were all headed for the electric chair in spite of evidence that they had not raped the girl and in spite of heroic efforts of then-attorney Thurgood Marshall and his team to free them. The “justice system” was bound and determined that “outsiders,” in both these cases, would not bully them into doing things differently than they had always done. The “nigras” were deemed to be unworthy of justice, and so they got little.

I couldn’t help but think of those stories, and the story of what happened with Trayvon Martin and Kendrick Johnson and so many other young black people who have gotten in trouble with the law and are either still in prison for crimes they have not done or have been executed already. This nation has not owned up to its troubled record of dishing out injustice to black people, especially, but to brown and poor people as well. Rather than admitting that America still has a problem seeing black people as human beings and not objects, America continues to insist that nothing is wrong. But something very definitely is.

If we go back to the Central Park 5, it would have been nice to see Donald Trump take out another full-page ad, this one apologizing for what he had pronounced when the boys were arrested and for proclaiming their guilt. Instead, he sought to justify his stance and said something to the effect that they were “not innocents.” He said that the settlement was a disgrace and that it was the “heist of the century.” (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/central-park-dad-40m-settlement-article-1.1837710)

There was no grace from him, only his typical rich-boy white arrogance.

There are black, brown and poor families throughout this nation that are looking for, needing, justice and will never get it. The nation is not committed to giving justice to all people; prosecutors are, for the most part, more interested in obtaining victories than in obtaining justice.

America’s disease of white supremacy and its attendant racism is terminal. A nation cannot thrive if it ultimately denies justice so regularly and systemically to a group of people – people who, by the way, work for this nation, have helped defend this nation, and pay taxes in this nation.

What happens to a dream deferred, asked poet Langston Hughes?

Why does the caged bird sing, asked the late Maya Angelou?

And what happens if America continues to ignore those questions, and more?

A whole group of people is crying, but the nation seems not to care.

A candid observation …