Kenny Wiley

Kenny Wiley

Kenny Wiley

Kenny Wiley

I delivered this sermon Sunday, September 27, 2015 at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. The weather was hot and the service long, yet the music, words, and energy shared made for a moving morning. Photo credit: Daniel Sauvé

 

“Which side are you on?”

It’s a controversial question—and, in this time of Black Lives Matter banners being ripped down and vandalized, it feels like the right question. So I’ll do the one thing I can do—share my story of how I’ve come to say ‘Black Lives Matter’—and believe that mine does, too. It’s a story of self-hate turned to activism and hope.

After leading a Black Lives Matter UU training in New York on Thursday, I went out with three other black UU young adults—yes, there a few others out there—I see you, Maníge–into a bar that, well, wasn’t in Harlem. We were nearly the only black folks in there, even as other folks came and went, and we were loud. We cut loose. The four of us—employed by mostly-white, UU institutions—got loud. We laughed loud, we commiserated loud, and we hoped and strategized loud. It got intense, the sharing and

I mentally stepped back and realized I was at that table: the table of loud black people. It was the table that, as a teenager, I feared and tried to hate, but just couldn’t. I looked into the face of my close friend Raziq Brown, and of my two other friends. I excused myself and went outside. I made it to the front door before the tears came. I wept.

The tears came because of how much younger me had learned to hate my blackness, to play it down when possible. No one person really said the words, yet the message sank in over time. As a child I heard from many about about the civil rights movement, in past tense. “We had problems and now they’re fixed,” basically. Though I had some teachers and religious educators say different, that was the biggest message.

My black family’s education level and success got used to put other black people down. “All it takes in this country is hard work—look at the Stewart-Wiley family!”

As a teen I learned that it was easy for me to navigate white spaces. My diction was “perfect”—I asked for things instead of aksing for them. I could “take a joke” at UU youth group instead of “being all social justice-y.” I got good at the art of making sure white people around me were comfortable. Eye contact. Smile—a lot. Good handshakes.

I was “impressive.” “Articulate.” “A refreshing young man.” “A credit to my people.” Supremacy teaches us that black lives matter only if—if we are respectful, if we are exceedingly educated, if our records are clean—then denies most black people the resources to make new realities. For awhile, I bought in.

But things kept happening. I kept reading and kept listening and other black folks seemed to be insisting, “Yeah, actually, the cops still harass us and too many of us are in jail and there’s this thing called mass incarceration and schools are still segregated with wildly unequal resources and LISTEN TO US.”

I started listening—to them and to myself. And over time I realized that other folks were starting to wake up. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement is often referred to as a new movement. And it is. Yet it is also old. Some of you have been to marches and you’ve heard old freedom songs like ‘Wade in the Water’ combined with the chant “black lives, they matter here.” This work is old and new together because a new wave of folks, young and not-as-young, are fighting old battles.

The road to that moment at the bar—to finally being okay with being at the loud black table, to finally not worrying so much about what white people might think of us—has been long, and it has everything to do with Black Lives Matter, a movement that’s saved me—and Unitarian Universalism—my religious home, a faith that’s both wounded and healed me.

Sometimes it’s asked, “What is the history of Unitarian Universalists on racial justice? Have we been good? Have we been bad?” The only answer is “yes.” The equivocation that challenges me—from “But all lives matter!” to “Well yes, racism is a big deal, but…”—has always been there. Yet throughout our religious history, there have been Universalists and Unitarians willing to resist the status quo, and willing to disrupt things so we might build a more inclusive world.

In 1965 Dr. King asked, “Who killed James Reeb?” Reeb was a young Unitarian minister from Boston who answered the call to go to Selma. King said, “a few sick and misguided men.” Indeed. For being white and supporting black folks’ freedom struggle, Reeb was viciously, and fatally attacked. Dr. King kept going, though, asking, “What killed James Reeb?” …The blame is wide and the responsibility grows… He was murdered by the irrelevancy of a church that will stand amid social evil and serve as a taillight rather than a headlight, an echo rather than a voice…

So, in his death, James Reeb says something to each of us, black and white alike—says that we must substitute courage for caution, says to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the philosophy which produced the murder.

Today, friends, we are told that the “sides” are pro-police or anti-police, and that saying Black Lives Matter means you are anti-white. It’s not true. What is being of us is what was asked of James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo, a white UU woman whose life was also taken in Selma: will we choose courage or caution?

This faith, this Unitarian Universalism, it is imperfect. I shared some of my wounds and struggles with you, hurts this faith helped foster. Yet I continue to believe in us. I believe in its possibility because it was as a Unitarian Universalist that the tears fell down my face when Trayvon’s killer went free, when they shot Rekia Boyd, when Michael Brown laid in the street for 4 and a half hours.

This was the faith that brought me out of my house and right here to the capitol steps thirteen months ago to say “this must stop.”

This is the faith that has helped us do great work, needed work. This is the faith that said, “We will marry you and your same-sex partner.”

This is a faith that said, “our children and teens need real health and sexuality education.”

This is a faith that says, “You can be depressed and we want you here.”

This is a faith that says you don’t have to have all the answers.

This is the faith that brought Viola Liuzzo to Selma.

This is the faith that got dozens of UU youth marching down Colfax last January with and for black lives.

This is a faith that calls us to do more, to be more.

Will we be a faith that says, “Whatever your education, whatever your criminal record, whatever I have been taught to fear about you—black lives are worthy and holy”?

I don’t know. I hope so.

I know that this question: “Which side are you on?” is not an easy one to answer, until it is. I know that finding my answer—that I am on the side of liberation, that I am on the side of blackness, that I am on the side of Unitarian Universalism, that I am on the side of love—has saved my life over and over and over again.

May we use that question—“Which side are you on?”—to be able to mean that chant: “Black lives: they matter here.” And here. And here. Amen.

The voices raised. We weren’t just singing–we were feeling.
I’d never sung like this before. For once, those words—Lift every voice and sing, til’ Earth and heaven ring—felt neither like intrusion or performance.

I gazed around the room and at the twenty other young faces of color, along with our mostly white hosts, the folks at the Lucy Stone Co-op in Roxbury, Mass. I was 1950 miles from my bed in Denver, and nearly as far from my hometown of Houston, Texas—but I found myself feeling at home, for the first time in a long time. And the sensation I felt within wasn’t sadness or joy—it was anger. I allowed myself to be mad—at the fact that we learn new names of those killed by state violence every week, and that in that room, was the most truly Unitarian Universalist I had felt in years.

As a preteen and young teenager, depression and anger swirled within, and came out at the most inopportune of times—during a sporting event, in the midst of a discussion with my parents, or before a big test. I expressed it only to my parents and my sisters. Between the ages of twelve and fifteen I screamed, wept, threw things, and occasionally tried to hurt myself.

Many teenagers feel anger. Many teenage boys feel rage—particularly because men are so often conditioned to see it as the only allowable emotion. I didn’t grow up that way—though we had to drag my dad into The Lion King, Mufasa’s death caused him more tears than anyone else in the theater. My family permitted sadness and welcomed discomfort. But as I became a teenager, the sometimes-public outbursts of rage began, clearly, to terrify my mother. I was becoming a black adult, and this nation has never had much tolerance for black anger.

White therapists and friends did help me figure out my depression. I was a person who, even when things were “going well,” sometimes just felt down out of nowhere. The therapists helped me understand that things couldn’t always be fixed, that sadness doesn’t always just go away because you ask it to.

My anger—my rage, really–was different. Nobody seemed to give me answers that helped. The white adults who helped advise youth group at my mostly white church loved me, but they didn’t get it. My mom knew how dangerous my anger could be, but didn’t know where it came from. The rest of my family understandably just wanted it to stop.

So I hid it. I buried it—not in the ground, but in our upstairs book collection, where books like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Lorraine Hansberry’s play Raisin in the Sun, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X just sat on the shelves, waiting for me. Morrison took me on an exploration of self-hatred, and I wept. Hansberry’s examination of racism in the north and dashed dreams filled my eyes with tears and more rage. These books felt like the answers nobody else could give me.

As I got older I learned how to hide my anger. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans just as my junior year of high school started. Though I had many friends in high school, it was with black authors—and other stories of helplessness, however seemingly unrelated, like Orwell’s 1984 or Tim Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate—that I “talked” out my disgust at what the news fed us every night.

Wasn’t anyone else noticing that white Louisianans were “stocking up” while black residents “looted”?
Yes, of course. I just didn’t know them. I felt alone, which fueled both my anger and my shame over such rage.

I was one of the Multicultural Leadership School’s oldest participants this past weekend, where we ostensibly learned about becoming more effective leaders but, more vitally, built community of youth and young adults of color through raucous singing (including renditions of ‘This Little Light of Mine’ on the subway), loud laughing, and purposeful sharing.

I’m a lifelong Unitarian Universalist. I’ve sung hymns in church my whole life, held hands in circles of 150 by Lake Murray in Oklahoma, and been moved to chills with thousands at General Assemblies. I’ve never sung like our gathering of twenty did all week long.

For me, I was singing my rage, singing my anger, singing my frustration that it took 27 years for me to find spaces like that, one where I feel neither theologically dishonest so black culture might accept me, nor isolated racially.
In white groups, singing ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ has sometimes felt like a performance, a putting-on of what the so-called Black Experience might be. Hearing “let us march on ‘til victory is won” from a group of people who have never marched alongside me—alongside us–can feel like cultural tourism at best, and emotional violence at worst.

Our all-POC group of twenty—kept on singing. We sang on the T and at First Parish Cambridge and at Lucy Stone and just about everywhere else. We sang, I think, because we needed to. We sang together, a group who saw our faith for the beautiful, doomed mess it is. I sang to let my rage out. It was not until I allowed my anger out that I joined the Black Lives Matter movement. I wasn’t just hurt that Mike Brown got left in the street for over four hours—I was enraged. I was furious at how many of my friends didn’t (and don’t) seem to care. I’ve been incensed at the way black women too often get left out of leadership structures, and of of National Conversations On Race

I am angry. I know now, thanks to spaces like MLS and others, that anger is okay. Black people are often called on to be superhuman, to forgive in a way and at a rate that  white Americans are not asked to do. The same folks who tell us to “get over” slavery and redlining and Jim Crow are allowed their hurt.

I am angry. Finally allowing myself to feel maladjusted to state violence and gross inequality–to feel the rage that had always been there–is what spurred me to finally act last August.

At UU Multicultural Leadership School, we sang. Some sang because of sadness, and others due to joy. Often the music was loud and festive. I sang because of anger. Whatever the reasons, twenty youth and young adult Unitarian Universalists of color lifted our voices and sang—and my heart, at last, rang.

The following statement comes from individual UU religious professionals of color, and reflects the views of the undersigned.

We, the undersigned Unitarian Universalist religious professionals of color, wish to express our support and solidarity with those who have been marginalized, brutalized and systematically oppressed by the government agencies of Baltimore, MD. We firmly denounce the institutionalized systems of racial and economic violence–including police torture and mass incarceration–that has targeted black and poor communities in Baltimore for decades.

The uprising that has come from the senseless death of Freddie Gray results from years of a pattern that, sadly, is not only seen in Baltimore, but in other cities with large black and brown populations such as Oakland, New York, Sanford, Tulsa and Chicago. This pervasive, vicious system operates in every state and region. Our hearts are broken like the system in which we live, and we seek to respond to the unrest with compassion, love, and a commitment to systemic change.

While we gather in solidarity with the oppressed, we are also deeply troubled by our own Unitarian Universalist Association and any religious body that has little or no response to Baltimore.

We honor our individual colleagues who choose to show up in their communities with minimal national support. We particularly call on the UUA to reevaluate its national prophetic voice after participating in the recent commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the events at Selma. Sanford, Ferguson, New York, Baltimore… these are our Selma. The time is past… we people of faith must gather with the beaten, the murdered and the oppressed.

We gather together with all of the people who protest, march and cry for freedom and we honor the memories of all those members of our human family: Oscar Grant, Rekia Boyd, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Mya Hall, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and too many others whose names do not make the sensationalist media; who have died at the hands of racist oppression. You have not died in vain. We Stand, March, Resist and Fight FOR and ON the Side of LOVE.

***EDIT*****
Here is the link to UUA President Peter Morales’s statement on the uprising in Baltimore, which quotes this letter:
https://www.uua.org/news/press-release/statement-events-baltimore

In faith and love,

Amanda Weatherspoon
Rev. Sofia Betancourt
Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt
Kamila A. Jacob
Aisha Hauser
Rev. Danielle Di Bona
Adam Dyer
Yuri Yamamoto
Kenny Wiley
Rev. Maricris Vlassidis Burgoa
Rev. Angela Henderson
Rev. Marisol Caballero
Om Prakash
Ranwa Hammamy
Rev. Joan Javier-Duval
Rev. Jamil Scott, I.O.B.M.
Rev. Alma Faith Crawford
Kimberly R. Hampton
Rev. Leela Sinha
Theresa I. Soto
Michael Macias
Rev. Sunshine Jeremiah Wolfe
Rev. Mitra Rahnema
Rev. Leslie Takahashi
Rev. Chris Long, Madison, WI
Lindasusan Ulrich
Kevin Alan Mann, Starr King School for the Ministry MDiv Candidate
Clyde Grubbs, community minister, Boston, MA
Jorge Espinel, Ministerio Latino, CLF
Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti
Rev. Pamela Wat
Rev. Qiyamah Rahman
Rev. Wendy Pantoja
Rev. Summer Albayati-Krikeche
Rev. Archene Turner
Rev. Addae Ama Kraba
Rev. Lauren Smith
Rev. Abhi Janamanchi
Rev. Bill Sinkford
Rev.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/chalice.jpg

“If, while I hear the wild shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth, am I not guilty?”
–Lucy Stone

In the Denver community I strive to be a racial justice activist. Whenever I introduce myself in justice circles, I say that my Unitarian Universalist faith informs my work. “My faith,” I have said, “calls me to proclaim that black lives matter—that my life matters.”
Deep down I’ve been asking myself: Is that true? I knew that I felt called; was it Unitarian Universalism calling me here? The questions lingered even as dozens of UUs joined me at Denver’s ‘Selma Sunday’ gathering of 275, and as hundreds descended upon Alabama to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the deaths of Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, and James Reeb.

The doubts remained because of the hateful and/or ignorant comments some Unitarian Universalists have sent my way since I joined the racial justice movement. The doubts remained because of the silence and seeming indifference I’ve felt from some of my fellow UUs, even as others have gotten quite involved.

I needed a Unitarian Universalist Black Lives Matter theology. I needed more than the First Principle—I needed to dive into our history and our theology and find the deeds, words, and voices that could help me feel theologically grounded in racial justice work. In The Larger Hope, Russell Miller writes, “When Universalists opposed to slavery first undertook to launch a campaign to [stop] it, one of their first steps was to cast back over their own history to find support.”

The first of the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism reads: Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Some UU religious educators refer to the first principle as “the principle we remember.” Indeed, it’s the one we so often invoke as we tell confused friends about our faith. We believe every person is important! It’s beautiful, and simple, and too often not quite true. The story we tell about ourselves, the story we have told about ourselves, and the story we tell ourselves, all have a deeper, more somber truth.

They are stories we have been telling for centuries. In 1846, the periodical Universalist Miscellany said that belief in the brotherhood of all humanity was “one of the distinguishing excellencies of Universalism.”
“However remote we may live from each other, however different our complexions, we are family,” the Miscellany contended. Despite such rosy proclamations, nineteenth-century Universalists and Unitarians were largely reticent about involvement in abolitionist work.

When confronted with white, privileged Unitarian Universalists derailing the ‘Black Lives Matter’ message with statements like “all lives matter!” or “I don’t get why black people are so angry all the time,” the first principle starts to feel like a lie. A deep dive into the archives of our Universalist and Unitarian ancestors—and of our nation’s history—unearths a more profound explanation.

Like the Declaration of Independence and the preamble of the Constitution, the first principle of Unitarian Universalism stands as an unrealized promise. It is a map of the work done centuries and decades ago, and a map of the work yet to do. The first principle operates as what UU and Harvard Divinity professor Dan McKanan calls “radical hope.” “Radical hope,” McKanan writes in his book Prophetic Encounters, “transcends the institutions of present-day society, but it does not transcend the laws of physical or human nature. It looks to the future, not to heaven.”

In America there have always been those willing to follow the roadmap, to look, as McKanan says, to the future–beyond immediate comforts–and insist that the statements held in our founding documents meant more work needed to be done. In the nineteenth century Frederick Douglass asked, “What, to the American slave, is the Fourth of July?” Sojourner Truth, who fought for rights for black men and all women–and encountered exclusion from both–insisted: “Ain’t I a woman?”

Decades later, as Jim Crow coalesced in the South and the privileged entrenched economic inequality in the North, W.E.B. Du Bois wondered aloud, “How does it feel to be a problem?” In the wake of the civil rights movement, Dr. Vincent Harding said he was “a resident of a country that did not yet exist.”

It is on the shoulders of those willing to strive for what the Constitution’s preamble calls “a more perfect Union,” and those Universalists and Unitarians who strived for a more perfect faith, that I find a ‘Black Lives Matter’ theological framework.

In 1812, the Universalist Magazine wrote vehemently that it was “utterly impossible to reconcile slavery with the pure doctrines of Christianity.”
In October 1845, 170 Unitarian ministers signed the “Protest Against American Slavery,” published in the abolitionist newspaper “The Liberator.” In it the ministers condemned their own reticence to engage, referring to harm done “by the long silence of northern Christians and churches. We must speak against [slavery] in order not to speak in its support.”
Lydia Maria Child said of systemic racism, slavery, and segregation, “The removal of this prejudice is not a matter of opinion—it is a matter of duty.”

The nineteenth-century Universalists and Unitarians who worked to denounce slavery fought three battles: the battle to end slavery, the battle against silence from within the congregations, and the battle against their own prejudices. We fight the similar struggles today.
In the early and mid-nineteenth century, the majority of Unitarians and Universalists were not actively engaged in the abolitionist movement. Those willing to attempt fully living out their espoused values pushed their colleagues and religious siblings to eventual understanding and greater action. Taquiena Boston and others call this “leading from the margins.”

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought Jim Crow segregation and, again, silence from too many churches. Neither stopped black woman and Unitarian Fannie B. Williams from saying, in 1893, “It should be the province of religion to unite, and not to separate, men and women according to the superficial differences of race lines.”
Denominational fear and ambivalence in 1953 did not stop the white minister A. Powell Davies from proclaiming, “I shall myself…not eat a meal in any restaurant in [Washington D.C.] that will not serve meals to Negroes. I invite all who truly believe in human brotherhood to do the same.”

Tragic indifference from fellow clergy about Jimmie Lee Jackson’s February 1965 murder did not stop James Reeb from traveling to Selma. Finding some of her religious siblings unaware of the horrors facing blacks in America did not stop Viola Liuzzo from making the same journey.

In 2014, that many Unitarian Universalists had (and have) yet to dive into the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement did not stop Elizabeth Nguyen from joining a Christmas Eve vigil against police brutality across from the Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart in which unarmed black male John Crawford was murdered. It did not stop UU teenagers in Denver from marching down Colfax Avenue and demanding justice.

It has not stopped Leslie Butler MacFadyen from organizing nationally to assist protestors from Oakland to Ferguson to Philadelphia. It did not stop the UU Congregation of Columbia, Maryland from calling the nearby, historically black St. John Baptist Church about co-planning a vigil against police violence. It has not stopped Raziq Brown from challenging a racially biased police system in Fort Worth.

To fight for black lives now is to participate in radical hope. It is to battle for salvation on this Earth. It is to fight for life, for love, for justice. It is to demand more out of the first principle. It is to demand a more perfect faith.

Most of us in the faith are here because we felt welcome—at last–here. Some of us were too agnostic somewhere else. Some of us weren’t vindictive enough somewhere else. We were too working-class somewhere else. We were too lesbian somewhere else. We were too nerdy somewhere else, too introverted somewhere else, too gay-married somewhere else.

Many of us are here because this faith and the people in it affirmed: you may not be perfect, but your life matters just the same.

That’s what’s on the line now. Through racism and posthumous victim-blaming, through silence and bullets and indifference and vilification, black people are being told that our lives do not matter—or that they matter only conditionally. Black lives matter if. If we are educated. If we are respectful. If.
And sometimes, not even then do our lives matter.

Right now we as Unitarian Universalists are being called to act. We are being called by our ancestors–those who insisted, who demanded that we help end slavery, that we fight for suffrage, that we join the struggle to end Jim Crow, that we listen to and honor Black Power. Lydia Maria Child and William Lloyd Garrison are calling us. Lucy Stone is calling us. Fannie B. Williams and Frances Ellen Harper are calling us. James Reeb is calling us. Viola Liuzzo is calling us.

Guided by that principle—that enduring, unfulfilled promise of the belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person–ours is a faith that has said, or worked to say to those who have been marginalized:
You are a woman, and your life matters just the same.
You are gay or lesbian, and your life matters just the same.
You are transgender, and your life matters just the same.
You are bisexual, and your life matters just the same.
You have a disability, and your life matters just the same.
You were not loved as a child, and your life matters just the same.
You struggle with depression, and your life matters just the same.

Right now we are being called—by our ancestors, by our principles, by young black activists across the country—to promote and affirm:
You are young and black, and your life matters just the same.
You stole something, and your life matters just the same.
I have been taught to fear you, and your life matters just the same.
The police are releasing your criminal record, and your life matters just the same.
They are calling you a thug, and your life matters just the same.

Wayne Arnason said, “The way is often hard; the path is never clear, and the stakes are high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth. You are not alone.”

Our ancestors, principles, and fellow humans are calling on us to promote affirm, with deeds and words: Black lives matter just the same.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/10991628_10155262139080545_5512312365118343623_o.jpg

I’m a millennial young adult. Why I still believe in faith community, and in Unitarian Universalism

Fort Worth. Seattle. Denver. Arlington. Columbia, Missouri. Five of us, young adults from across the South and West, huddled in the Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Church office at one in the morning and strategized for the big Sunday morning service just hours away.

As I looked at each face, all betraying exhaustion yet each still filled with determination, a simple message permeated the room.

We’ve got this.

Oh home, let me come home
Home is wherever I’m with you

All weekend our worship quintet, along with the event’s general leadership team and fifty other young adults, had been working to build community at our Winter Gathering—no easy task considering attendees’ birth years ranged from 1979, or the year of Village People and Gloria Gaynor, to 1996, when Coolio’s ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ ruled the airwaves.

In Unitarian Universalism much has been made about the dearth of YA programming, with graduating high school folks feeling they are not being “bridged out” of youth group, but rather “pushed off a cliff,” with little support waiting for them. Youth rallies and “cons” touched their souls; adult worship services too often leave them cold.

Trying to build a young adult worship community—or else a spiritual space truly welcoming to young adults–has always been a challenge. We’ve read the articles. Millennials are less likely to go to church, to identify as religious, and to believe in God. Often our generation gets blamed for our absence from religious spaces. We’re told that we are too focused on our cell phones and individual lives to aim for anything greater.

It’s easy to believe such statements, to accept them as fact—even as members of this generation. Often we are quick to believe the worst about one another, and ourselves. Perhaps, though, we ought to heed wisdom from one of my generation’s favorite movie characters, The Lion King’s Rafiki, and “look harder.”

Four months ago a team of young adults–some of whom had, prior to the event, never met–united virtually and planned worships, justice actions, workshops, discussions on religious covenant, and more. Over fifty people took time away from their families to travel to the Houston area on the weekend after Christmas, and to make a statement: we are about something.

The late men’s basketball coach Jimmy Valvano said, “If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.” And so, for three days, we did. It was an unapologetically spiritual, religious space. We danced, we laughed, we stayed up late. We sang ‘Amazing Grace’ tearfully arm-in-arm at midnight, and ‘I’m On A Boat’ at 1:30 am another night. Both were spiritual experiences for many.

We listened as people found their voices, in some cases for the first time in years. Those who loved their voices were encouraged to use them less. We were called to action, to live out our UU values, and to work for environmental, racial, and economic justice. We struggled through covenant building and then through covenant following. We discussed body image and sexuality and mental health. What most of us found was something profoundly messy, and imperfect, and beautiful.
Many of us, we found grace. We found hope. And through struggle, we found home—or the beginnings of it.

That word—home–undergirded our time together.  For many in our age range, home eludes us. Perhaps we have gone away to school. We are where we grew up, and it no longer feels like home. We may not be fully welcome at home anymore, or we have grown beyond it. We are forging new homes with families and friends of our own.
 
Oh home, let me come home
Home is wherever I’m with you

It was this exploration of home that brought five Unitarian Universalist young adults together, poring over worship outlines at one in the morning as friends danced the Wobble two rooms over. Our goal was to bring two messages to the suburban Houston congregation the next morning.

The first message, the stated theme of the service, was to lift up the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, to call for more Unitarian Universalists to join the struggle, and to make a case that racial justice has always been about the quest for black Americans, and other folks of color, to find home in the midst of discrimination.
Speaking truths at home, as Jesus did at the synagogue in Nazareth and Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni did/do right here in America, likely means being hated and reviled. We argued that we must combat such hatred with support and love and solidarity.

Our second message—our latent statement of purpose—was, to quote another seminal millennial film, to bring it. Through song and impassioned readings and poems and story and laughter and silent meditation and fiery preaching, we strived to show what multigenerational, multicultural worship can do. Can be. Can feel like. Worship—and faith community more generally– can do more than make us think—it can make us laugh, make us cry, make us sing.

Worship can call us to action, call us to justice, call us home.

Home was never meant to be easy.

Our faith is hard. People who don’t or can’t agree, who struggle to understand one another, nevertheless stay together and covenant together.

Through these experiences—an oft-challenging yet ultimately rewarding young adult gathering, and a YA-led, boomer-musically-supported Sunday morning service full of tears, laughs, and energy—I find myself with some hopes for Unitarian Universalism going forward.

I hope that when we come together, we bring our whole selves, and not just our minds. I hope we heed Emerson’s warning in his 1838 Divinity School Address, about the preacher in the snow storm:

I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more…A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it.

Emerson believed “The true preacher can be known…that he deals out to the people his life,–life passed through the fire of thought.”
May we bring our minds and willingness to reason; may we also bring a willingness to laugh, to weep, to dance, to share our stories. May we truly come alive. May we bring a willingness to listen and be silent together.  May we be willing to make some noise. May we be willing to work for justice and change our ways when needed.
When we do these things, tough as they are, there’s little we can’t achieve.

Home was never meant to be easy. Home is hard work. All over, Unitarian Universalists of all ages and races and backgrounds are working to find home. To build home–together.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/photo3.jpg

Some of what’s said at protests makes me uncomfortable. Why, as a leader, It’s not my job to “police” others’ anger

My maternal grandfather, the late Oscar Stewart, served seventeen years as the chief of police at Texas Christian University. A black man in charge of the TCU campus police force, the flags at TCU flew at half-staff when he died, in 2013. While in college I drove to Fort Worth and spent a weekend with him. We played a couple rounds of golf, his favorite post-basketball pastime; on the course we ran into some of his white former police colleagues. They shook my hand and, laughing, told me to root for Missouri less–and TCU more. I was 20, six feet tall, and black, yet those chuckling white, Texas-accented men on the golf course made no attempt to make me feel less human.

I struggle when I hear protestors chant “fuck the police.” I struggle when all cops get thrown under the proverbial bus. I understand, though, where that feeling comes from. My life experience–having lots of white friends and being treated mostly well in society–must not be used, by myself or anyone else, as a weapon against other black and brown folks speaking their truths.
Since Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown on August 9^th, I’ve emerged as one of Denver’s leaders in the fight to end systemic police violence and brutality. We’ve held rallies, forums, protests at grocery stores, and marches through the streets.

You name it, and we’ve heard it. There are those who believe in respectability politics—that “black people must love ourselves before the police or white people can love us.” There are those who want us to “be more like Martin and less like Malcolm.” We are often implored to “stop killing each other first.” Self-proclaimed leaders have called for calm, for us not to show too much passion, because it will scare moderate white people away from our side.

And we’ve heard that all police are evil, that voting is useless, that black pastors are worthless, that “we should be openly violent in return.”

Never mind that calm protest has never changed anything. Never mind that black people who kill other black people get thrown in jail, unlike cops who kill unarmed teenagers. Never mind that we needed both Dr. King and Malcolm X, and that they were not as far apart as their posthumous caricatures suggest. Never mind that passionate nonviolent protest—and, frankly, the looting—is what made Ferguson into a national story in the first place.

This is not an argument for moderation. We have had enough of that.

Those of us with a propensity towards moderation—towards decorum, towards respectability—I implore you–us–to hold it in. Black people are being killed. This is no time to be calm. This is a time to disrupt, a time to move beyond silence.
Some have called on myself and other leaders to “control the message” at these events. We have our opinions on what works best, but rather than unilaterally deciding, I invite a broader, truly democratic conversation on best practices.

As soon as we in leadership positions tell other people how to feel, we are lost.
If you don’t like “fuck the police” as a chant, get some friends together and start “black lives matter.” If large numbers of people would rather chant the former, be honest with yourself that maybe that’s not the rally for you. That’s okay. There are events at which I don’t feel comfortable.

And lastly, to my white protesting family: By now, you’ve likely read articles about why “all lives matter” isn’t the point. Black lives are the ones in question. I ask you, here, to evaluate how often you take the bullhorn or microphone. If you’re frustrated with black people who don’t seem radical enough, remember that we are more likely to have police retaliate against us and/or keep us in jail longer.

But at an event, I’m not going to tell you what to do. If you want to do that work on your own, it will be warmly welcomed.

It is often said that we have to work together for this movement to work. Indeed. But “working together” doesn’t mean silencing anyone who disagrees with us. Working together doesn’t mean men silencing women. Working together doesn’t mean older civil rights activists running over younger ones. Working together doesn’t mean white people taking the mic or otherwise telling black folks how to respond.

Working together means understanding not just how each of us is disadvantaged but also how we are privileged. Working together means knowing when to talk, and when to listen. Working together means having hard conversations.

I am a moderate protester. It is an honor to march with ‘radicals’ as well as (relative) conservatives. We are showing up, and it’s a start—though we have more work to do, both within and without.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/10325296_880371905313952_3843724509388956683_n.jpg

“Dad, what in the world am I supposed to say to him? He talks to world leaders!”
“How about ‘hello’?”
I sat at a table with my father at a Washington, D.C. restaurant, but eating felt like an impossibility. Nerves overtook me. I felt sick.

In an hour, I’d be meeting the president of the United States.

Never had I been more nervous. My dad, a former Clinton employee from the late 70s, had received an invitation to the White House from his old boss. All of eleven, I joined him.

As a child my friends read comics; I read little history books. Children’s stories of civil rights leaders, of women like Ida B. Wells and Susan B. Anthony, and American icons littered my room. The women and men in those stories kept me up at night. How did Harriet Tubman not lose hope? How did Rosa Parks get her courage? What gave FDR strength?

Maybe most children don’t pore over books about women’s suffrage, but nearly every young person spends time dreaming of heroes.

Back then I made little distinction between mainstream, elected leaders—like President Clinton—and those who challenged the status quo, often at great cost.

After meeting President Clinton in the Oval Office, I decided I’d go into politics. I wanted to be, I told my mom, a “real-life superhero.” And, as I became a teenager, even through bouts of severe depression, that hope persisted.

In my sophomore year of high school Spider-Man 2 came out; one scene still gives me chils. Many know it as the ‘Aunt May scene.’ Peter Parker asks her why a neighborhood boy, Henry, wants to be Spider-Man. She replies:

He knows a hero when he sees one. Too few characters out there flying around like that, saving old girls like me. And Lord knows, kids like Henry need a hero. Courageous, self-sacrificing people. Setting examples for all of us. Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. And years later, they’ll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them how to hold on a second longer.
I believe there’s a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.

“I believe there’s a hero in all of us.” It’s that line that has, over the years, kept me believing. But Aunt May got a couple things wrong.

When a person is truly courageous and self-sacrificing, they draw disdain, even rage. Everyone may love Dr. King now—or, at least, love to quote him, no matter their political views—but in life, many reviled him. When Dr. King spoke out against the war in Vietnam, other black leaders criticized him, and President Johnson felt betrayed.

A hero cannot be in it because she wants people to line up for her, cheer her, scream her name. Whether it’s in comics or in real human rights movements, heroes are not celebrated. Heroes are despised. Heroes are ignored and, so often, unknown. And sometimes, heroes are killed.

To be a hero means speaking truth to power. Heroes advocate for freedom, not the status quo; for hope, not hate; for the presence of justice, not the absence of tension. Heroes call us to be better versions of ourselves.

Here at the end of 2014, I find myself, again, dreaming of heroes. I look around at the public sphere and, at first glance, I don’t see many. The actions of officials—local and state—in Missouri surrounding the Ferguson situation have been troubling. A ‘peace’ “won” with tanks and riot gear is no peace at all. Too many appear more interested in policing the actions of poor and working-class blacks than with working with them to help improve their lives.

While politicians get the credit, they have almost never been the true heroes. The Kennedy brothers and Johnson were good-hearted men—men who waited a long time to get involved in civil rights issues. They did so because they were pushed and prodded, by Dr. King and by thousands of others. Black people (and a few white ones) were being attacked and sometimes lynched, and yet they waited, because they feared losing the South.

I met one of my childhood heroes, Bill Clinton. I later learned he was willing to hurt people by cutting (though he called it reforming) welfare. He was willing to compromise and buy into—or at least not challenge–myths about people, from poor blacks to folks in the LGBT community—to score political victories.
Mr. Clinton was incredibly kind to me in the White House that day in 1999. By most accounts, he genuinely loves people. But is he a hero? Is Barack Obama? Are any politicians? I’m not sure.

I don’t think (most) politicians are evil. Politics is complicated, and messy, and requires compromise. Yet I still dream of heroes.

And if we look harder, we will find them—being shouted at, harassed online, and ignored or shamed or misunderstood by the public. There’s one other thing Aunt May got wrong: heroes need not give up their dreams. Heroes inspire us to join their dreams.

Frederick Douglass dreamed of a day when black folks could truly celebrate the Fourth of July. Sojourner Truth dreamed her society might answer her “Yes!” when she asked, “Ain’t I a woman?” Mary White Ovington dreamed her white people such as herself would join the struggle for racial equality. Ida B. Wells dreamed of a nation without lynching. James Weldon Johnson dreamed we might ‘Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.’ At the March on Washington, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson implored Dr. King to “tell ’em about the dream, Martin.”

And today: sportswriter Jessica Luther dreams of a sports world without intimate partner violence and with people in power who believe the victims. Elon James White dreams that men will take responsibility for their public actions. Anita Sarkeesian and others dream of a gaming community less hostile to women.

The day after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, I scoured the Internet every five minutes to see if someone in Denver had organized a vigil or protest to honor Mr. Brown’s life. I checked church websites and searched on Twitter. Nothing. Finally, I saw one. I tweeted out seeing if anyone would join us in a peaceful vigil.

A few people responded. We’d meet near Civic Center Park. I told my roommate Kierstin about it, and ten minutes later, she came downstairs with markers and posters. “Let’s make signs.”

That first night, there were nine of us out there. Numerous cars honked their support. Two people heckled us. Bolstered by Kierstin’s support, we kept tweeting. A few days later, over 100 showed up for a vigil. A few days later we held a march through Denver in solidarity with the Ferguson protestors, at least 300 strong.

On those days, and many since, Kierstin has been a hero. I’ve met many others. They are not famous. Many do not have official titles and positions. But from them I have learned: heroism means showing up. Heroism means pushing officials to do better, to be better, to build a more inclusive world.

Our country, our world–we need leadership. We need heroes. This can be done without hating the “other side.” It can be done through love, even of our adversaries. But it cannot be done without the willingness to be despised, to be heckled, to be ignored.

After all this time, I still dream of heroes. And despite the hateful rhetoric, despite the fear that rules so many, I still believe there’s a hero in all of us.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/1928301_27566655544_7082_n.jpg

“Man, I don’t have any people. I’m with everybody, Julius.”
–Louie Lastik, Remember the Titans

Wintertime in Houston sneaks up on you. As children we sweated in our Halloween costumes and, some years, played the big Thanksgiving Day basketball game in shorts. That first 40-degree day in early December alerted us it was time to ask our parents for money for Christmas shopping.

It was such a 40-degree day in my ninth year, a Sunday, when an adult said words that still stick with me.
“It means so much that your family worships here with us, Kenneth. It shows how far your people have come.”

Baffled doesn’t quite say it.
I thought the folks at church were my people.

I am a proud lifelong Unitarian Universalist. My roommates will tell you that some days I sing Spirit of Life to myself as I make breakfast. Coming of Age and YRUU summer camps brought me ever-mingled comfort and stress.

I am also black. The struggle for black freedom has long held a grip on my soul. In adolescence not even complicated high school romance got me feeling quite like Toni Morrison and Lorraine Hansberry could.

I love being Unitarian Universalist—I think.
I love being black—I know.

During college I joined a great UU congregation. They were thrilled to have me, and I them. Older adults had me over for dinner and looked out for me on campus. When my mom died, church staff and members alike wrote cards and weren’t afraid to ask me how I was doing.
There were also only two black men active in the church, and the other gentleman’s first name was my last. Though he was older than my father, it took some folks two years to stop getting us confused. Sometimes it was funny and sometimes it hurt, but it always reminded me that I was not fully at home.

In Soul Work: Anti-racist Theologies in Dialogue, UU minister and scholar Rosemary Bray McNatt relays the story of the time she talked for an hour with Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. King.
Mrs. King told Rev. Bray McNatt, “Oh, I went to Unitarian churches for years, even before I met Martin. And Martin and I went to Unitarian churches when we were in Boston.”

Mrs. King continued, “We gave a lot of thought to becoming Unitarian at one time, but Martin and I realized we could never build a mass movement of black people if we were Unitarian.”

The first time I read that, during my failed attempt to do seminary and become a UU minister, tears came down my face like a mighty stream. Night after night I read that passage from Rev. Bray McNatt’s chapter in the book. Night after night I wept.

I cried because I understood. I understood why they would choose to root themselves in a black church, and with a suffering God who could help black people and tell them He would never forsake them or give up on them, even in death.

I teared up also because I’ve often wished I could leave UUism. Sometimes I feel so alone because of race. I need church, though; almost by default, this faith is my religious home. I believe in God, but don’t call God ‘He.’ Unless Jesus somehow finds me, I cannot in good conscience join a Christian church.

Experience has taught me that being black and UU means feeling great most of the time, yet waiting for the next microaggression, the next moment of non-belonging. It is to feel profoundly uncomfortable in the midst of the familiar.

Growing up I needed to figure out how to navigate a mostly white society that accepted me quite warmly, so long as I did little to rock the boat. I had no real black community to help me out, save for a few friends and two extended family members. Talking about race with many white UUs too often means shouldering their insecurities, patiently answering their questions, making the fight for racial justice appear warm and inviting.

It isn’t.

On Facebook I am quite active; on Twitter, I have few followers and mostly listen/read. I follow young adult activists who fight for racial equality, champion black feminism, and struggle for change. Mostly they are people of color, often also members of the LGBTQ community. They are not conciliatory. They regularly call white people out, challenge PoC men’s sexism, and support one another.
They live out theologian Allan Boesak’s words from The Courage to be Black: “No one person has the right to take our life into their hands, and to exercise the power to give our life to us or to withhold it from us.”

For them the way is clear and straightforward, albeit difficult. For them white people, even (or perhaps especially) well-meaning white liberals, mostly get in the way, re-center themselves, and derail conversations. These folks are mostly done with the mainstream society that blindly trusts conventional authority. I mostly agree with their analysis and support them with favorites, retweets, and small financial contributions.

All the community they need is with each other.

Nothing is so straightforward for me. Most people in my life are white. I cannot so easily dismiss them, nor do I want to. White individuals have caused me stress, and others have been there for me. White people have told me awful race jokes I never again want to hear, and white people have marched alongside me at rallies and protests.

Some may read this as internalized racial oppression. It is. I am shaped by my upbringing. Many privileged black folks revel in being accepted by white America, in opting out of blackness (see: Raven Symone and Pharrell). I want no such thing. I am black and proud; being authentically black, for me, means something a bit different.

When Mike Brown was killed by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in August, something fundamentally shifted within. I felt called to act, to organize rallies and vigils in Denver.

Planning those rallies terrified me, but not because I feared the inevitable white backlash. I worried that I wasn’t “black enough.” I thought my being a Unitarian Universalist would put me on the margins of the movement.

I was wrong.

A black, Christian pastor I met at a Denver rally said to me, “As long as you’re not ashamed of your blackness, you can be one of them and one of us at the same time.”

And so it is.

At rallies for racial justice in Denver, UU ministers and laypeople have shown up. I have looked out and seen “my people.” They are black folks and white UUs.

This is, it seems, less true nationally. Our faith has a complicated racial history, and a less than stellar record on race presently. St. Louis-area UUs put out a call for ministers and UUs to come to Ferguson, to be present for Ferguson October. Some, like Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley and Rev. Julie Taylor, were there and proved vital. But not enough.

Hundreds of UUs are planning to go to Selma, AL in March 2015 for the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed writes in The Selma Awakening that, after years of absence, UUs came through and journeyed to Selma. Rev. Morrison-Reed argues that in Selma, “Unitarian Universalists’ values in practice snapped into alignment with their espoused values.”

Last summer I went to Selma as part of a moving road trip through the South. With a friend I walked from Brown Chapel to the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a muggy June evening. On the way we stopped at the marker honoring Rev. James Reeb, the white, Unitarian minister from Boston who was killed after answering Dr. King’s call for clergy to come to Selma.

Kneeling in front of Rev. Reeb’s marker drove me—to tears, and to an understanding of history’s importance. Finally, after ignoring the race problem for years, we showed up in Selma. But fifty years later, if we UUs show up in Selma in 2015 but not in Ferguson right now, and not for all those black and brown victims of police violence in the sadly inevitable future, we will not have learned from our past.

The harrowing truth is that I could be the next Mike Brown. My household had two parents. I have a college degree and a job. My pants don’t sag. When I’m out protesting or canvassing, though, none of that matters. I cannot opt out of blackness, and I do not want to. In the wrong situation, though, my respectable nature may not save me—from a racist police officer or citizen, nor from the ensuing character assassination. I would go from the decent, reasonably friendly guy some of you know to a mentally deranged (I have depression) Harvard dropout who was “no angel” and deserved what he got.

I know some of my people—black people—would come to my defense. Some UUs and other friends would, too. But would there be a broad movement on my behalf? Or would faith members send my dad and sisters thoughts and prayers before moving on?

These questions keep me up at night.

There are so many things to fight—and fight for—in the world. We mostly do a great job on climate justice and immigration. Our LGBTQ work has saved and changed lives. Black lives, too, are worth fighting for. When the next Ferguson happens—and sadly, it will—we can and must do more. We have to show up, be willing to follow others, and be willing to change ourselves.

Unitarian Universalists, you are my people. And UUs, my ‘other’ people—of which some of you are—need you. We need you to show up. We need you to listen and go beyond platitudes. Not everyone can travel hundreds of miles, but we can all do something—something beyond what we thought we could do. Oct. 22 is National Day Against Police Brutality, and several cities are hosting events.

The next call to action for racial justice has arrived. My people: Will we answer?

My people want to know.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/photo-18.jpg

I have depression.
I am young and black.

These two basic truths of my existence do not directly correlate, nor did the latter clearly cause the former. Yet the statements ought not be separated. I am depressed. To the extent that depression ever has a ‘cause,’ mine is both chemical and situational.

Long have  questions and thoughts about race consumed me—and, for nearly as long, I have wished I could stop caring. During my childhood small books on Rosa Parks, SNCC, and the March on Washington littered my room.

Even as I came of age in mostly white external spaces, from school to church to friend circles, questions of race—of supremacy and history and inequality—did not let me alone. In high school I grappled with black voices across the political spectrum, trying to find my way without a guide. I read books from Toni Morrison, Malcolm X and Shelby Steele, feeling pulled to the left but willing to entertain anyone who would at least discuss race openly.

After a history teacher first pointed me to W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, one sentence brought me, night after night, to tears.

How does it feel to be a problem?

I felt like a problem because I had what my parents called “an obsession with race.”
I felt like a problem because depression had twice nearly killed me.

I was black, depressed, and race-conscious. And few people wanted to talk about any of it.

Even among well-meaning friends, bringing up depression often stops conversations short. People don’t want to say the wrong thing and mentally search for the perfect words. Those of us who suffer learn to speak of it sparingly, and to frame it carefully when it does come up. We share our pain and end up consoling our friends.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

Those who battle depression also fight stigma, of course. We combat feel-good messages of positivity. Just feel better. Think happy thoughts. Think about your past successes.

These suggestions sound ludicrous to us, but we try them anyway—and then feel disgust with ourselves that they didn’t work. Something must be wrong with us, and not with the suggestion.

Those feelings of shame create a culture of silence. Depression becomes our burden to bear twice over. We feel it, alone, before dueling the ensuing shame.

That feeling—that people are okay with knowing that you have depression, as long as you don’t talk about it—mirrors some of what blackness has meant in the post-civil rights era.
It’s okay that I have blackness, as long as I don’t talk about it, or “act black” in any way.

We know the lines:
“If you want racism to end, stop talking about it.”
“I don’t see race.”
“Nobody brings up race except you.”
“Stop bringing race into this.”

Which brings us to Ferguson, Mike Brown, and battling injustices many people can’t, or won’t, see.

Most of what’s transpired in Ferguson, Missouri since Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown on August 9^th has been utterly predictable, from the slandering of his character to the justification of his murder, to the disproportional focus on the looting by a relative handful.

47 percent of white Americans believe race received “too much attention” during the heat of the Ferguson situation (Pew). 37 percent agreed that Brown’s death raised important issues about race. Those of us who took to the streets to protest yet another black death at the hands of police were told to “wait for the facts.”

Don’t make it about race. 

Had Mike Brown been white, he could have acted exactly as he did, store theft, jaywalking and all—and he would almost certainly be alive today. That may not be provable; however, while the Aurora theatre shooter was taken into custody, John Crawford III held a toy gun and was killed in a Wal-Mart.

We speak up and get told we are race-baiters, or opportunists looking for attention. We want to keep racism alive so we can have jobs and get on TV.

Those comments sound a lot like what some say about those who dare speak of their depression. “Attention seeking.” “Wanting the spotlight.” “Not to be taken seriously.”

How does it feel to be a problem?

Talking about being black makes people uncomfortable.
Why do you bring up race so much?

Talking about depression makes people uncomfortable.
Just don’t focus on it, and you’ll feel better.

Talking about inequality makes people uncomfortable.
Stop bringing race into everything.

I once wished I could ignore it. But I will not—and we cannot—any longer be shamed into silence. Rarely does ignoring any issue actually make it go away. Audre Lorde told us her silences had not protected her, and that ours will not protect us.

And so rather than opt for silence, I choose to speak. I choose to speak my truth. My truth is this:
I am depressed. I am depressed because of chemical imbalances in my brain. Medicine and therapy have provided some relief. Friends and ritual have also helped. I am depressed. I likely always will be, to some extent.

I am depressed also because, despite us having a black president and a black attorney general, and despite living in a society where I can play ultimate frisbee with white people and high five white strangers at football games and work at a white church and have lots of white friends, black lives still matter less in America.

I am depressed because I watched many of my friends go blissfully about their lives, seemingly unconcerned as police pointed guns and deployed tear gas against their unarmed fellow citizens.

I am depressed because black men have devalued the moving, vital leadership of black women going back to Sojourner Truth, who said in the mid 19th century, “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women.”

I am depressed because black editor Thomas Fortune’s 1883 words still ring with truth today: “The white man who shoots a negro always goes free, while the negro who steals a hog is sent to the chain gang for ten years.”

I am depressed because those who speak up are labeled as The Problem, while the issue they strive to solve goes unchallenged and often unseen.

Shame is powerful. Depression makes us intimately familiar with shame, with doubt, and with fear. Supremacy, though it no longer requires supremacists to operate, teaches us the same lesson.

Depression and supremacy aren’t satisfied with our shame. They want our silence. And as much as it hurts–as often as we’re told, verbally or otherwise, to shut up, as many times as we curl up and cry or bury our faces in our pillows–we have to keep going.

Audre Lorde said, “only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

At rallies and protests and forums around the country, we are fighting doubt and finding truth—in her voice, and in ours.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/14200_10154479723775545_1217868850074679157_n.jpg

Mike Brown, Ferguson and Injustice

Moments away from addressing the crowd of two hundred, I panicked. Who could I draw upon for inspiration? My mind turned briefly to MLK–which made me feel even worse. Wow, Kenny, I thought to myself. You tweet a few times, co-organize a couple vigils and rallies and now you’re Dr. King. Real humble there, buddy.

Okay, so that wouldn’t work. I went over names and faces in my head. Fannie Lou Hamer. John Lewis. Ella Baker. Bayard Rustin. Dorothy Day.

Names flew by faster and faster. Two hundred-ish of my fellow Denver residents had joined together to honor Mike Brown and other victims of police violence, and to rally for justice and racial equality. I had volunteered to co-organize and to emcee the vigil itself.

Why had I done that again?

I’m just some guy who works at a Unitarian Universalist church. I’m not an ordained minister. I’m not a pastor. I’m not a professional organizer. I have no clerical collar or stoll or robe on—just jeans and a shirt that says “DENVER.”

Many of us, at least in childhood and adolescence, learned narratives about the civil rights movement that went something like this:

There was slavery. Then there was Jim Crow. Thurgood Marshall and Linda Brown challenged school segregation and Rosa Parks stayed seated on a bus. Dr. King led a boycott. Then Dr. King had a dream and led marches in Alabama. He wrote a letter in jail. He was killed for his dream, but segregation died, too.

 Too often we credit a handful of people—Dr. King and Rosa Parks in particular—for the work and sacrifice of untold thousands, even millions, who strived for equality.

This has terrible consequences.

We watch the news or our Twitter feeds and feel horror—horror that another unarmed black person was killed, horror that the deplorable actions of some black youth were used as justification to essentially create a police occupation of a St. Louis suburb, horror that too many of our colleagues and former classmates and even family members seem more interested in focusing on what Mike Brown might have done to ‘deserve’ being murdered than in the killing itself.

We watch yet another slander of a dead person of color and we are filled with frustration, filled with anger, filled with rage.

And then that vicious thought bubbles up, the thought that sends us back to the other room, back into our seats, back onto our Netflix queue:

There’s nothing I can do. I feel so helpless.

We think this because somewhere along the way we internalized the notion that a few people make history happen while everyone else watches. And so we scroll through social media and flip through newspapers, waiting for official statements from our ministers, from our elected officials. We wait for someone to ‘fix it.’

We don’t have to wait.

While many around the country waited for President Obama and Governor Nixon to make statements on the situation in Ferguson, local leaders like Alderman Antonio French spoke out and documented events on the ground. A hundred years from now, schoolchildren will know Obama’s name. They probably won’t know French’s name.

But this week, to that community and to those following the developments around the world, who has been more important? Whose actions have mattered more?

And so moments before the Denver vigil began, as my legs shook and the media members’ cameras prepared to roll, it was on Antonio French—and the protestors and mourners in Ferguson, Denver and nationwide—that my mind landed to glean inspiration. Antonio French cared about his community and did what he could—document and witness the events on the ground. The people who showed up at #NMOS14 vigils in Denver and all over the country, we did what we could: we showed up. We made signs. We answered questions and spoke our truths into the cameras.

I told my terrified, pre-vigil self: I’m not Dr. King. I’m not Fannie Lou Hamer. I’m not an ordained pastor and I don’t organize for a living. My co-organizers and I can sing okay (or okayish, in my case) and give decent TV interviews and take down emails.

And that’s okay. I’m somebody, and I care. 

Not all of us can plan or attend rallies. Not all of us want to chant. A good close friend said to me after the vigil, “I care about inequality too, but fighting racism isn’t my leading cause. Mine is battling stigma around mental illness.”

Everyone—everyone—can do something about racial injustice, in their own ways. My friend, when he becomes a therapist, can understand that the black woman who schedules an appointment with him may be battling not just depression, but also sexism, racism and the damaging stereotype that all black women can handle anything and don’t have problems.

We can challenge our friends. We can practice empathy. We can pay attention. We can educate ourselves about inequality. We can learn that ending racism is not black Americans’ fight or Latino/a Americans’ fight or Asian Americans’ fight but must become America’s fight—especially white Americans’ fight. We can review hiring practices and seek out different information sources. We can challenge our own notions.

And we can keep our gaze on the situation in Ferguson and connect it to a broader system of injustice. We can channel the anonymous elderly woman who, when a car driver during the Montgomery bus boycott offered her a ride, declined, saying “I’m not walking for me. I’m walking for my children and my grandchildren.”

She did what she could.

So can we.

Attached media: https://kennywileydotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/bvcwh_xcqail44q-jpg-large.jpeg

“Darnell! It’s so good to see you, honey. Give me a hug.”
My plate of collared greens, cornbread and two kinds of casserole still minutes away, I had only the glass of sweet tea to feebly distract me from the table to our immediate left.
Darnell, a young black man, had emerged from the kitchen, cleaning supplies and all,  at a popular diner in downtown Oxford, MS–much to the delight of the middle-aged white woman I’d only been vaguely aware of thirty seconds prior.

I had previously noticed the man who turned out to be Darnell. He’d looked tired, even bored–but now his expression looked intimately familiar, as though he’d studied my face to learn its proper form. As the woman talked excitedly to him and introduced him to her group, tears approached my eyes. Her warmth and her friendliness reminded me of my now-deceased mother, and, at first glance, showed how far America has come from the days of Jim Crow. Fifty years is a long time, I thought.

And then I kept looking–at the woman, at her table, at Darnell, at the patrons in the restaurant, at our nation–and the question, sitting everywhere and waiting to be acknowledged, found me.

How long, really, is fifty years?

I left Denver Monday morning, June 2, with my friend Jen. We stayed a night in Oklahoma City before driving to Arkansas and beginning our tour through the South. Jen and I–twenty-somethings, a white woman and a black man–started with a pretty specific itinerary and ideas about what we’d find.
Over the ensuing thirteen days, we walked through parks and museums, looked at statues and rivers, and wandered small towns and big cities. Our reasons for going were complementary yet not identical, which worked for us.

I grew up “southern-ish,” spending my first fourteen years in the Houston metro area and my college days at the University of Missouri. Living in Denver and Boston helped teach me that neither the history of racial discrimination nor its present effects are limited to the South. Yet I suspected that I might find in Montgomery and Birmingham answers, and questions, that I wouldn’t find in Houston or Columbia.

And so we journeyed. The question–how long is fifty years?– proved omnipresent.

We didn’t need to travel the South to know this, but even so: America has changed. A young black man and a young white woman toured the South without major incident. We clicked with a white historian at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery and danced to an unforgettable cover of ‘Proud Mary’ with an integrated, middle-aged crowd on Beale Street in Memphis.
We toured famous black Baptist churches, large UU congregations, and worshipped at a black Bible church. We walked the elaborate, glitzy National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and stood alone in Money, Mississippi, at the marker where Emmett Till was abducted and killed in 1955.
We stayed with a white mentor of mine in Oklahoma City and a black mentor of mine in Little Rock. We took photos for white families in Athens and black families in the Smokies. We stayed with a black rower in Clemson and a white basketball stud in Atlanta. An older white woman offered me a tissue as I teared up inside the elder King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.

And fifty-two years after James Meredith overcame a violent scene to become the first black student to enroll at Ole Miss, Jen and I sat in the Oxford, MS diner with white and black Ole Miss football players eating together on one side of us, and, among others, the woman who so liked Darnell on the other.

I looked at Jen and knew she, too, had her eyes on the scene. We’d found it: the personification of post-racial America. Then I shook my head and looked around. Patrons filled nearly all the restaurant’s tables, yet the only visibly black folks in the place were Darnell, myself, and an Ole Miss football player. I again looked at Darnell’s face, and again registered the familiarity of his facial expression.

His expression was a mask, a mask I put on too often.
At once, I understood: fifty years is a long time, but it’s not long enough.

The 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery did not start right at the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, famously the site of Bloody Sunday. They began less than a mile away, at Brown Chapel A.M.E. church.
The marker at the church reads:
The demonstration that led to the most important advance in civil rights for millions of Black Americans began here March 21, 1965…This is a tribute to those who planned, encouraged, marched, were jailed, beaten, and died to change Black Americans from second class to first class citizens.

Brown Chapel stands in a mostly black housing project on, predictably, MLK Street. The walk hundreds made for freedom fifty years ago is now littered, metaphorically and otherwise, with evidence that the march both lifted millions up, and left millions behind. So many of us in suburbia grew up looking at pictures of the Brown Chapel steps in textbooks. Freedom was won there, we were told. The view out from the steps narrates a far more complex tale.

We walked silently from the church steps down MLK Street, past the James Reeb memorial and over to the Pettus bridge. Walking over the river and under the bride’s infamous sign, the font unchanged in fifty years, brought me more than goosebumps and tears. Darnell’s mask–my mask–swam to the front of my mind. The mask and the shoddy neighborhood surrounding Brown Chapel; the bridge and the simplistic tale of civil rights permeating our country’s racial discourse; my own racial frustrations and the disdain some people in my life have for me whenever I mention them–everything felt connected.

We grow up being told that racism is a matter of the mind and heart. Being racist is an individual action. Racists are somewhere, and someone, else. Racism, and racists, are mostly a thing of the past. And we grow up learning that Rosa Parks and Dr. King challenged white folks’ hearts and changed them. It’s clear that things are different, and we must acknowledge that. Jen and I can travel together, tour SEC campuses together, and sit on the steps of the Alabama state capitol together. Fifty years is a long time.

Fifty years has gotten us here: to the mask I saw on Darnell and know well myself. We are welcome, conditionally. We’re welcome in mainstream society, and welcomed, if. We’re welcome if our diction is like mine. We’re welcome if we smile a lot. We’re welcome if we don’t show anger. We’re welcome if we assimilate, if we don’t speak up too much or talk too loud. So many black folks are never given the tools to learn or the education to make it, and then people ask why they never made it, why they won’t do anything with their lives.

The next fifty years won’t automatically bring improvement. Contrary to popular belief, racism won’t end “one funeral at a time,” as ‘old racists’ die off. The next fifty years won’t be about the racial prejudice in our hearts or in our minds. The next fifty years will be about the racism in our policies, in our housing laws, in our school zones. Most of us don’t hate each other anymore–we just don’t know each other. We don’t understand each other.

And as someone who spends a lot of time as the only black person in spaces, I wear a mask. I wear a mask that talks sports and The West Wing, 90’s TV shows and Star Wars. My mask smiles often and patiently explains why something hurt me. My mask loves ultimate and doesn’t mind that I’m one of a handful of black players. My mask isn’t a lie, but it’s far from the whole truth.

I wear the mask to hide my loneliness, my weariness at always sticking out, my sadness that my attempts to change things get cast as race-baiting or ‘holding onto the past.’ I wear the mask to get along, to get through the days and weeks. I wear the mask because, in a strange way, it’s comfortable. I know it well, and it knows me.

The mask, which some black folks know well and I suspect Darnell at Ole Miss had on, gets to come off sometimes. It comes off when I talk with a handful of friends, most of them black. It comes off when I call my Aunt Michelle, a professor in California. And it came off in Selma, halfway between Brown Chapel and the Pettus Bridge, as I wept in front of the memorial for Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister who was killed trying to help the march.

What we have to fight–redlining, police brutality, microaggressions, sexism, educational inequality, mass incarceration–it is different from what Rev. Reeb and others battled. It may feel less urgent to many.
Kneeling in front of Reeb’s marker just steps from the Bloody Sunday bridge allowed me to feel my purpose. In my own way–with patience and clarity and love of all people–I am supposed to continue the struggle. I am supposed to continue the march. Luckily, there are plenty of people from all races and backgrounds, gender identities and personality types, who are already walking.

We all have our roles. Mine is to ask, and try to answer, again and again:

Just how long is fifty years?

 

It started with chills. Goosebumps.

It began when he walked through the church parking lot. For once, he didn’t stand out. He was just another new face, complete with a mediocre #2 haircut, scuffed dress shoes and slightly wrinkled khakis. He could be a one-time visitor, never to be seen again. He could be a future member, a young man who would grow and change with the church. For now, though, he was just another new face.

For waking me up this morning
That’s why I praise You
For starting me on my way
That’s why I praise You

The usher, a warm middle-aged man in good shape, directed his aunt and uncle into a row on the right side of the church, and he followed.

He thought he knew what would happen.

Already, he felt at home. On his way in, every man he passed shook his hand and said, “Welcome.” Five women had hugged him. As he settled into his row, an attractive young woman about his age glanced at him—or maybe it was at the wrinkles in his shirt. He couldn’t tell. He sat down next to his uncle, but then he realized that everyone was standing and singing.

You see so many times 
You´ve met my needs
So many times, You rescued me
That’s why I praise You

He stood up, glanced around the sanctuary, and started clapping along. He looked at the faces as he did so. 
He saw sturdy men in their fifties; teenagers–some shabbily dressed, others in their Sunday best; kids in athletic shorts; wives and husbands, grandparents and grandchildren, entire families together.

He looked to the front and saw the choir: twentyish smiling, intense faces swaying, clapping, praising.
Most of the faces, both in the choir and in the crowd were black—like his.
It started with chills. Goosebumps.

Actually, it had started before that, in his classes at grad school. In one of them, he and his classmates had read James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It On The Mountain.” They read Langston Hughes’ short story “Big Meeting.” The professor had read aloud Hughes’ account of his own pretend conversion. Those three stories brought him here, he thought. He felt trapped somewhere among all three. The story of the black church, of the struggle for equality—it was his story, and yet it wasn’t his story at all.

The choir picked up the pace, and the congregation followed suit:

For every mountain, You brought me over
For every trial you’ve seen me through
For every blessing
Hallelujah, for this I give You praise

Murmurs and shouts of “Yes,” “Thank you, Jesus,” and “Amen” filled the sanctuary as the choir sang. All at once, he was no longer just a body in the sanctuary: the choir was challenging him. It was like they knew what had been on his mind.

For every mountain, You brought me over.

The tears began.

How he wanted to join in. If anyone had asked (and during the greeting time, they did), he was there because he was visiting his aunt and uncle. That was technically true, but really, he agreed to join them at church because he wanted to know what it felt like to blend in, to be just another dark-skinned face. At school—in elementary, in high school, in college and now in grad school out by the coast—he stood out. At work he stood out. In discussion section he stood out. In church especially, he stood out: the lone black face. Of course, sometimes that wasn’t completely true, but he was almost always in the minority. What would it feel like for him to be able to let his guard down?

For every mountain
You brought me over
For every trial you’ve seen me through

He lived a fortunate life, but lately, that was hard to remember. His mother, the person who knew him best, loved him most and whom he loved most, had died, a year and a half ago. A few weeks later, his college buddy and roommate died suddenly. He had picked up and moved halfway across the country to start a new adventure on the coast. He craved and feared connection, friendship, and love. He couldn’t sleep because he kept having nightmares about other people in his life dying: his siblings, his father, his long-time friends, and his new best friend. He felt broken, beaten down, and insert-other-cliché-about-sadness-here; as the song goes, he was tired, he was weak, he was worn. More than anything, though, he was lonely.

He wanted—no, needed–to feel at home somewhere. He thought back to when his mother was still alive. During college, trips home had meaning mostly because it meant that he got to hug her, have long conversations with her, and work in the yard with her. But where was home now? He thought of his religious communities: the one he grew up in, the church he went to during college, the worship group at school now. Each one felt like a best friend’s home—familiar, warm, he knew all the traditions, and he could open the refrigerator to make sandwiches without asking permission–but there was always that unspoken awareness that it wasn’t home.

Was it the race thing? He didn’t know. Maybe everyone feels like an outsider for one reason or another. He just knew that he wanted—no, he needed–to find out. He had a lot of “best friend homes” in his life, and he felt lucky for that, but he needed to find his home again.

The tears kept falling.

How he wanted to join in with the choir and the congregation. As they sang and praised, he felt something in the sanctuary. He felt connected to the people worshiping in the room. Almost.

For every mountain, You brought me over

The choir belted out the song’s refrain. The congregation repeated it, some murmuring, others singing, still others shouting. But he couldn’t sing along. A beautiful, dark-skinned woman in her forties standing three rows in front of him fell to the ground, her tear-filled face overcome with the Spirit. He was so sad, so pained, so tired. 

He wanted—no, he needed—to do the same, but he couldn’t.
Because he just.
didn’t.
have it.

He thought of his mother, who taught him to look for the Divine in everything and everyone. As a kid, he’d meditated with her every morning. He thought of his father, who taught him to take the teachings of Jesus and Scripture “seriously, but not literally.” The church he went to taught that Jesus was one of the greatest, wisest men in human history, but not the literal Son of God. He had always believed in some kind of higher power, but never in the kind that would interfere. All those nights in the hospital with his sick mother, and still he had never asked God for anything—because somehow, he knew different. Not better, just different.

He thought of Langston Hughes’ conversion story his professor had read to the class. The professor cried that day, and he did, too.  He, too, wanted to feel the Spirit, wanted to be truly included in this wonderful church and in this powerful feeling.

I want to thank You for the blessing
You give to me each day
That’s why I praise You
For this I give You praise

He needed a place like this; a place where people hugged and clapped, where they prayed and swayed, where they trusted in the community and Jesus to support them–to help bring them over the mountain. He inhaled books and scoured his favorite TV shows in search for answers to his grief, his loneliness. He read the Bible and watched sermons online, practically daring himself to believe, to submit. And finally, his pain had led him here, crying silent tears in a room of strangers who looked like him and weren’t afraid to love, to weep, or to hug a complete stranger.

For every trial
You’ve seen me through

The choir held the final line, and the shouts in the room reached a fever pitch. He could feel the congregation releasing its collective sadness and pain one by one. He saw pain from divorces, money problems, struggling children and more being sung and shouted into the waiting arms of Jesus and God the Father. He himself had so much to remove.

As the song ended and the building roared, he looked up into the portrait of Jesus behind the choir and made a decision. He didn’t really believe as (presumably) everyone else in the room did, but he would try, because he needed them. He needed a place like this. He saw his future, if only he would believe. He would have a place where he wouldn’t have to stand out or be the spokesperson for a group of people. He’d meet a beautiful, brilliant, black (or whatever; he didn’t care) Christian woman and they’d raise successful, God-fearing children. He wouldn’t feel so alone—he’d have church brothers and sisters, and people to pray with and to pray for. The sense of family and community overwhelmed him.

The song ended, and the pastor came to the front.

“God is so good today. Thank you, Jesus, for filling the choir and this hall with the love and mercy of God. This is the time in our service where we ask: who in this hall is ready to commit to a life following our Savior, Jesus Christ? Who is ready?”

A bespectacled woman in her late thirties stepped out into the aisle, and the sanctuary erupted.

His mind turned again to Go Tell it On The Mountain. If he just went out there into the aisle, he would have an experience, just like John, the boy preacher. He would succeed where Langston Hughes did not. He would be filled with the spirit and finally, finally, some of his pain would leave him behind.

He moved his left foot a fraction of an inch forward, ready to give it a shot, but–
He felt familiar eyes staring him down from right behind him. He whirled around.

It was his mother. His dead mother.

She wore her trademark church clothes: the dark blue sweater, and the long, flowy skirt; she also wore an uncharacteristic look of concern.
As the applause and cheers for the woman carried on, she leaned in and asked, “Son, were you about to—?“
“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know what else to do.”

“I know you’re sad, Son, and I know you feel alone. You know that I always wanted you to figure things out on your own, so I won’t ruin the mystery about what happens when you die. But I have to ask…what are you doing?

“I need something or someone to save me from feeling like this. I’m so tired, and so lonely.”

“I know, Son. I know. I won’t tell you to become a Christian, or not to become one. But do notinsult these folks. Jesus is with them—don’t you dare move forward unless Jesus is really and truly with you, too. Just remember that the Divine is everywhere. It’s here, yes, but it’s in your church now and in the church I raised you in, too. I’m just going to tell you what I told you when you meditated with me when you were little.

“Listen.”
“To what?”
His mother stared at him.
He stared back at her.
“What if I can’t hear anything right now?”

“Keep listening, Son. You will.”

She smiled an encouraging smile at him, and then turned around and walked past the newly committed woman, humming one of her favorite hymns, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” As she did so, his mother stopped, turned back around, and pointed up towards the choir. She winked and then left the sanctuary.

Three more people pledged their lives to Christ, but he wasn’t one of them. The tears had stopped, but he felt every bit as alone. He barely heard the call for prayers or the announcement letting people know that youth group would be meeting after the service. He was still straining to listen to his mind when he noticed that the choir had gone back up to the front and was twenty seconds into the closing hymn.

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light

Despite his sadness, he laughed to himself. He didn’t turn around, because he knew his mother had gone, but he understood: today wasn’t the day for answers. It wasn’t the day for conversions. Today was the day for struggle. There was only one thing to do.

He listened.

Take my hand, precious Lord
Lead me home.

 

Hey, guys.

I’m writing to you because the sport you love, ultimate, is also the sport I love. It’s more than my favorite sport–I consider it my spiritual practice. Ultimate has helped me in times of grief, sadness and depression, and in times of anger.

I play ultimate because it’s a game one can’t win alone. I play because I get lost in the moment. I play ultimate because I get fired up watching a teammate’s huge layout D. And I play ultimate because, at most levels, it’s up to the players to hold themselves, and each other, accountable.

I believe that the sport we love, while growing overall, harbors troubling sexism—and men, I think we are responsible. I see sexist behavior coming from some of us, both on the field and off. I contend too many of us don’t take female players seriously, and we don’t respect women’s ultimate more generally. We can, and must, do better.

I am a good, but not great, ultimate player. I have played in lots of sectional tournaments. I will never play at nationals. Despite my limitations, I have, like many players–including many men—often been told I’m a natural leader. For too long I thought that meant I needed the disc all the time, and that my voice needed to be heard for my team to win, whether “my team” meant a competitive team I practiced with regularly, or the random group of people at a pick-up game.

As men, we have been conditioned to believe that we matter. We’ve been told that we are great. We think we can make the huge throw or the big defensive stop. It is our job to make the big play.

So we show up to ultimate, and many of us play the hero. Some of us give unsolicited advice, shout about how open we are, throw contested hucks, and, all too often, we ignore the women on the field–especially at pick-up games. Maybe we throw to them once. Twice if we think they’re really good. Too often we never even find out whether they’re skilled, because we never give them a chance–as though the chance was ours to give in the first place.

Men: ultimate does not belong to us. The disc is not ours. The game is not ours. Being male does not give us a right to ignore our teammates. When it comes to sports, we are privileged. Women must prove themselves worthy, while men must prove themselves unworthy.

Some of us believe the disc belongs to us because, in general, we are taller and run faster than women do. I contend that those of us who believe that are wrong.

Of course, there are exceptions to the above statements. Some games and teams are more inclusive than others. Some women play gladly at pick-up games, get the disc whenever they want it, and captain competitive mixed teams with few issues. Yet the presence of gender equity in some spaces does not mean all is well across the board.

I’ve brought this up with men before and heard variations of the following counter-arguments:

-I would throw to women if they got open.
-I throw to women if they’re good.
-Sports are meritocracies, and guys are faster and taller than women.
-It’s about winning, not social equality.
-Why are you lumping all men together? I throw to girls all the time.

I have gone to pickup games and watched talented female players get ignored on the field so guys can repeatedly huck it deep to one another. I’ve played in mixed-gender leagues with women who get the disc only a few times a game—and not because they’re never open.

If you don’t want to throw to women, play for a men’s team. If you want to play mixed, then play mixed. And if you play pick-up, throw to open people. Period. Every time we neglect a player on the field, I argue we hurt the game we love. Self-officiated at most levels, it’s up to us to create the culture we want. I seek an ultimate culture in which open players get the disc—and new players, regardless of gender identity, are warmly welcomed and nurtured–for even the best players were once novices.

I didn’t write this “on behalf” of female players, as though they need a man’s protection. I wrote this because I, and several players I know, both women and men, believe there’s a widespread problem about gender relations in ultimate. And I believe that sexism in sports comes from men. It is not due to women’s “genetic inferiority”—it is due to our learned overconfidence and prejudice.

True leadership is about lifting others up as we climb. It means stepping up at times and stepping back at others. I see specific things we can do to build towards a better ultimate.

We can refrain from calling people off the disc at pick-up games. We can huck to our guy friends less and throw to open people more. We can remember that we’re probably not as great a player as we think. We can yell less and encourage more. We can talk about women players and women’s teams with respect. And, if we’re on a competitive mixed team, we can learn from the best teams, who say that people who feel valued and valuable create a team of winners.

I invite you to observe the games and leagues in which you play. Who gets the disc, where, and how often? Also observe your own behavior. Am I dominating the game, cutting off other players when I make cuts, or ignoring open players? Do I assume female players need advice and male players don’t?

Lastly, and perhaps most crucially: If I’m not one of those guys, am I calling out those who routinely exclude or trample on others?

I ask myself these questions, and others, every time I cleat up—for fun and in competitive games. I repeatedly fall short. It’s a lot to unlearn. I identify as a feminist athlete, and I believe in ultimate, so I think it’s worth it to keep working.

USA Ultimate describes Spirit of the Game, or the ethos of ultimate, this way:
“Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among competitors…or the basic joy of play.”

Not ‘mutual respect among only male competitors, but “mutual respect among competitors.” That means every person who steps on that field deserves respect, and every player deserves to feel the joy of this beautiful game. May we work together to ensure ultimate’s bright future–for everyone.

Kenny Wiley
#35
*A/N: This letter has now been published at Skyd Magazine: http://skydmagazine.com/2014/04/open-letter-male-ultimate-players-guy/
Around 4,000 reads thus far as of 9:04 AM Mountain Time 4/29. Please feel free to comment below, and share your own experiences with your ultimate communities!

*Thanks to former teammates and terrific players Amory Hillengas, Joe Baz and Meg Gatza for their edits, suggestions and counsel.

I delivered this sermon at Prairie Unitarian Universalist Church, where I serve as the Director of Faith Formation.

Lincoln’s Melancholy

Sixteen months ago life, it seemed, was good. I was in my second year at divinity school, my time as Ministerial Intern at First Parish in Cambridge was in full swing, and I had it all figured out.

Graduate from Harvard Divinity School, do well, get a ministry job at a sweet church, do well, travel coast to coast preaching our faith’s message of radical love and justice, become known nationally as a great leader in Unitarian Universalism, turn thirty.
I’m not really kidding, sadly.

Sixteen months ago, if you had told me I would be here working at Prairie UU, I don’t think I’d have believed you. Yet here I am. And thank goodness. Well, for me. Maybe you agree, maybe you don’t!

In 2005, historian Joshua Wolf Shenk published Lincoln’s Melancholy. It was, and is, a groundbreaking book not merely because it introduced to a wider audience Lincoln’s struggle with what we now call depression, but because its thesis is that Lincoln’s depression fueled his greatness. Shenk suggests a reframing of depression towards something more than an illness to get over, but something that can, if we go through it, lead us to great things.

I bring to you Shenk’s account of Lincoln’s lifelong struggle with depression because it resonates with me personally, and because, whether the term ‘depression’ is something near or far from your experience, Lincoln’s difficulties with self-inflicted pressure, expectation management, and search for vocation are painful realities many of us navigate.

One of the most detrimental thoughts one can have in one’s depression is some variation of this: “I have a good life. I shouldn’t feel this way.” Similarly, friends and family alike, trying to be helpful, can list off sixteen good things about your life—to which we might reply, “Yes, that’s great, but how does that help us get out of bed?”

Here, I want to make a distinction that is key to the rest of our exploration of depression. There are two phrases—the dark night of the body, and the dark night of the soul, that speak to distinct manifestations of depression. Some depressions are chemical, having little to do with circumstance. Other depressions and times of deep sadness relate more to “the dark night of the soul,” or discontent with one’s present reality. Many, of course, have elements of both. It should also be said that depression is a tough thing to talk about, and is even tougher to analyze. As with any sermon from a UU pulpit, all I can do, or would ever want to do, is speak my own truth.

To continue, Shenk argues that Lincoln’s talent and ambition, combined with genetics, teamed up to bring him down in a series of what we’d call “severe depressive episodes” in his early thirties. Shenk writes: “The very irony of Lincoln’s situation…is that the very successes that could prop him up also exerted an equally powerful force that could tear him down.” And for a time, it did tear him down. Sufferers of depression such as Lincoln wonder if their moods will ever lift.

Psychologist Lauren Slater continues the point: “These fears are fifty percent of what it is to be melancholy. If you were to be really, really depressed but knew that it would end in five days, it wouldn’t be depression.”

So it isn’t just that things are bad, but also that it feels like there’s no way out.

So it was as I waded further into my second year at Harvard Divinity. Somewhere along the way last year, I began caring more about the perception others held of me and less about actually doing good work, or of actually serving others. I cared more about seeming great and less about being great. I got involved in every committee, every school activity, and just lost my way.

I took on more and more responsibilities. Of course, the more I took on—student government, preaching opportunities, leadership positions—the less well I did any one thing. I lost all perspective.

The things (aside from economic and academic privilege in my upbringing) that got me to Harvard—healthy friendships, listening to my inner voice, and family bonds—fell by the wayside in favor of a desire to feel important and successful. I let down my friends, mistreated those closest to me, and rarely spoke with my family.

Obsessed with success, I failed.

I realized my life was crumbling, and depression took over. I fought and fought to hold on to the life I had, but to quote from The Replacements, the harder I fought, the deeper I sank.

I looked up and it was August 2013. No longer on the ministry track, no longer a Harvard student (with no Masters), and no longer in Cambridge, I’d seemingly lost everything. I had no job and little hope things would improve.

I couldn’t get past seeing myself as a failure. So many people rooted for me and helped me, yet there I was, Ivy League dropout, lying on the couch, hopeless and pathetic.

William Stafford wrote, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” It is with these words that spiritual leader Parker Palmer begins his book Let Your Life Speak. I really think half of my religious friends—or the ones who knew how down I was—recommended this book to me. We talk a lot about Parker Palmer here at Prairie.

Parker Palmer helped me understand part of why I was so down: what I had been doing at Harvard was not my life. Palmer believes that the self seeks wholeness, and that to try and live the life others think we should lead is a recipe for deep sadness and profound despair.

“True self,” he writes, “when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth.”

Lincoln, in that “most miserable man living” 1841 letter, said, “I must die or be better, it appears to me.” He wondered if he would make it. Eventually, he emerged, and turned to the question of how he would live. It is this question that haunts many of us. How will we live these lives of ours?

Depression and melancholy aren’t easy things to talk about. It’s kinda hard to give a fiery, passionate sermon about deep sadness.

But I have to say, Prairie, that I do feel fired up about this topic, that I do feel passionate about these hidden struggles, that welcoming them can actually inform the work we do here.

I think there are three main lessons we can take from Lincoln’s journey. The first is, as my mom advised concerning my preaching: “Tell more jokes.” Lincoln joked all the time. It became a healthy deflection of his sadness.

The second is that Lincoln didn’t go it alone. In the late 1830s and early 1840s, there were weeks where Lincoln’s friends went everywhere with him for his own safety—from himself. His friends kept an eye on him, wrote to him, and let him know, again and again: “Abe, you are not alone.”

The third lesson—and this is where I want to spend the remainder of our time together—is that Lincoln’s depression helped him be a great president and, more importantly, a courageous and empathetic human being. I’m not saying that you need to go through real struggle to be either. But the depth of Lincoln’s sorrow afforded him extraordinary gifts of bravery and understanding.

On December 23, 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln took the time to write a letter to a young woman whose father had died. The letter is filled, not with empty condolences, but with real empathy. Lincoln understood her sorrow because had been there. He wrote: “Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You ca not now realize that you will ever feel better…[but] you are sure to be happy again. I have had experience enough to know what I say.”

The first time I read that letter—and our middle and high schoolers are reading it in full in religious education today—I cried. The second time I read it, I cried again. In the heart of one of our country’s ugliest hours, Lincoln took a minute to truly be with someone who felt sorrow would never leave her. That’s power. That’s leadership.

And it is this message I want to leave you with today. I’m still getting to know all of you, and you’re just getting to know me. One thing people have said some is that I have a lot of energy—that I have a lot of passion for this job. And it’s true. But there’s a reason. I have a little energy because I want, in my own imperfect ways, to help make our children and youth’s lives a little better. When I was a kid I struggled with depression. I struggled with depression as a teenager, and depression knocked me out of Harvard.

But no longer do I run away from my past. No longer do I run away from my struggles. And I want to encourage you to do the same. It isn’t depression for everyone. For some, it’s the grief of losing a love one. It’s divorce. It’s physical ailment. It’s kids who frustrate us, or parents we still battle. Sometimes it’s several things all at once.

Lincoln’s example tells us that yes, getting better matters, of course, but that in a way, we ought not think of struggle as something to get over. Instead we can carry a piece of hardship with us, so we are reminded that we can use our experience to help others. Our struggles, whatever they have been, can help us in our work.

In August 2013, as I lay there feeling miserable and hopeless on my dad’s couch in Houston, Lincoln’s words from that letter reached out and found me. “Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better…[but] you are sure to be happy again. I have had experience enough to know what I say.”

Lincoln didn’t run from his pain—it fueled him. And my pain fueled me to apply for this job, drive to Denver, get it, and my pain fuels me now as I work with our young people and all of you.

So friends, I urge you: don’t run from the sadness. Don’t run from the grief. Don’t run from the frustration, the despair. These, too, are a necessary part of the battle, for the time will come when you can use them, when they will fuel your work—fuel our combined work as Unitarian Universalists.

That is why I believe so strongly in the power of religious community, of having a place and space full of people who say, “You don’t have to be better right now. I am with you.” And so don’t run from your struggle, whatever it is. Pack it up and take it with you. Lincoln’s words to Fanny in the letter reminded me of that Harriet Tubman refrain, what she would tell the slaves she helped free on the Underground Railroad: “Keep going.”

We can remind each other of that.

If life is good right now, keep going.

If stress is taking over, keep going.

If raising a child or three children or five has you overwhelmed, keep going.

If it feels like love has left you, keep going.

If love has found you, keep going.

If grief has taken you, keep going.

If joy is coursing through you, keep going. I

f you are lonely, keep going.

If you wish you could ever, just once, feel lonely, keep going.

If your body is in pain, keep going. If your body has never felt this good, keep going.

If you need someone, keep going. If you are in demand, keep going.

Keep going, friends.

Keep going.

Let your struggles be your fuel.

Amen.

Matt Bieber over at The Wheat and Chaff is a funny, almost absurdly brilliant human being. We went to graduate school together and have engaged in some terrific discussions about gender, race, love, and more through the last two years.
Over the past couple weeks, Matt and I exchanged messages about how the media handles race, through the lens of the #CancelColbert controversy. It spawned a great conversation. I invite you to take a look.

Matt Bieber: You have some really interesting thoughts about the whole #CancelColbert episode. Can you briefly recap the sequence of events? And what did you make of Colbert’s response?

Kenny Wiley: The Colbert Report Twitter account put out a tweet referencing the bit they did lampooning Dan Snyder’s “Original Americans Foundation.” The bit used stereotypical Asian/Asian-American words, and it quickly garnered a great deal of attention. Activist Suey Park, previously known for her #NotYourAsianSidekick hashtag, took issue with what she viewed was the racism and white privilege latent in Colbert’s words, both in the skit and on Twitter, and criticized the show by, among other things, starting the #CancelColbert hashtag. It took off and became a huge story.

There are two things that make this story noteworthy to me. First, Suey Park quickly came under fire for starting #CancelColbert. She received heat from white liberals, fans of Colbert, and also from many people of color. There were several journalists and other people of color who leapt at the opportunity to dismiss Park’s claims that Colbert’s satire was ineffective and racist.

I am a Black American. I found this “ganging-up” on Park by Asians and other people of color on Twitter and other forms of social media to be fascinating and thoroughly disconcerting. I know that there exists for many of us a desire to come across as ‘reasonable’ and ‘measured’ when it comes to racial issues. We don’t want to seem angry, and mainstream America rewards those of us who maintain our composure. I argue that many writers of color used Suey Park as a device to prove their “reasonableness.”

I’ve done that in the past, and really regret it. Suey Park simply strove to begin a dialogue about the appropriateness of a rich white person, even in character, using tired stereotypes about one ethnicity to score political points. It’s been said that “good satire points up [in terms of power structures], not down.” I believe tearing down other people of color for the benefit of white people proves that these power structures exist, and also maintains them. I’m disappointed, not that people of color had the temerity to disagree with Park’s analysis, but that many did so viciously. They seemed more interested in challenging Suey Park than in analyzing Stephen Colbert’s work.

That brings me to my second thought. A narrative emerged, from white folks and people of color alike, that Suey Park and those who agree with her were “fighting the wrong battle.” Dan Snyder was let off the hook, so went the conventional wisdom, because Park directed her energy at Colbert and not at the absurdity of having an NFL team named the Washington Redskins.

This is a dangerous argument, especially coming from those white people who self-identify as liberal. Telling Suey Park and others, “I’m on your side,” while simultaneously discrediting their views and opinions, seems incongruous. However one feels about The Colbert Report actually being canceled, Suey Park spoke to a very real pain for many people of Asian descent and other people of color: being used as a punchline over and over and over hurts. Watching a white male profit off of racial humor, even in character, pains us. The “I’m on your side” response discredits such a viewpoint, and says, basically, “get over it.”

As someone who has heard the same tired, worn racial jokes throughout my life, I can tell you that getting “over it” just isn’t that simple. Many people believe racism, and other forms of discrimination, to be limited to isolated, horrendous actions by individuals. When one comes to see that racism is a system that involves and impacts everyone, it becomes crucial to critique everyone – because we’re all complicit. I am a black male and I think prejudiced things against my own race, and others. I’m not a bad person. Harboring racial prejudice doesn’t make anyone a bad person, because we all have it. It’s out of our control.

What we can do is listen to those people who harbor opinions we are taught to discount – women, and people of color. We can fight the urge to immediately dismiss their claims.

I now turn to you with a question. I’ve often heard it said that people like Suey Park are “injecting” race and gender into a particular situation such as the Colbert controversy, and that they need to “learn to take a joke.” How would you respond to the view that sensitivity is weakness, and that we need to stop injecting gender, race, etc. into the public discourse?

MB: People dismiss sensitivity as ‘weakness’ so that they don’t have to listen to what others are sensing, experiencing, and living through. In other words, disparaging sensitivity is the true act of weakness. It’s a declaration of indifference (and underneath, fear).

This whole controversy has been confusing to me, in part because of something I went through as a teenager. My high school’s mascot is a Native American ‘warrior,’ and a group of my friends and I sought to get it changed. As we made our case, I sometimes asked people how they would feel if the mascot were of a different race or ethnicity. I would give examples. What if a student dressed up to look like a stereotypical Jewish person – yarmulke, big nose, curly hair, long beard and payot? And what if that student then danced around the football field with sacred Jewish religious paraphernalia? What if we sewed those same stereotyped images into our wrestling uniforms and plastered them on our scoreboards?

I was trying to make the same point Colbert was making – that we would never feel comfortable taking some other group of citizens and turning them into caricatured symbols for sports teams. But we’ve been doing that to Native Americans for decades, and relatively few people seem to notice.

I’m wondering, then, whether you think there’s any difference between what I was up to and what Colbert did. One thought that comes to mind is that, save for a few letters to the editor, we were mostly trying to persuade people in one-on-one situations. And that meant that we could approach things differently depending on our audience. Generally, I was wary about using examples that implicated the person I was talking to, because I didn’t want to risk hurting them in the name of making my point. On the other hand, though, this sometimes felt like it was the only way to make the point real to people. (Either way, I’m sure I made mistakes: I was 18 and full of self-righteousness.)

I’m wondering if it works differently on TV. The target of Colbert’s satire was Dan Snyder, but he was broadcasting to millions (including many Asian-Americans). He had no way to get a sense for his audience, because he had no way to know who was watching or to gauge how they might feel.

I’m wondering if this is related to your point about privilege – that by just going ahead with his joke, Colbert was expressing a kind of indifference to the possibility of hurting Asian-Americans (and others who are tired of being caught in the crossfire of white people’s humor).

But perhaps this is another difference – that Colbert wasn’t just trying to illustrate his point using a provocative analogy. He was also trying to be funny. And if he hadn’t been so interested in getting laughs, he might have been more sensitive to the hurt his words might cause. (He’s certainly overlooked this kind of thingbefore.)

In his response to the controversy, Colbert suggested that the furor only started when one of the jokes got taken out of context in a tweet. But you’re saying it’s more than that – that plenty of people were already frustrated, and that the joke wasn’t okay even in context. And I think it feels that way to me, too.

This leads me to wonder – would it feel different to you if he hadn’t made a joke? If he had used the same example, but in a way that expressed more overt solidarity with Native Americans? If he had done something like what a Native American group did in this recent ad?

KW: To your last question: I believe using the premise of the joke as sober commentary would feel quite different – but it also wouldn’t feel like Colbert. Colbert pokes fun. That’s what he does, and now he will apparently be doing it as CBS’ new host of The Late Show. So your actions in high school also strike me as far different from Colbert’s joke. Using equivalence as a debating strategy can be tricky, because the other person(s) may just not see anything wrong with racial humor in general. I have seen it be effective, however – provided the other person has some appreciation for anti-racist rhetoric.

In a way, Colbert-to-CBS feels inevitable. Another white guy moving on up. While some people of color (and some others) argue for the cancellation of Colbert, he gets a massive job upgrade.

Media in our society exists to entertain; even more fundamentally, media aims to make money and perpetuate itself. CBS sent a message loud and clear that using people of color as props is profitable and acceptable, and as long as you toe a racial line, getting critique from “fringe groups” doesn’t matter.

Media coverage of the Colbert controversy and of race more generally deeply frustrates me. I came across a quote from Elinor Tatum, editor-in-chief of the New York Amsterdam News, that deeply moved me. She said of race-related stories in America, “There is no such thing as objective journalism. There’s always a point of view.” I buy that. When too many of us don’t understand power dynamics, we fail to see that the privileged position is seen as the default or ‘objective’ stance. So only white folks can be unbiased about race, only men are unbiased about gender, and so on.

Such viewpoints stymie us as a society. White viewers of Colbert and/or the Colbert controversy could simply dismiss out of hand Suey Park’s claims instead of doing any sort of introspection on their own thoughts or biases. She is a woman of color, and therefore had two ‘inherent’ strikes against her credibility even before she said anything. People – indeed, not just white folks, but also people of color more interested in respectability politics than in asking tough questions – tuned her, and those like her, out.

Somewhat relatedly, I recently learned that people we would now consider die-hard racists – Bull Connor and other white supremacists – told media outlets that they weren’t racist. I believe, as Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry does, that we need not equate the systemic racism of today to brutal Jim Crow segregation of the past in order to make our point. It is frightening, though, to consider that “I’m not racist” is as old as racism, and perhaps nearly as insidious.

I’ve started thinking, then, that maybe we ought to stop using terms such as “sexist” and “racist” when discussing systemic prejudice and supremacy, because they cause such a visceral reaction. People essentially stop listening as soon as you suggest they have prejudice against women. “I’m not sexist – I love women,” some men say. Media and individuals focus on horrific, isolated, seemingly outdated instances of overt prejudice. I believe that lets us consumers off the hook, to point fingers at “those racist people” or “those homophobic people” without examining how we help perpetuate these invisible (yet super-visible) systems of inequality and discrimination.

How do you think we move the conversation away from “Look at those sexist people!” to “Look at this system of sexism”? Relatedly, I saw a poster this week that said “We need feminism because our campus teaches ‘How not to get raped’ instead of ‘Don’t rape.’” The poster deeply moved me. I’m interested in moving conversations and more accurately analyzing systemic realities. I’m curious as to your thoughts on how we do that, and anything else.

MB: Thanks for being so honest about your feelings here, man. I often feel a kind of exhaustion with the sheer level of callousness and meanness in our popular culture. I have a sense that the fatigue you experience is deeper, though, because you’re a target of much more of that meanness. It takes courage to share those feelings, and I admire it.

In general, I think I agree with you about the terms ‘racist’ and ‘sexist.’ They seem helpful for describing systems and situations, but they’re often counterproductive interpersonally. Not always, though. When I was growing up, my mom stopped me short several times by suggesting that my casual adolescent slang was sexist. If you’re talking to someone who’s both concerned about uprooting their own racism or sexism and capable of taking that kind of direct feedback, those words can work. But probably not on TV (where people are much more likely to get defensive).

As for how we have the kinds of conversations you’re seeking, I think the answer is to just keep having them! Because the more we do it, the easier it is for everyone else to jump in. We do our best to point out the shortcomings of the existing narratives, and we push as far as our courage and insight will take us. And then we sit back and hear what others think. Speaking of which, perhaps we should do that now!

KW: I also believe in the power of conversation. What I think matters is that we’re all striving to improve, rather than just marginalized groups carrying most of the load when it comes to conversation, education and activism. About a week ago a white friend reached out to me wondering if I’d share my thoughts with him regarding the Steve Utash mob beating in Detroit in early April.

My friend wasn’t coming from an overly negative space, yet the request still rankled me. To him, I believe the Utash tragedy was an example of “reverse racism,” of angry blacks beating a white man nearly to death. He wondered why I hadn’t written about it, and why black activists hadn’t made a big deal of the situation.

As with most things regarding race, the case wasn’t that simple. Indeed, Steve Utash was horrified that he’d hit a black child with his truck, and stopped to check on him. Utash was beaten by black people – and a black person saved his life. If anything, the case showed how messy any and all of these issues can be. But I was struck by my friend’s demand that black activists speak out against the violence, yet there was no mention of retired nurse Deborah Hughes’s heroics.

The more I read about the Utash/Hughes tragedy and the more I read my friend’s message, the more I thought of W.E.B. Du Bois’ words in The Souls of Black Folk. In 1903, Du Bois asked a set of questions that, for all our progress, still remains unanswered today:

“Here, then, is the dilemma…What, after all, am I? Am I American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American?”

The people who attacked Utash are described as young black men. Deborah Hughes, a black woman, is described as an “American hero.” They are all black. They are all Americans. That disconnect in description saddens me deeply, and it concerns me. I don’t know what to do about it. Talking about this discrepancy, and so many others like it – with race, gender, sexual orientation and so many others – is of the utmost importance.

Let’s keep talking, my friend.

“I’m so glad you’re better.”

A year ago I found myself in the midst of a severe depression. It wasn’t until September 2013, about seven months ago, that I showed signs of improvement. It took leaving graduate school, moving two time zones away, and incredible gestures of friendship and empathy to get me to this point.

Emotionally, where am I now? I’m “better.” That’s what I tell people—because it’s true.
Sort of.

In the last couple months, I’ve reconnected with old friends in person, by phone, through Facebook, and in other ways. I went back to the east coast in early February to see people. I was pretty public about my depression (not that I could have hid it anyway—I’ve got a pretty bad poker face) and people wanted to know, understandably, whether things were better for me out west.
Better—there’s that word again.

Depression, at least in my experience, isn’t like a sprained ankle. Generally speaking, things have improved a great deal. A year ago I barely functioned. Eight months ago my deepest desire was to disappear. Two days ago I went to a Denver Nuggets game and laughed and cheered with my best friend.

But am I “better”? It depends on the day. Last week I spent three days barely able to get out of bed. Shame of past ‘failures’—grad school troubles, falling short of my best in friendships and other relationships, not being the family member I know I can be—sent me on a rapid spiral downward.

The spiral felt worse because of how often I’ve said that I’m “better.” That inner dialogue went something like this:

How much have people done for you? You have this job you like with fun people and this week you can’t even get everything done. People go out of their way to help you and you still fail. You have so many gifts and you screw them up, time and time again.

You’re a failure. These five months in Denver were a fluke. You’re going back to the person you really are—and that person is useless.
Just give up.

The Harry Potter book scene that stuck most with me seemed, at first glance, to be a throwaway. Harry and his classmates learn about the Imperius curse, a spell that allows the caster to control the recipient’s mind and body. A person under the Imperius curse will do whatever the caster wants—unless she/he learns to throw off the spell.
The first time Harry experiences the spell, in the classroom, he feels that blissful urge to submit—but his mind has other ideas:

“And then he heard [the] voice, echoing in some chamber of his brain: Jump onto the desk . . . jump onto the desk…

Harry bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring.

Jump onto the desk…  

Why, though? Another voice had awoken in the back of his brain.

Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice.

Jump onto the desk…

No, I don’t think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly . . . no, I don’t really want to . ..

Jump!  NOW!

The next thing Harry felt was considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping—the result was that he’d smashed headlong into the desk, knocking it over.

“He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping.” 

That feeling of conflict, of inner turmoil—that’s what it feels like to battle depression, and that’s what it feels like to stand up to that hateful inner dialogue.

I’m not sure I will ever defeat depression. Some days the inner voice seems to come out on top. Even now, with a job I enjoy in a city I love, despair still has its day, or its hour, or its week.

But as long as I keep going, I stay in the fight. Getting out of bed is a win, however small. Brushing my teeth is a win. Reading that email I’m terrified to open is a win.

Fighting off that voice means experiencing considerable pain—but as long as I’m fighting, it means I’m feeling, and I’m living. Last week was rough. This week has been great. Both weeks are part of this long, grueling process.

Mostly I want to give myself permission, and give anyone reading this permission (or the permission to give yourself permission) to have days that don’t feel like better. Have moments and hours and weeks that don’t feel like better. As I continue this struggle through depression and grief, I am coming to learn that getting better means the presence,and not the absence, of pain.

Keep battling that voice, even if you knock some desks over. Keep hurting and keep struggling. Know that I’m right there with you, getting better—thanks to the bad days, and the good ones.

 

Three days ago, a white friend of mine asked for my thoughts on the brutal beating of Steve Utash, a white truck driver who inadvertently hit a preteen boy who dashed out into the street less than two weeks ago.

Steve Utash hit a black preteen boy on a Detroit street. When Utash, horrified, got out of his truck to check on the boy, several upset people attacked him, verbally and otherwise. Among them were a group of black teenagers. Utash was brutally beaten by the mob and only regained consciousness very recently.

Some social conservatives, frustrated with what they deem the “race-baiting” tactics of sociologists and other social liberals, have noted that the story–black teenagers viciously attacking a white man–hasn’t captured much national attention or outrage. My friend wondered why Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (apparently) hadn’t weighed in. He also sought my thoughts on the matter, as I write and think frequently about race.

I know what I’m supposed to say. From one end, I’m supposed to say that violence is violence, and that this is a horrific crime. I should be every bit as angry when this happens as when a hate crime happens to a black person by a white person.

In the other corner, I’m supposed to point out that there isn’t the same legacy of mob violence against white men that there is against black men. I should say that the black teenagers, yes, overreacted, but that they responded to long history of violence–and that Utash hitting the boy struck that chord for them.

When I read my friend’s message about the Utash tragedy, sadness overtook me. I’m sad because an innocent kid got hit. I’m sad because a group of people let anger overtake them, and responded with hate instead of love.
I’m sad because people retreated to their corners.

Some used Steve Utash as an excuse to berate Jesse, Al, and others who view racism as prejudice+power. Some anti-racist activists explained away black folks beating a white man nearly to death because such violence is “not systemic.” Both types of responses are understandable and contain elements of truth. Neither response helps, nor feels particularly human.

But this is not a (false) equivalence essay.

In “The Souls of Black Folk,” W.E.B. DuBois asked in 1903 a set of questions that, for all our progress, still remains unanswered today:

“Here, then, is the dilemma…What, after all, am I? Am I American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American?”

In 2014 we are often told we ought to strive for a “colorblind” society. Most people of color, particularly the less affluent, know that such rhetoric is unrealistic at best and harmful at worst. For centuries we have been defined and segregated by our race. We have found ways to adapt, to look out for each other, to band together–and suddenly we’re told things like “”You shouldn’t have BET because a White Entertainment TV would be racist,” or asked, “Why don’t we have a White History Month?”

After being rejected and denounced for so long, we are now welcomed into mainstream society–conditionally.

Black folks and other people of color are welcome if. We are welcome if our name doesn’t sound too black, a truth sociologists still find despite our having a president with a “funny name.” We are welcome if we are incredible athletes or entertainers–as long as we remain humble and avoid seeming arrogant. We are welcome if our diction sounds white. We are welcome if we ‘ask’ for things instead of ‘aksing’ for them.

We are welcome if.
And we know it.

And if not?
We’re just another nigger.

And even if we are welcome, even if we are seen as full American citizens, we are still seen as accountable to one another.

When those black teens attacked Utash, black America was, in some way, held responsible. It felt like my friend was saying, “Why aren’t you all doing something about this?”  That my friend felt comfortable suggesting I, and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ought to be organizing protests and speaking out against the teens who committed those barbaric acts–that says something.

It says: You are only allowed to be upset about racial violence if you’re upset about all of it, equally. If not, shut up.

All of us live lives of inconsistency. We wear “Boston Strong” shirts while ignoring the 49 murders that have happened in greater Boston since the attacks at the Marathon a year ago. We call overbearing men confident and confident women overbearing. At sporting events we applaud soldiers who protect our freedom, even as we question or fear the existence of peaceful Muslim centers near Ground Zero.

In high school, as I watched footage of Emmet Till’s disfigured face, I thought, “his skin tone is like my father’s.” I grew up reading books and watching tapes about people who looked like me being brutally beaten or enslaved. Those images haunted me. I was not alone. And so yes, news stories of a black person being attacked does things to me that a white person’s similar predicament does not. I wish that were not so.

And yet.

None of that excuses the actions of those teenagers against Steve Utash.

Social liberals and anti-racist scholars may not exactly be in Steve Utash’s corner about the controversy (though Jesse Jackson did speak out Monday against the attack); he did have a black person in his corner when it mattered most.

Deborah Hughes, a retired nurse, heard the crash and rushed out to see how she could help. When she saw the agitated mob and the beatings, she barged into the chaos to save Utash. Hughes said, “I laid over the top of him, I put my arms around him and I said, ‘You are safe. Nobody’s going to hurt you no more.”‘ 

Deborah Hughes saved Steve Utash’s life.

I don’t know Deborah Hughes. Maybe she’s a black conservative, tired of Melissa Harris-Perry’s ‘divisive rhetoric.’ Maybe she’s a social liberal, exhausted by white America’s ‘inability to truly understand race.’ It doesn’t really matter. Deborah Hughes is an American hero.

Maya Angelou famously quoted Terence, the ancient Roman playwright, who said, “I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.”

I hope we can follow Deborah Hughes’ example: Steve Utash’s suffering was not alien to her, because Steve Utash is not a talking point; he is a human being. Marissa Alexander is a human being. Trayvon Martin was a human being.

When Deborah Hughes saw Steve Utash being attacked, she didn’t see a talking point. She didn’t see a sociological study or proof of blacks’ reverse racism. She saw a fellow human in danger, and she moved to help.

May we do the same. May we do the same whether it’s a middle-aged white man being attacked, a  middle class black girl being left out of advanced classes, or a middle school boy trapped in a system that has forgotten about him.

May we move to help.