Behold the Crime of silence

In 1970, James Baldwin was interviewed by David Frost and was asked if he was a Christian or a Muslim, and he said, laughing, “I was born a Baptist.”

Baldwin laughed, hard, prompting Frost to say, “It’s not that funny.”

Candid Observations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Baldwin responded, “It is to me…and he proceeded to answer Frost’s next question, “And what are you now? Do you feel as black (sic) now as when you were born?”

Baldwin responded, “I think you should ask that question of our president…Richard Nixon or the Attorney General. Ask the president how black I feel.” Frost asked, “Do you think the Civil Rights movement is dead?”

Baldwin replied that the Civil Rights movement had resulted in some changes, yes, but it had always been a “self-contained” endeavor and carried within it “something self-defeating.” He added, “Martin knew this, too.”

“In the beginning, we thought that there was a way of reaching the conscience of the people in this country. We hoped there was, and I must say that we did reach several blacks and several whites. We did everything in our power to make the American people realize that the myths they were living with were not so much destroying black people as whites.”

He described who he was and how he felt as a Black person in a country that worshipped whiteness. It had taken its toll, and he said, “I am not a young man, but I am a Black American and I know something about the crime of silence. I know what happens in San Francisco and in Chicago, and in New York when one of our representatives wants to protect the morale of the police. I know what a no-knock, stop-and-frisk law means. It means search and destroy. I know something about the history black people have endured and are still enduring in this place.” He concluded this part of the interview by saying, “We’re not on the edge of a racial war. We’re on the edge of a civil war.”

Still.

Baldwin could just as easily have been sharing those thoughts today.

We are seeing what the crime of silence produces: Chaos. Complacency. Fear. Spiritual and societal blindness, caused by our refusal to challenge injustice and those who support it. The silence helps many rest in a false sense of security; “this is America,” they think. “Nothing as heinous as what happened in Germany will ever happen here.” The belief that America is truly exceptional and immune to abject suffering and destruction by any other country or from within has warped the minds and the capacity of people to understand that evil has no boundaries. It has made Americans boast of being “the greatest country in the world,” even as it descends into the abyss of tyranny. And it has made people think that if anyone suffers, ‘it won’t be them; it will be those who “deserve” to suffer.

Only some people who have a platform speak out and speak up. Unfortunately, too many others are caught in a mythic belief that even if things are bad, the great America will be able to rebound, and, many think, America will do so with the people whom they believed were never worthy of American rights and citizenship eliminated. They believe that if there is a breakdown of America, it will be for the good of a country that had for too long been sullied by the presence of people who should never have been here. (They forget that it was their ancestors who brought the “undesirables” to this country and that it was the unpaid labor of those people that resulted in the economic growth and domination of this country.)

Silence in the face of evil and injustice makes some people or groups of people think they are or will be immune to the dark days ahead, but it always results in excruciating suffering for the masses. American political and law enforcement leaders have been silent from this nation’s inception, and many have been complicit. This country has operated with the understanding that some people have the right to perpetuate injustice because of their race and wealth. They have operated with a “wink and a nod” mindset, akin to that portrayed in the movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement.”

It was the silence (and fear of the president) by lawmakers in the halls of the United States Congress and Senate recently that resulted in the passage of a cruel budget that will hurt millions. Belief in the superiority of a rogue president has resulted in the US Supreme Court choosing to be silent at times when it should have been the leader of the “rule of law” and the pursuit of justice for everyone. Fear of so many, afraid of being punished by the powers that be, has resulted in silence about the complicity with and partnership of America with Zionists, as troops have ravaged the West Bank and specifically, Gaza using weapons that were supplied by the United States, and silence is the accepted way of ignoring the suffering that is going on in the Sudan.

The prayer is that none of us remain silent but take the risk of speaking out and acting to stop the march to the shores of 18th century injustice, echoing the voice of the God of the Christian Bible who desires mercy and not sacrifice and justice for all human beings, the God whose teachings clearly illustrate that He/She cannot be named as the commander-in-chief of those who are running over and destroying the lives of too many of the human beings She created.

If any of us are being silent, we need to think about why and decide if we are going to serve God or serve human beings and honor our desire to flourish in a capitalistic society. There indeed may not be a way to reach the consciences of those who practice injustice against others, but injustice will surely flourish if those who are writhing as they watch the destruction of liberty and justice for all God’s people remain silent.

That silence is perhaps the greatest crime that we are facing today.

A candid observation…

Struggling with the Language of Newness

The ultimate power of prophetic ministry is that the words spoken by the prophets do not never disappear. Their words have so much truth that they cannot be erased or forgotten. People may choose to ignore them for any number of reasons, but the words they speak stick regardless of the social times in which we find ourselves.

           The late Dr. Walter Brueggemann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, wrote, “It is the aim of every totalitarian effort to stop the language of newness, and we are now learning that where such language stops, we find our humanness diminished.”

           He wrote those words in 1978, but they struck me as something to think about as we work to identify the ingredients in the kettle of theological soup that is challenging us now. We are seeing in real time what it looks like as the people in power work to “stop the language of newness” that has been evolving over the past 50 years due to landmark legislation, but the seeds of which were planted hundreds of years ago as the country decided to build a government on a cracked foundation.

           The founders were not interested in “language of newness.” Yes, they wrote magnificent documents, filled with words that stirred the souls of those who heard them. But behind those words were mindsets that wanted people to understand they had a “place” in society, and that the “liberty and freedom” that was written about did not and would never apply to them.

           As enslaved Africans heard those words, their souls jumped. Though they were treated abysmally, not allowed to grieve the loss of their homes and their families, their spirits, fed by the language of newness that they heard, propelled them forward. For them, the language of newness did not stop, and therefore, their humanness was never diminished.

           But it is a fact that what we are seeing now is at least partially happening because there was too much newness, too much power and release from traditional beliefs and practices that allowed wealthy white men a measure of comfort that they never intended others to share. Their wealth was created by those whom they oppressed, and they needed for that to remain intact.

The spirits of people, however, yearn to be free. People yearn to be able to use their intellect and their creativity, and thus will not “stay put” because they cannot. Totalitarian efforts always cause chaos, but they can never, and have never, killed the human need to be free, fed during periodic spurts of time where they hear and ingest the language of newness.

           We sit now in a maelstrom of anger and insecurity that has haunted the wealthy and powerful for years. The language of newness that has kept the oppressed on a battlefield has offended them. The oppressed have not cowered as they have been encouraged or forced to do. They (we) have been knocked down but have forever gotten back up. The language of newness that we have heard from those who speak to us on God’s behalf is a spiritual nutrient that has attached itself to our very beings and cannot, once ingested, be taken away.

           The people in power do not understand this phenomenon. They are creating a new “language of newness,” but because their language seeks to diminish, and not increase the dignity, worth, and appreciation for all humanity, it will fail. People will be free, regardless of the pushback they receive and endure. Their language of newness comes from them and depends on their survival to endure, while the language of newness that Brueggemann speaks of is fed to us by the very breath of God.

           The challenge before us is not to give too much credence to what the oppressors are saying, though being fully aware of what they are saying. Knowing what they are saying will direct our prayers, and calm our spirits – and make us available to the presence of our God, the God about whom we learned in Sunday School and from our parents, the God who told us to love our neighbors, the God who has walked and talked with us “through many dangers, toils and snares.”

The oppressors of today claim that God is behind and in support of what they are doing. They want us to absorb that language. What they might call the language of newness, we must recognize as a language of deception. We need to understand what they are saying and why, but we cannot align with them. We know that all people matter. Black and brown people, women, immigrants, the elderly, the poor, children, the differently abled, non-cis gender persons – all matter. God loves all of us. That is the language of newness we have been receiving for the last 50 years (and before that). We have to remember that though oppressors have tried to keep us enslaved to an ideology created by hatred and bigotry, we have learned, through the years, to reject their efforts. Their language of newness is not ours.

           May we ask God for the strength to continue to reject their language of the newness they want, and to instead lean on the power we receive from the momentum of memory that reminds us that God has our backs and has always had our backs. We will get through this, relying on the language of newness that will come from this experience that will remind us that, at the end of the day, it is God who is in control, and not a group of people who have made God their tool to justify their behavior.

           God will be with us “at break of day.” That is a truth we cannot forget, especially now.

           Amen and amen.

The Difficulty of Facing the Truth

I read a statement given by a white pastor after the murder of George Floyd. He said, “We understand the curse that was slavery but we miss the blessing of slavery, that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in and lived in.”(Italics mine)

That phrase, “We miss the blessing of slavery” made my face grow hot. How dare anyone say that at any time, but especially after the brutal murder of George Floyd. How could anyone be so insensitive?

But after I calmed down, I realized that, regardless of how that statement hit, it was the truth. The enslavement of Black people made this country, and the misery and deficiency of Black people simultaneously was a blessing for white people, creating for them a sense of entitlement and sufficiency.

The truth hurts. We are living in a painful and scary time. People are losing their jobs and health care; people in power are running roughshod over and through this country like bulls in a china shop, and too many people are cowering in fear, saying nothing. Some people are refusing to see what they are seeing, and too many people are still saying that “it’s not so bad.”

But it is, and it promises to get worse. The truth is this “democracy” is under attack. The coup that the current president began in 2016 and pushed during his presidency and the presidency of President Biden, is in full swing. We are seeing happen what Nikita Khrushchev said years ago: “We will overtake America without firing a single shot.” The goal of what is going on is to replace one “deep state” with another, the new one unconcerned about the lives of the masses. We are speeding downhill and there is nobody to help us or save us. Journalists who speak up are being fired, and people are being put in place who will teach the perspective of the oppressors. It has only been two months, and already, much of what constituted the infrastructure of this country has been either destroyed or badly damaged.

That is the truth, whether or not people want to believe it. People who thought they would be “safe” under this president are finding out that they have been hoodwinked and they are scared and mad – just like those who had the sense to believe that the goal to destroy this country was real.

The truth is hard to see, hard to swallow, and accept. We prefer to stay under the warm blankets of deceit. When we are in that place, we can and do pull the blankets over our eyes when something is going on that is too difficult to see and scary to accept. But times come when the blankets of protection are taken from us, and what we are left with is the raw truth staring us in the face.

What we do with the truth matters. The truth is that we live in a system that wants the masses to cower to the wealthy. If we see it and pretend it doesn’t really exist, we commit our souls to a slow disintegration. We lose. Denying the truth gives it power. It laughs at us as it continues to stomp on all that we have believed. When we cannot or will not see the truth, it takes control, until one day, it wins. We think and act like the oppressors want us to.

But when we see the truth and confront it, we begin to dilute its power. The deception inherent in what passes off as truth is weak. Deception does not like to be confronted and challenged but when it is, it begins to disintegrate. Many people in this country have refused to see racism and white supremacy for what they are and what they do and have done. Some people have believed that if they did all they could to “act white,” or “look white,” they would, in fact, be accepted as white, but they learn that life in a racist world does not work like that.

But throughout history, when those who are being manipulated to think the way the oppressors want them to think decide that they will not do that, the landscape changes. That we dare confront raw power is in itself unnerving. Confronting and challenging the truth takes away fear and intimidation. We are able to make bold statements publicly and stand on them, like the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who said to leaders in South Africa as he confronted apartheid, “God is not a Christian!” Confronting the truth gives us the will and the way to seek release from its grip. It is not much different than acknowledging that we don’t feel well and, after a while, deciding to see what’s wrong. We risk hurting to become well. Illness hides and rests in our capacity to deny its presence, but when we decide to get up and be aggressive about finding out what is wrong, illness, no matter how severe, stands much less likely to take us out or cause extreme pain and suffering while we are alive.

As we see people being punished for facing evil in the face, may we pray for the courage to first, see what is happening and then have enough faith in God and belief in the need for justice for all people, to stand up, face it, and push it to lose its potency. We are not powerless, but our courage will manifest when we stop denying that what is happening is happening and in response, do as stated in Galatians, “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”

A candid observation …

Pledging Allegiance to a Flag that Has Not Pledged Allegiance to You

In 1965, author James Baldwin debated Conservative writer and political commentator William F. Buckley at Cambridge University. The event took place not long after Baldwin, residing in France, had recuperated from an illness that had sapped him of his strength, but he was well enough in February of that year to make the trip to Cambridge University and face Buckley.

The subject that they were to debate was “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” Baldwin went first, and he spoke with a quiet fire, clarity, and passion in a way that seemed to hold the roomful of students spellbound. He had no notes. He merely spoke. His words were riveting and biting at the same time; he shared the raw truth about being Black in America and that experience, in all of its fullness, did not require notes or a script to make his points.

He said many things in that speech that hit hard but his description of what it was like to grow up Black in America was particularly powerful. He said that it was a unique experience to realize as a child “that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance… has not pledged allegiance to you,” to be shocked to discover that “although you are rooting for Gary Cooper “ as he kills Indians, the Indians are you.”

I found myself wishing that I could have seen Buckley’s face as Baldwin spoke. The truth he was sharing was as raw as it was painful. Baldwin continued. “I picked the cotton …under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing!’

We can all remember saying the pledge, putting our hands over our hearts and pledging fealty to this country and therefore to its flag. I realized that in my own mind we all pledge allegiance to a country and its government that has not pledged allegiance to us. The flag is a symbol of a country whose leaders have felt little compunction over the course of its life to create policies that respect the full humanity of all who live here.

I can remember, as a child who sang in a district choir in Detroit singing “pro-America” songs. I still remember the lyrics of one:

I love the United States of America!

I love the way we all live without fear!

I like to vote for my choice, speak my mind, raise my voice

Yes, L like it here!

I like the United States of America

I am thankful each day of the year!

For I can do as I please ‘cause I’m free as the breeze,

Yes, I like it here!

I like to climb to the top of a mountain so high

Lift my head to the sky

And say how grateful am I

For the the way that I’m working, and helping and giving

And doing the things I hold dear!

Yes, I like it! I like it!
I like it here!

All of us in that integrated choir sang our hearts out – with all of our songs – but there was a special and unique energy that I can remember when we sang the songs about “our country.” We sang the songs. We pledged allegiance to the flag. And we believed that this country was a safe place that afforded liberty and justice to everyone.

I didn’t know – nor did my choirmates know – that this was a country that denied rights and equality to many who love it. I had not witnessed the evidence of racial, ethnic, class, and religious bigotry. I did not know about buses that made Black people sit in the back, neighborhoods that were manipulated to be all white or all Black, and I did not know that Black people who had served in this country’s wars did not earn a place in the line for benefits for veterans once they returned home. I had no idea that Black soldiers were too often lynched – while still in uniform – when they returned from those wars. They were fighting for their country, but it was not enough to dissolve the curse of racism that was baked into the foundation of this country.

When Baldwin said that we pledge allegiance to a flag that has “not pledged allegiance to you,” I felt myself take a small gasp. I had never thought of the plight of so many people here for whom that sentence holds true. It is such a simple truth, but we don’t often think of it that way, with those words. It is a jarring truth.

When Baldwin finished his side of the debate, the roomful of students – a group that looked to be all male and all white – stood on their feet and applauded for what seemed like 3-5 minutes. When Buckley took the podium, he opened by commenting of Baldwin’s “British accent,” suggesting that it was probably fake – but nobody responded. He made his points, not nearly as eloquent as had Baldwin, concluding, of course, that the American Dream was not created on the backs of Black people. When the camera panned to Baldwin’s face to catch his reaction, it was clear that he understood that Buckley did not have a clue as to what he had presented. Buckley received a polite round of applause when he was done – and he lost the debate: 184 votes to Baldwin’s 544.

The people who are in this moment fighting to dismantle the government are those to whom the country pledged allegiance. I don’t understand how one can call oneself a patriot while working to take one’s country down, but I do know this: This country has never pledged allegiance to the masses of Americans who need policies that help them. It has pledged allegiance, however, to those who have money, who make money, and who will continue to make money for themselves. All who are ignored or passed over will still be expected to pledge allegiance to the country that has not and will not pledge allegiance to them. Those who have been pledged the least will be those who fight the hardest to save what rights they have; those who have never worried about having rights as American citizens will continue to bulldoze over them and not realize the truth of Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, “Until all of us are free, none of us are free.” Many people will find out the hard way that the American Dream has been created at the expense of the Negro, as Baldwin said, but at the expense of every person who has done back-breaking work of building this country.

Humans in the Hands of a Silent God

Any more, as I hear about the bad and violent actions people take against other people, I shudder.

I held onto a naivete about how “good” people – i.e., those who believe in God – were somehow better, that their relationship with God would guide their feet and their actions. They would see other human beings as just that – human beings – and treat them as they would want to be treated. For Christians that principle is actually in the Bible: “In everything …do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12)

Candid Observations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribed

But it seems that Christians, and others who have professed a belief in God, have ignored that precept in far too many instances. My awareness of this was probably brewing throughout my youth when I watched some of my Christian friends be mean to others, but it reached a peak when I read about one Sam Bowers.

In the 60s, Bowers was the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and he was also the leader of the Mississippi White Knights, a secret division of the KKK. In the 60s, the Mississippi White Knights claimed a membership of over 10,000. The FBI attributed nine murders and 300 beatings, burnings, and bombings to this group led by Bowers. He was the mastermind behind the killings of three civil rights workers in 1964 – Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman – and led the group in 1966 in the killing of Vernon Dahmer, a Black man who helped register Black people to vote. (https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/).

What got to me is that Bowers was a devout Christian. At the time I learned this I did not know – and did not know there could be – a Christianity without Christ and without God. According to reporter Stuart Wexler, Bowers, as well as many others, “embraced a Godless ideology and relinquished God’s grace.” Because of his Christ-less Christianity, he enveloped and embraced parts of the practice of Christianity with which he was familiar, including prayer and fasting – but he led people to pray and fast as they prepared to conduct murderous raids on Black people in the South. (Charles Marsh: God’s Long Summer)

Brutal violence carried out by humans who profess to follow God against other humans is not a rarity. From street murders to domestic violence, to wars – humans murder and maim others and still profess a belief in God. The spiritualist Howard Thurman, noting the ferocity of the hatred and violence carried out during war wrote, “During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even as it has to masquerade under the guise of patriotism.”

people gathering on street during nighttime — Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

It is because of the human capacity to feel and act upon hatred that resides in the human spirit that violence is so common and so brutal. I cannot understand how Europeans who said they loved God were able to carry out genocide of non-white people in the lands they “discovered.” I cannot understand, again, how religious, church-going people were able to brutalize the Congolese under the direction of King Leopold II of Belgium and think nothing of it, nor can I understand how the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II is still regarded as an act of heroism. Neither can I understand how religious people seem to take as a matter of fact – of righteous fact, if the truth be told – the genocide of Native Americans in this country, and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany, and I cannot understand why the world deems it to be OK for the Israeli government to be destroying the Palestinians en masse, when it is Hamas they are seeking to annihilate as a result of that group’s terrorist attack on innocent Israelis.

The number of people killed because of violence is staggering. It is estimated that 100,000 Native Americans were forced to walk the Trail of Tears and that about 15,000 of them died. Between 1500 and 1866, it is estimated that 12.5 million Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas and that about 1.8 million died during the Middle Passage. Data shows that about 6,500 Africans and African Americans died due to lynching carried out between 1865 and 1950, and during the Civil War, 620,000 were killed. In World War I, 21 million people lost their lives, including over 9 million military personnel. In World War II, 38 million people were killed, and in the Vietnam War, 3.8 million died. I could go on, but I think the point has been made.

I cannot believe that any of this is OK with God, yet God lets it happen. In our creation, God apparently included a spiritual path toward hatred and violence, a path that allowed us to think that hating and killing what God had created was OK. To me, that means our creation is or was flawed – if we are to believe that our assignment in life is to follow God. If it is OK with God that people bypass the religion taught to us that said God is good and that God requires us to live in harmony with each other, then there is something wrong. We are – or people like me are – looking for a God that does not exist.

Please understand: I am not saying that looking for a God of community and love is the only way to practice religion, nor am I saying that anyone who is looking for that kind of God is successful in meeting that criterion all of the time. We fail miserably as humans. But it seems that a belief in a God that disparages evil and hatred of others, and outright violence – including murder – is a problem. I yearn for a divine intervention in which God says to those who live in violence and hatred “Enough!” I yearn for a God who sits heavily on the shoulders and in the hearts of those who profess belief.

God’s silence in the light of the inhumanity we as humans practice against each other is troubling, more so because those who have no trouble fighting against, taking away the rights of, or murdering those whom they dislike for one reason or another profess belief in that God.

Sam Bowers had prayer and fasting for his murderous lynching crews; people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, stopped while in the Congress building to lift holy hands and pray. In the 18th century, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I would challenge Edwards and say we are humans in the hands of a silent God, one who is permissive of the evil we are prone to practice against each other.

Any more, as I read and study the violence we perpetrate against others, I shudder. My God is silent and unavailable or unwilling to stop our destruction of each other – actions that we take based on hatred, greed, or the lust for power – or of all of those issues. Why the silence, God? Why?

A candid observation…