Here’s the problem, as I see it.

Racism in America is a part of its heritage and legacy. It was built into the democratic system.

This racism, which I will define as a system which keeps one group in power over another group of people which has no rights, was written into the United States Constitution. The words “all men are created equal” were never intended to include African Americans or American Indians or, I guess, any other ethnic group, especially groups which were or are noticeably different.

To escape the systemic inequality embraced by the Constitution one had to find a way to fit into the dominant group, which happened to be white, Protestant men.

Those who could not or did not fit into the dominant group were and are openly discriminated against, with the blessing of the government. In our history as a nation, the dominant group has systemically controlled African Americans. The control has been on all levels, in all areas of life, but most especially on the economic level. The dominant group controlled African Americans and forced them to work for them, with little to no benefits.

To keep their workers under control, they objectified them, meaning, they looked upon them as objects and not as subjects, people. If one does not see another person as a person, it is easy, or easier, to treat them as objects, worthy of being misused and abused and killed.

Men who beat women objectify them, or parents who beat their children objectify them, though they say they love them. One cannot beat one whom one loves.

The person who is hated and objectified and denied rights begins to hate himself. The beaten woman begins to believe the rantings of her crazed, controlling mate, or the abused child begins to believe that he or she is “bad,” and rationalizes that that is the reason he or she is being beaten.

As the beaten woman or child will always try to “be good” so that their beatings will stop, so has been the history of African Americans, trying to “do good” in order to be accepted.

One of the saddest results of “this racism thing” has been the self-hatred African Americans developed in this country. As we were hated, so we hated ourselves. The dominant group might first have used the term “nigras” as a term of endearment, speaking of the people they owned as beloved possessions. A “nigra” was simply a black person, stupid, of course, and needing to be cared for, which the dominant group was willing to do.

As the debate over race grew, however, the term of endearment morphed into a term of anger, derision and contempt. The term “nigra” became “nigger.” The dominant group called the name; African Americans internalized the name and began calling themselves the same.

One could get no lower than a nigger. African Americans knew that. They/we felt our status in this land of the free. African Americans were not free and were not worthy of freedom. The dominant group taught that the Bible did not teach racial equality and they completely cleared up any misunderstanding about the words “all men are created equal” being applicable to African Americans or women.

Racism, then, became the inner lining of this democratic system. This democracy was from the outset, unequal, and meant to be. Racism was the government, and therefore the power to keep a group of people under control and keep the dominant group in control. It was and is an economic and political oppression based on race.

In the era when the dust storms nearly annihilated a part of this country, signs were put up that said “no niggers” need apply for work until all white men had jobs. That kind of thing is a part of the legacy of this democracy.

I wish the young African American rappers realized and understood, then, what legacy they are perpetuating when they use the word “nigger” in their lyrics. It is not cute, funny or good. It is yet more evidence of the self hatred which still exists among African Americans.

The racist lining of our democracy is sewn into every aspect of American life. Little white kids still think little black kids are bad, stupid and ugly, and too many little black kids still think the same about themselves.

When Dr. Laura said “nigger” over and over in her rant last week, she showed a lack of professionalism (she is a psychologist, for goodness’ sake!), insensitivity and a capacity, still, to objectify African Americans.

I have purposely said “nigger” in this piece to make those who read it look at it and think about what it means. I guess I am trying to begin ripping the lining of racism from the cloak wear called “democracy.” We cannot heal the sore until we look at the sore and see how infected it is, and how infectious it is.

I know I have to take this a little deeper, but this is enough for now.

It is a candid observation.

I find myself stumped, stymied and saddened by something Bill O’Reilly said the other day.

I occasionally listen to right-wing radio and television talk show hosts because I want to know what they are saying. I think we ought to know our neighbors, even if we do not agree with them or care for them. It might be that we are living in perception and not truth when it comes to those from “the other side,” and that is never good.

But O’Reilly the other day was criticizing social justice, and said that social justice is for people who want stuff. That’s what “social justice” means, he said. Social justice is when the government pays for people who want stuff.

I was floored.

I think I must have grown up naive, believing in the famous words, “All men are created equal.” I thought those were the most powerful, most true, and most intuitive words ever written …and they were written by our Founding Fathers.

My fantasy was initially cracked when I was a teen at an amusement park, watching people get on replicas of old cars, Model Ts and Model As, and I said that it must have been fun back then to have lived when these cars came out.

My friend said quietly, “Not if you were black.”

He reminded me of how there were not equal rights for people in this country and “back then” had certainly been worse than our present day.

Well, as I grew I watched and learned the painful lessons of racism. I watched my father, a brilliant man who worked for the Internal Revenue Service, cry as he told my mother how he’d gotten passed over for a promotion yet another time. Apparently, he knew that his being passed over was only because he was black.

I visited the South, my cousins in Alabama, and was told to be very careful about talking to white people. I stood in lines where white kids were let on the rides before we were, though we’d been standing there a lot longer.

I went to college and heard white students say that the only reason “we” were in college was because of Affirmative Action.

Stuff. Affirmative Action helped minorities get pieces of America that had been formerly shut down for them. There was the Voting Rights Act, that had to be put in place so that black people could have the right to vote. Stuff, I guess. Health care reform …helps more people get health care. Stuff, right?

O’Reilly alluded to the fact that people wanting “stuff” were those who were not willing to work for it. They want hand-outs, and,therefore, social justice exists, but for O’Reilly and others, it is not a good thing.

All people are not created equal. They are not supposed to have equal rights. God created the haves and the have nots. “People wanting stuff” is a said state of affairs, muses O’Reilly. This country, trying to serve more people, to make it so that more people have nearly equal rights, is going the wrong way, becoming socialist, under the socialist, non-American president, Barack Obama.

As I have mused and pondered over this, it occurs to me that democracy is not about “all people being equal.” It is about free enterprise. Those who have, get more, and those who do not have, get less. It’s the way things are, the way things are supposed to be. Nobody ever meant to say or to imply that all people in this country should have equal rights when it comes to “stuff.”

As government systems go, I am glad to be in America, but I am no longer deluded or fooled by lofty expectations of what freedom in a democracy means. The system is set up so that some people will succeed very well and others will not succeed at all. There are 30 percent more homeless people in this nation this year than there were last year, but democracy does not say or mean that they should have homes (though they are working.)

According to O’Reilly, democracy means that the homeless and poor, the sick and the hungry, are able to pull themselves up and do an “honest day’s work” and be able to participate in this free enterprise system.

You see? It helps to listen to those whom we do not like. We learn a little more about how our world works and how the people in our world think

The opposition to Mr. Obama from the Right is partially racial, that’s for sure, but it’s also deeply economic, a cry of protest against policies that attempt to help more people get “stuff.”

Thanks, Bill.

That is a painful…candid observation.

I believe in God, but I really struggle with believing in organized religion.

If I didn’t believe in God, Someone who loves me in spite of who I am, not because of who I am, I don’t think I’d be able to keep my footing.

Neither drugs nor drink “does it” for me. I don’t have a desire to be high or out of it; though from time to time I want to run and hide, running really isn’t my modus operandi. No, I like to look my Goliaths in the eye and challenge them to try and crush me.

Sometimes, they almost do …but there is something about believing in God and in God’s son Jesus that gives me a weird ability to find another breath, not necessarily a second breath, but perhaps a sixth or seventh one.

It is my faith that God IS that keeps me afloat. God’s presence is a source of empowerment and encouragement, a nudge at times and a shove at others, moving me from a place that I definitely need to leave to a place where I definitely need to be.

But organized religion…that’s another story.

Anne Rice says she’s left Christianity but not Christ. I have written that I understand, and I do. From where I sit, religion, in this case Christianity, has been horrible at practicing the tenets of God. Rather, Christianity (and probably all religions) has succumbed to the desire for power, money and control. Prelates from the beginning of time have used religion to control people and manipulate them into supporting their desire for power, leaving their “call” to teach people about God pushed disrespectfully to the curb.

We humans have what might be called the “Lucifer Syndrome,” a name for pride that I have coined. Lucifer, you remember, lost status in heaven because he wanted to be God. Lucifer was an angel who fell from grace because he didn’t want to follow god. He wanted to be God, to usurp God’s position.

God’s “way” seems relatively simple and straightforward: Love everyone. Be obedient to God. Do those two things and we will find peace.

But we are forever adolescents: we want our way and we fight authority. Seeing as how God is invisible to the human eye and can only be verified as a real entity by the faithful, we humans do what any teen without supervision does: we go wild, doing our own thing, going our own way.

Religious leaders know us; they devised a system of laws and rules designed to keep us in place and keep us beholden to them. People get so involved in following the rules of humans that they (we) forget to follow the directives of God.

Getting so caught up in rule-following does a couple of things: it makes it easy for us to develop a sense of superiority which in turn allows us to be horribly unkind to each other, and it effectively keeps us from being in communion and communication with God.

It is the communion and communication with God which makes one spiritual.

Spiritual living makes us breathe differently. We desire to breathe our humanness out so that we can make room for the spirit of God within us. Religion makes being able to do that very hard.

Then, adding insult to injury, we non-spiritual religious types get involved not in loving and accepting each other, but in denigrating and criticizing each other. Why would a church put a young boy named Ryan White out of the church (or maybe even prevent him from coming in)? Why would a church burn copies of the Koran, the holy and sacred book for Muslims? Where is the compassion described in the gospels, stories where we see a man talking and mingling with “the least of these,” letting them know how special they were in the eyes of God?

It is this hope for redemption that even religious types preach and present as they attempt to “get souls for Christ.” People want and need to be redeemed, forgiven, accepted. But once the people are “in” the church, they become lost in the rules, laws, doctrine and dogma of their church, things which allow and perhaps encourage those who are religious to look down upon those who are not.

I suggested to someone that as I read the Gospels, and even parts of the Book of Acts, I feel that were he alive, someone would call him a Socialist or a Nazi. We want God on our terms, so that we can do what we want but run to God for cover and comfort when things go awry.

Like we did when we were teens, or perhaps wanted to do.

Sometimes I want to scream out, “Hang religion!” but then I think of the people who still come with hope and yearning in their eyes. Rice said she refused to be “anti” so many things that apparently make people appear “religious.” The emphasis is on the word “appear.” Appearance is not truth. Everyone who says he or she is Christian is not. Maybe that’s a reason Jesus said many are called but few are chosen.

Maybe five people come with the yearning eyes. We have to minister to them. That part of this pastor thing is great …

But rules, doctrine and documents, combined with our tendency to push God the Father and Jesus the Christ aside… is only going to make people more and more skeptical about that to believe. They will remain members of Christianity but they will have the honor of joining a religious person, a so-called Christian …but “the Christ” will be nowhere in proximity.

And that is a candid observation.

Anne Rice has left Christianity.

I understand.

Weird that I, an ordained minister and pastor would say such a thing, but unfortunately, I understand. Christianity and in fact, organized religion in general, distresses me.

I, like Rice, love Jesus the Christ. I believe in what he taught. There is power in love and forgiveness and in serving people.

But we, the religious, make a mockery of God, of Jesus, and of the tenets of God taught through Jesus. We twist and maniupulate scripture for our own purposes, to fit our ideology. The late Sen. Robert Byrd once said, in his days as a segregationist, that, sure, the scriptures say to love our neighbor, but “we can choose our neighbor.” He was using the Bible to justify segregation and racial hatred.

Breaking my heart is the Christian preacher who has decided to burn Holy Korans. Then there is the Christian preacher whose church torments the parents of gay children who have gone to war, fought, and died. They do it in the name of Jesus.

Whose Jesus? What Jesus is that?

Rice says she will not be anti-Gay, anti-Democrat, anti …and she lists a few. The God of love, surely could not endorse the kind of hatred that too many Christians practice, not the God my mother taught me about.

The God of my mother was the God who created us all and who therefore loved us all. Even as I struggled with seeing white people attack innocent black people who were trying to gain civil rights in this country, and with seeing white mothers yell the “n” word at little black children, my mother said that this God loved us all, even these hate-filled whites, and that because God loved them, we must, too.

Get real.

But my mother was adamant. The world of God was about love and forgiveness. God loved and forgave us, so we must do the same. The Bible said it.

It was hard to reconcile what my mother said with what I saw in the world. Not only did different races of people hate each other in the name of Jesus, but so did members of the same family. Parents stopped talking to children because they were gay; light skinned African American parents ostracized children who were too dark; mothers shunned daughters because they were too heavy.

Apparently this God of love was not going over well.

God could have staved off all this inconsistency by making everyone male, white, and straight. No women. No different nationalities. No Jewish people, no Muslims, no Buddhists or any other religion. Nothing different. Then it would be easy to love, right? Oh, I forgot…nobody with any disabilities or anything that made them less than “the norm” could exist either. A perfect, womanless, Anglo, straight society is what would make things all right, all good?

Isn’t that what Hitler thought? Didn’t he think that there were too many misfits in the world, and don’t we religious, Christian types think that if there were a few less “different” people that the world would be as God intended?

I think that’s what many of us think, but I would bet that even if this was a boring, “same” world, things would not be better. I would bet that even then, in the name of Jesus, the straight white Protestant men would find ways to hate other straight white men.

Did God, then, make a mistake in creating so much diversity in the world? Or did God do it on purpose to highlight the fact that Jesus said that not everyone that says, “Lord, Lord!” will enter the kingdom of heaven?

I don’t know. I do know this: I understand why Anne Rice has left Christianity.

That is a painful and candid observation.

I have been thinking this for the longest time, and have been trying NOT to think it, actually, but the Shirley Sherrod thing did it.

I am angry at our president. I am angry that our president is afraid to embrace his African American heritage because he believes it will be bad for him politically. Or at least it appears that way.

I was irritated with him before he was elected. He was giving a speech commemorating the March on Washington, and he didn’t – he couldn’t – even say Martin Luther King’s name. Someone must have told him it would be too risky.

And these same advisors, I guess, have been telling him to tow the line, to not mention race if at all possible. And so he doesn’t, and ironically, his silence on race is as damaging as I guess his advisors thought it would be to mention the “r” word.

In spite of slavery having been ended in 1865, slavery really does exist. Our minds and our spirits are so deeply in bondage, both white and black. White folks are enslaved to the fear of being called racists; they are way too defensive and way too ready to slide into denial as a way to cope with their fear. Black people are still enslaved by anger and a spirit of victim hood; way too many of them believe that their lot in this country is hopelessly dismal.

White people want racism, and the memories of our racist history, to just go away. Black people want white people to stop dodging the issue and deal with the mess made by racism. And black people wanted, I think, Mr. Obama to begin to blaze the trail for real change in race relations to begin. Instead, Mr. Obama, like too many white people, dodges the issue as well.

I understand the need for politicians to be political. I understand that they must represent ALL of the people. I also understand, recognize and appreciate the work done by Mr. Obama which will help the poor and disadvantaged of this country.

But I am sorely disappointed that Mr. Obama’s neck, like the neck of the NAACP, was placed in the noose thrown by the Right. This debacle was an opportunity for the president to step up and be presidential on the issue of race. It was an opportunity for him to tell his staff to remain calm until all the facts were known.

Instead, he reacted as the noose was tightened and in effect, transferred the noose to the neck of an innocent woman whose life has been one of fighting racism and class inequity. My president has egg on his face, as does the NAACP and Ben Jealous.

Racism will not go away. The Right, while eager to accuse others of pulling the race card, actually pulls it more often, daring others to challenge them. The Right is smart in knowing how to politicize race while ignoring the problem of racism. They will use “race card strategy” a lot, I am afraid, in the upcoming Congressional elections probably and in the 2012 presidential election most certainly.

Mr. Obama cannot do what so many people in this country have been doing: deny that racism exists. He will have to step up, man up, if you will, and face this demon head on, in order to steer the country in new directions. Denial will not work. It never has, not for any problem, and it never will.

And that is a candid observation.