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South Carolina: It's Time to Take It Down

21 June 2015 at 19:27
Dear South Carolina Governor & Legislators,

I was born in Charleston.  I'm a daughter of the South.  There's a city in Spartanburg County -- Landrum, SC -- that was named for some distant relatives of mine.  And my direct ancestor fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy.  My family owns land in the South that was passed down for generations, land that once we enslaved other people on. 

I understand heritage. I understand heritage is complicated.  I understand we have to remember the bad of who we were, and the hard times, along with the good of who we are, and the good times.  I understand that lives were lost and lives were changed, and the Confederacy and the Civil War continue to shape us.  I understand that we can't forget the past, nor do I want to.

I understand heritage.  I struggle with mine, celebrate mine, mourn about mine, live with mine.  Heritage is complicated.

But flying the Confederate flag doesn't represent my heritage, which goes back generations before and continues generations after the Confederacy.  It could only represent a thin slice of heritage at best.  But this symbol doesn't do even that.  It doesn't even truly represent that slice of time -- it's not the flag that flew in South Carolina during the Confederacy, it's the battle flag of another state.  It's not something that's been there, flying over or in front of government buildings, untouched, since that time. It's a symbol that was brought back into our public spaces by the resistance to the Civil Rights movement, a symbol that was brought back for reasons of hatred and racism.  It's a symbol that's been used and abused by the KKK.  It's a symbol that might seem to say "heritage" for some small percentage, but says "hatred" and "oppression" for so many others.  And it has no business on our public lands and flying over our government buildings. 

It's time to acknowledge that this symbol was put up for the wrong reasons, it's the wrong symbol, and it's time for it to come down.  It doesn't truly represent heritage.  It represents a hate that has no place in our government any more.  It represents a time when we acted wrongly, fighting against voter registration and glorifying a time of slavery. 

To truly respect our heritage, to truly honor it, we have to also be willing to honor the truth -- the complicated truth that there were things our ancestors were wrong about, and there were things they chose that we can't applaud.  My ancestors had honor and love and a number of good virtues, I'm sure.  But my ancestors drove Native Americans off their land, and then on that land my ancestors enslaved African Americans.  That's not something I want to wave a flag proudly for.  It's not something I want to forget, either.  But honoring and respecting heritage means understanding this complexity, that not all was good, not all was admirable, and not all was what we want to carry forward.  I might have German ancestors, but flying the Nazi flag wouldn't honor heritage, it would honor hate.  Flying the Confederate flag doesn't honor the complexity of heritage -- it shouts a message of oppression.

And one thing that clearly we need to not carry forward at this time in our country is a symbol that speaks of hatred, of oppression, and of slavery.  We need to not have symbols that glorify racism and oppression as part of our government and its buildings and sites.  The symbol needs to be placed in its proper context, and that is purely historical.

It's time to take down the Confederate flag.

Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Landrum



"They died... discussing the eternal meaning of love."

18 June 2015 at 12:27
In the Civil Rights era, there were churches that were centers for civil rights organizing.  And they were attacked -- bombed, set on fire.  We know best the story of the 16th Street Baptist church where four young girls died.  In his eulogy for them, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would say, "They died between the sacred walls of the church of God, and they were discussing the eternal meaning of love."

In that same eulogy for the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also said:
"They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream."
They are words he would share again in his eulogy for the Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb.

After the shooting in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, a shooting motivated by hatred of the values we stand for, the UUA launched our social justice movement "Standing on the Side of Love." 

This shooting in Charleston, South Carolina at the Emanuel AME Church says something to us in our religious faith, too. This shooting doesn't call for us to launch a movement, but to join a movement.  This shooting calls for us to be partners, work in solidarity, join coalitions, build bridges. 

These deaths say to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for Love.

The Meaning of #Ferguson

19 August 2014 at 13:50
Generally I write about things on my blog that are not the same things as I'm preaching on -- the blog is an outlet for thoughts that aren't about something I will be preaching on, but still want to get out there.  This past week, I threw out my regularly scheduled sermon to write about Ferguson, as many ministers did around the country.  Because I was channeling all my reading and research and thoughts into the sermon, however, it meant a lack of blog writing on the subject.  For those not in my pews, therefore, I realize it can feel like I've been silent on the subject.  So I'm doing what I don't very often do, and posting my entire sermon, lightly edited, to this blog.  The sermon I was to give was a reprise of one I did post to this blog, a sermon entirely in rhyme about Earth Day and The Lorax.  It's the tenth anniversary of my call to the church, and I had asked people to vote on their favorite sermons of ones I have given over the past ten years.  So during announcements, I announced the change thusly:
There once was a minister who planned far ahead,
Not knowing that current events would instead
Make her wish her week’s sermon was not planned
So that she could respond to events in our land.

She had planned to give her whole sermon in rhyme.
When she gave it before, it was liked at the time.
It was a sermon that was given for a holiday, Earth Day,
And speaking in rhyme was an unusual way
To bring attention to the message of global warming
And all the climate trouble that’s forming

It’s still a relevant message, so she’ll give it next week,
But if it was next week’s sermon on art that you seek,
Well, don’t fret, because it’s likely a topic this year.
Ann Green, you see, is likely to steer
The sermon she purchased at auction that way.
And, so the message that you’ll hear today
Is not the one that was in your Bellnote.
Not the one that got the vote,
That was submitted when Cindy asked for your choice
Of sermon for her anniversary to voice.

Nevertheless, there’s more ways to celebrate,
This ten-year occasion, than just when we congregate.
A party at Elissa’s is coming on Saturday at seven.
Or seven thirty, either way, it’s sure to be heaven.
We’ll hope to see you there.  And again, come next week,
If it was the Lorax/Earth sermon you came here to seek.

It was a light moment in an otherwise solemn service.  The reading was "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes.  And here's the sermon.  Please forgive that my footnotes are not all in Chicago Style, and that it's still a little bit rough.  Sermons are an oral presentation style, not a written one.  The hashtag in the title is a reference, of course, to the role of Twitter in getting this story out.  There are many things I haven't covered in this sermon -- how the rights of the press have been suppressed, the discussion that's being had about the militarization of the police, and how the media covers the deaths of young, black men (although I mention this briefly).  Those are all important subjects to look at, and I hope I will, in time.

"The Meaning of #Ferguson"

Ninety-five years ago, in the summer of 1919, which would come to be known as the “Red Summer,” race riots broke out in cities across this country – in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Connecticut, Tennessee, Maryland,  Arizona, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Texas, you get the picture.  Not here, but Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania.  In Chicago, they started when a young black man was stoned while swimming in an area reserved for whites, and drowned, and Chicago police refused to arrest those who did the stoning.[i]  The Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay wrote a poem for that summer, “If We Must Die,”  The poem reads:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Fifty years ago was the summer known as Freedom Summer, a summer devoted to registering African Americans to vote in Mississippi.  It was then and there that three young civil rights workers were killed – twenty-one-year old James Earl Chaney, an African American young man from Mississippi, and two Caucasian young men from New York, 20-year-old Andrew Goodman and 24-year-old Michael Schwerner.  Paul Simon was a classmate of Andrew Goodman, and he dedicated a song he had written before the death, “He Was My Brother,” to Goodman:
He was my brother
Five years older than I
He was my brother
Twenty-three years old the day he died
Freedom rider
They cursed my brother to his face
“Go home, outsider,
This town is gonna be your buryin’ place
The folk-singer Tom Paxton wrote, similarly:
Calm desperation and flickering hope,
Reality grapples like a hand on the throat.
For you live in the shadow of ten feet of rope,
If you're Goodman and Schwerner and Chaney.

A lot of things have changed since 95 years ago and 50 years ago.  But this summer, the way things have erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, it’s bringing those summers back to mind.  There are no songs or poetry emerging yet that I’ve heard, although time will tell.  What we have, in the internet age, is a hashtag -- #iftheygunnedmedown.  What the hashtag is about is young African-American men and women posting two different pictures of themselves on Twitter.  One is a picture of them in college or high school graduation robes, or in military uniform.  The other is in street clothes, flashing a gang sign.  And the question is, if they gunned me down, which picture would the media use? 

This sermon is not about the details, and about whether this young man, Michael Brown, was a good kid or a thug.  What I have to say today is about why this case has become so important, why we’re talking about this young man’s death at all, and why there is protesting still going on down in Ferguson.

So, briefly, what we think we know, for those who haven’t been following the news, is that a young man, 18-years-old and college bound, African-American, was killed by a police officer in Ferguson.  It looks like, based on the latest news, that Michael Brown may have stolen some cigarettes or cigars from a local store.  It was reportedly a strong-arm robbery, which means the thief was unarmed.  It would be shoplifting, but it appears was a tussle with the store owner who tried to stop the thief, which would make it strong-arm robbery by definition.  This robber is alleged to be Michael Brown, but that’s not completely proven.  [Update: It’s now being reported that the shopkeepers didn’t call in to 911, that Michael Brown paid for his purchases, and that a call was made by another shopper.]  It then appears that as Michael Brown was walking somewhere, a police officer ordered him to get out of the street and stop walking in the street.  One witness says they then ran, another witness says she saw Michael Brown struggling to get away from the police officer who had grabbed him through his window.  It also seems that while the stop was unrelated to the robbery, by this point the officer may have linked Brown to the robbery.  Brown then, according to a witness, breaks away and runs away, and is shot.  He then spins around, holds his hands up in the air to surrender, and is shot several more times.  He then is left, dying or dead, for quite a while, untouched, with a crowd gathering, until an ambulance arrives. 

So Michael Brown was not, possibly, a perfect citizen for us to be rallying around.  Or maybe he was just an 18-year-old kid out for a walk.  Whether he was or was not does not matter.  It’s really beside the point.  As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow:
When black youth find it difficult or impossible to live up to these standards—or when they fail, stumble, and make mistakes, as all humans do—shame and blame is heaped upon them. If only they had made different choices, they’re told sternly, they wouldn’t be sitting in a jail cell; they’d be graduating from college. Never mind that white children on the other side of town who made precisely the same choices—often for less compelling reasons—are in fact going to college. The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that’s why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners.  All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives.[ii]
In Michael Brown’s situation, his mistakes, if he made any, didn’t lead to his incarceration, but to his death.  Here in 2014, it seems that this young man’s life, Michael Brown’s life, matters beyond his family, but to the nation.  Why? 

This story of Michael Brown came on the heels of another African-American man, Eric Garner, who was killed this summer by the police, in New York City.[iii]  An asthmatic, he was put in an illegal choke hold and died on the street.  Also this summer, John Crawford, in Ohio, was shot and killed inside a Walmart.  Unlike Michael Brown and Eric Garner, he was armed.  Armed with a BB gun he picked up on the shelf in Wal-Mart, with intent to, perhaps, purchase.  And Ezell Ford, in California, was killed this summer.  Also unarmed, it’s reported he was shot in the back while lying on the ground.  Dante Taylor, in California, this week, was unarmed, tazed by the police when he resisted arrest, and died.  A robbery suspect had ridden away on a bicycle, and Dante Taylor was on a bicycle.  Many of these African-American men didn’t behave perfectly in the situation.  But they were all unarmed, all African-American, all dead at the hands of police. 
What is true in this country is that white Americans and black Americans have a very different experience of law enforcement in this country, and very different expectations of how we’ll be treated in encounters with them.  White Americans, largely, are taught that police are to be respected, admired, and are there to protect you.  Police can be expected to come when you call, to respond to you politely, and to treat you with respect.  Police are not expected to hassle you or stop you when you’re walking down the street or driving down the street, unless you’re speeding.  And when you are stopped for speeding you have a polite chat, get your ticket, and drive on your way.  White people can reasonably expect when they’re in a store and walking out that they will not be stopped; even if the security alarm buzzes as you go out, you’ll be waved on your way.  How many of you watch Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC?  Did you know she is a Unitarian Universalist?  Melissa Harris-Perry reports that a black person is killed by a white police officer at least twice a week from 2006-2012.[iv]

The protests in Ferguson have taken up the chant, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” as reportedly Michael Brown had his hands up and said, “Don’t shoot.” 

After Trayvon Martin, we heard a lot in the media about how African-American men are socialized in this country – told respect and not challenge law enforcement in any way, because those encounters, in the African-American community, are considered to be encounters that can easily become deadly.  It’s hard for white people to understand the reality of growing up and living in a way where the police aren’t your protectors, they’re your antagonists, where you might be stopped and detained regularly for no reason. 
This isn’t new.  In 2001, talking about a man who attempted to get into the White House when George W. Bush was president, with a gun, comedian Chris Rock said, on the Daily Show, “That's right. That guy jumped the fence or whatever and they shot him…  I knew it wasn't a brother, because they shot him in the leg. It's like, 'Oh, they shot him in the leg? Must've been a white guy.'"[v]

In American, when you’re white, you can carry your gun around with you, and have encounters with the police where they merely ask you for your concealed carry license.  If you’re black, you can’t pick up a BB gun off the shelf in Wal-Mart.  That’s the perspective of African-Americans in this country.  After Trayvon, Etan Thomas, an NBA player, wrote, “Very soon, I have to ruin my son's rose-colored glasses view of the world we live in. I have to teach him that...[i]f the police stop you, make sure you stop in a well-lit area and don't make any sudden moves. Keep your hands visible. Avoid putting them in your pockets.”[vi]  Actor Levar Burton, from Reading Rainbow and Star Trek the Next Generation, has said:
Listen, I’m gonna be honest with you, and this is a practice I engage in every time I’m stopped by law enforcement. And I taught this to my son who is now 33 as part of my duty as a father to ensure that he knows the kind of world in which he is growing up. So when I get stopped by the police, I take my hat off and my sunglasses off, I put them on the passenger’s side, I roll down my window, I take my hands, I stick them outside the window and on the door of the driver’s side because I want that officer to be relaxed as possible when he approaches my vehicle. And I do that because I live in America.[vii]
Contrast that to what you might expect from police, if you’re white.  Tim Wise, who is a white author, has written this:
One day I locked myself out of my car on Roberts Street and so I’m trying to break into my car with a coat hanger and a cop comes up. And he sees me doing it. He does not even ask me for ID or proof that that’s my car. Literally, the NOPD was like, hey you’re breaking into the car the wrong way. Let me help you. The cop was trying to help me break in. Now there is not a black man in this country 23 [years old] for whom that would’ve been the reaction.[viii]
In fact, I watched a video where they recreated exactly this sort of thing.  They had an African-American man and a white man, both dressed in t-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, both trying to free a bicycle that had been locked up with bolt cutters.[ix]  The white guy got asked if it was his bike, but out of a hundred people who pass by, only one tries to stop him.  With the African-American guy, he’s stopped repeatedly right away.  And when it was a blond-haired white girl, openly telling people she was stealing it, people helped her.

I took a test earlier this month, for a inter-cultural competency inventory that the MidAmerica Board is all talking together.  I’ll find out next month where I stand.  But this model that we’re using is called the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity[x], and it says that intercultural sensitivity is something people can and do learn.  In it, people move from Denial to Polarization to Minimization to Acceptance to Adaptation.  In the Denial stage, people would say that there is no racism, no difference between the races.  We’re all human, that’s all that matters.  To some extent, our Unitarian Universalist theology encourages a level of denial, to ignore differences and look at our common humanity.  In this stage, we have one size fits all solutions.  Laws are laws, crime is crime, the police are the police, end of story.  The next stage is polarization.  It’s us vs. them.  And we defend ourselves at that stage through fear and anger – distrust of others, denigration of others, feeling our way of life is threatened.  We can see some of that in the police response in Ferguson – meeting protest with tear gas.  We can see that kind of response in the arguments around immigration earlier in this summer.

Minimization, the next step, returns to a “deep down we’re all the same” point of view. W e avoid stereotypes, and we’re consistently, and insistently nice, avoiding anger.  Lots of us UUs find ourselves here.  We can recognize differences, but we minimize them.  We want to assume we’re all the same deep down and focus on that and ignore, or minimize, the difference.  Our response to Ferguson here is to use expert data – most of those young men who were killed were troublemakers.  The police are really here to serve and protect.  People need to just avoid conflict.  Everything will be okay.  Minimization.  We just all need to follow the golden rule.

The next step in intercultural growth is Acceptance.  Everything becomes relative at this point.  Behaviors are relative, values are relative.  We have a curiosity about other cultures without evaluating them.  We assess communities in their own communities, rather than applying global rules.  So a response to Ferguson at this level might take into more account of the socio-economic and historical struggle of Ferguson, and say, no the experience of the police in that community is not the same as it is here in my community.  At the same time in Acceptance, you can realize that values are relative, but hold onto your own – I value peace, and nonviolence.  I can see that others are responding differently, and understand why, but without giving up my ethical commitment to nonviolence. 

The last stage is Adaptation.  At this stage, we begin to adapt our own culture and change it in response to others.  This is where we need to get to, as a movement, as a faith, and as an entire country, with Ferguson.  We need to adapt our American culture to understand the lived and very different experience African-Americans have had in this culture.  Adaptation is shifting to be more effective in the situation, not changing permanently, necessarily.  It was adaptation to bring in a different person, an African American officer, to lead the police in Ferguson.  Another example of adaptation: my colleague Tom Shade wrote an article this week in which he charged us, as a movement to do three things in response to Ferguson – Learn, Re-Think, and Teach.  In talking about re-thinking, which is adaptation, he asked what it would mean for us to move from thinking “#notallcops” in response to Ferguson to thinking “#yesallblackmen.”[xi]  What that means is what is your first reaction to the story?  Do you jump first to saying, "Not all cops are like that?" Or do you jump first to saying, "Yes, that's the experience of all black men in our society, for the most part."

Another example of that charge comes from 48 years ago, but it’s a charge directly to us.  In 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the Ware Lecture at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.  The Ware Lecture is where basically we, as a movement, invite an outsider to come in and tell us something we need to hear.  In his lecture, titled “Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution,” Dr. King said these words, that I think speak to us today about moving from denial to adaptation, and about how to respond to not just Ferguson, but police violence, and also the New Jim Crow today.  This is a long quote, and I’ll close with his words.  He said:
…certainly we all want to live the well adjusted and avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must say to you this evening, my friends, there are some things in our nation and in our world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted. And I call upon you to be maladjusted and all people of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry .I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. I must honestly say, however much criticism it brings, that I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and to the self-defeating effects of physical violence….  Yes, I must confess that I believe firmly that our world is in dire need of a new organization – the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and women as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, cried out in words that echo across the centuries—"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, cried in words lifted to cosmic proportions—"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could say to the men and women of his day “he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.[xii]
May it be so, my friends.  May we be amazing maladjusted to the troubles of our day.


[ii] Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition (p. 205).
[iv] Harris-Perry, Melissa, http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry, August 17, 2014
[x] Information taken from presentation to the Heartland Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, Fall Chapter Meeting 2013.  More on the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_scale.
[xii] King, Martin Luther.  Ware Lecture, Unitarian Universalist Association, 1966.  http://www.uua.org/ga/past/1966/ware/index.shtml

Plantations, Difranco, and Me

2 January 2014 at 18:17
I have been reading about Ani Difranco and her response -- and the responses to it -- to her misstep of holding a retreat at Nottoway Plantation with great interest.

For those who haven't been following it, Ani Difranco is a white feminist singer/songwriter.  In late December, she announced that she would be holding a "Righteous Retreat."  This was an occasion where people could join her and friends for 3 days/4 nights singing and songwriting in the Big Easy, with a price tag of $1000.  The location of the retreat was to be Nottoway Plantation, the largest antebellum plantation in the South.  Difranco made the large misstep of choosing a site for her retreat especially burdened with the history of slavery, and a site that seemed to gloss-over and even glorify that history.  Furthermore, her statement said, as others have noted, (emphasis mine):
We will be shacked up at the historic Nottoway Plantation and Resort in White Castle, LA, for 3 days and 4 nights exchanging ideas, making music, and otherwise getting suntans in the light of each other’s company.... In the evenings we will perform for each other and enjoy great food in a captivating setting.
The poor wording choices added to the misstep, taking it way beyond clueless.  And the internet erupted, pointing out the racist setting and demanding the cancellation.  Difranco was slow to respond.  And then she did cancel the retreat, issuing a statement that has been critiqued as a "fauxpology," in which she indicates that at first she had hoped to still go to the location and have a discussion about the setting become part of the experience, and then realized she would have to cancel it after all.  There are excellent critiques of her response here by Emi Koyama and here by Tim Wise.  Koyama's blog links to many other good critiques, as well.  Essentially, Difranco avoids taking any blame, seems to believe that it is her place to reclaim a slavery location, and throws blame back at those critiquing her actions calling those statements "hatred." 

Interestingly, in the days that have followed the cancellation of the Righteous Retreat, Nottoway has adapted it's historical statement on its webpage saying:
We hope also for Nottoway Plantation to serve as an educator, giving the public a glimpse of life on a Louisiana sugar cane estate in the mid-1800s. With this comes the regrettable fact that, as was typical during that period, Nottoway's workforce was comprised of slaves. However, to sidestep this issue out of a fear of public scrutiny would be an injustice. To bypass a historical property such as ours in order to avoid talking about slavery would be to ignore the opportunity we all have to keep moving forward — to not only acknowledge the shameful shortcomings of our past, but more importantly, to continue to grow in our understanding and support of one another. 
It's a very small step.  Nottoway is by no means turning itself into a museum about slavery.  It's still primarily about sharing the opulent lifestyle of its owners, and allowing its guests to luxuriate in, not engage critically, with that history.  As Tim Wise writes:
At least at Dachau, the guides don’t waste time ruminating on the vicissitudes of life as a camp guard, or the architecture of the prison wings. There, the purpose of the visit is to horrify, to remember without deflection or protection from the evil that envelops the place even now. But in America, we turn our chambers of horror into historical amusement parks, into places where more is said about manners, and weddings, and cotillions, and carriage rides, and ball gowns, and Doric columns and parasols, than about the system of white terrorism that made all of those things possible.
Nottoway's new statement will no doubt be highly critiqued, but that's not what I'm writing about today.

As I said, I've followed all this discussion with great interest.  And it's not because I'm an Ani Difranco fan.  I've never really listened to her, and  I can't name a single song.  No, I've been interested because I am a white feminist.  And feminism, white feminism, which I love and embrace in so many ways, had a horrible history of racism that we have to acknowledge.  This event is as painful as it is in large part because of this history of feminism that we too often ignore.

And I've been following it because I'm a Landrum, and my family owns a small piece of plantation land. 

My Landrum ancestor, my grandfather's great-grandfather Jeptha Landrum, owned a plantation. Jeptha was born in 1803 and commissioned as a lieutenant in 1822.  He was commander of a military expedition that assisted in driving the Creek Indians out of Fayette County, Georgia.  I know the chief's name, Black Hawk, because his son named his horse for him.  In 1827, he won some of that land in Fayette county in the land lottery.  Jeptha became a judge, and built up a plantation of 3000 acres and had 50 or more slaves.  He was a Jeffersonian Democrat, naming one of his sons (not the one I'm descended from) Thomas Jefferson.  The Landrums had this plantation for only the one generation.  After the Civil War, my grandfather's grandfather, Larkin deLafayette Landrum, would have the work of selling off portions of the land during reconstruction.  He saved some land that was passed down.  My grandfather's father inherited some of that land, and it was divided among his children.  My grandfather inherited  a handful of acres, that was then split upon his death between my father and aunt.  My father owns one of the last couple of parcels that remains in the family (my aunt sold hers). 

My family and I have been struggling for decades and generations with our legacy as descendants of people who enslaved other people, and what that does mean and should mean to us.  We've struggled with the fact that we own this few undeveloped acres of land that was once part of that plantation, and what we can do and what we should do with that land, other than just leave it alone and pay taxes on it, or visit it once in a while and tromp around in the woods, which is all we've done so far.  The only thing on our parcel is the ruins of a small (1-2 rooms) house from after the Civil War that some ancestors lived in for a period (I think my great-grandfather with his family).



 

As you can see, it's no Nottoway Plantation.   I'm no millionaire heiress.  I'm also a descendant of poor country farmers who hung onto this land even though it was mostly just a tax burden to them.  Why did they keep it?  A sense of honor or legacy or family or duty?  A nostalgia for the Old South? I'm sure the reasons were complex and varied and perhaps not even understood.  Why will I hang onto it, if I do?  That, too, is complex and not thoroughly understood, except that to get rid of it is equally complex.  Can I just sell it and keep the money? 

One thing that's clear in Difranco's situation is that she tried to turn her event into an event focusing on slavery without partnering with the descendants of slaves in that framing.  As Jaya wrote:
Ani, you don’t get to choose how Black women want to deal with the legacy of slavery. 
I agree.  But I do have to choose how I deal with the legacy of oppression.  This Difranco did not do, to her detriment.  Similarly, Kimberly Foster writes in a post titled, "Dear Ani DiFranco Supporters: You Cannot Reclaim an Oppression You Have Never Experienced":
There can be no healing at Nottoway Plantation. Continuing to hold an expensive getaway here is an affront to feminists of color.
I agree that I cannot reclaim an oppression I haven't experienced.  Is this the same thing as reclaiming a site of oppression?  Is it possible for my heritage to be reclaimed?  What would that mean?  These are the questions I've been engaging in for decades.  And then, how do we go about it?  How do we avoid making racist mistakes that continue to add to the problem of the legacy of slavery?

We will make mistakes.  That will absolutely happen.  It's fear of missteps, in part, that keep me and people like me from really dealing with our legacy of slavery, and fear of a reaction like the one Ani Difranco got.  But Ani made the crucial mistake of not really acknowledging her mistake -- or even seeming to understand that it was one.  Like her, I didn't ask to get handed this problem.  But it is mine to deal with, and as a would-be ally, it's important that I do so, and not, when I make mistakes, blame the people who point them out to me.  When we make mistakes, as white feminists and would-be allies to people of color, it's important for us to recognize and own them, something Difranco did not really do.  Mel Hartsell gives an example of what Difranco could have, should have said:
I was well-intentioned when I thought that it would be an act of boldness for us to have a progressive event in a place so wrought with suffering. I did not see outside of my white privilege or reach outside of my circle to gather input from communities that would be directly affected by this venue. 



It's pretty tough to see outside one's own privilege. And often we would like to ignore that it exists.  I would like to be able to just inherit this land when my time comes and have it come to me free from the legacy of slavery.  But it doesn't work like that.  My inheritance will come without its history.  It is my legacy, and as such I'm compelled to engage with it.  However, it's very clear that it's also something that I cannot do alone.  It is also not the case that I will get to just simply decide that I am able to reclaim it from this legacy all by myself.  That was the main thing Difranco did wrong, beyond her initial clueless lack of insight into what her location choice stands for -- she didn't dialogue with people of color either in her attempt to keep the retreat there, or in her framing of her understanding when pulling out of the location.

And that is what this situation says to me --  I get to live with my legacy, but I do not get to decide alone what the Landrum plantation land means and how or whether it can be "reclaimed."  If I want to truly engage that question, I have to engage in it with the descendants of people who were most affected.  That's going to take more work.  It's easier for to find out the name of Jeptha's son's horse than the names of the people who he had enslaved, much less their descendants, if it can even be done.  And I can choose whether or not I engage in the task of finding them, but I can't control whether or not they will want dialogue with me or to help me engage this question -- it's not their job to resolve my legacy for me. 

For now, I continue to ponder and philosophize, rather than act.  But it's a story that won't be complete until more steps are taken.  It's a burden that will hang on me until I address it.  

We Don't Stand for Stand Your Ground

16 July 2013 at 19:40
In the wake of the verdict about the Trayvon Martin case, there are a lot of protests going on, and petitions calling for a civil rights case against George Zimmerman. 

With all honesty, I think that George Zimmerman is innocent under the law.  And what we need to do now is channel this energy, this passion, and change those bad laws, state by state.

Michigan is a "Stand Your Ground" state.  There have been rallies and protests going on in Detroit.  What we need to do is get this base mobilized to change these laws.  The Stand Your Ground laws perpetuate and exacerbate an already large problem of racial bias in our sentencing.  In states with Stand Your Ground laws, a new study has shown that whites who kill blacks are more likely to be found to be acting in self-defense than any other racial combination.  It's true in all states, but more so in Stand Your Ground states.

The studies aren't as thorough as they could be -- they don't compare home-invasion with non-home-invasion cases, for example. 

Even if Stand Your Ground doesn't perpetuate racism, it's still a bad law, however.  What we've basically been slowly instituting in this country is a system of shoot first and ask questions later; a system of bring a gun to a fist fight; and a system where guilt and innocence is decided by who is the fastest, quickest draw in the West, North, or South (not so much the East, which has fewer states with these laws).  In this system, the innocent person is the one with the gun.  The innocent person is the last person standing.

In this system we have, George Zimmerman was the innocent person -- he was the scared person with the gun, and the gun is the decider. 

We need to create a culture wherein it is not only acceptable, but better, to walk away from a fight.  We need to teach people to run away if they have the option of running away.  Stand Your Ground is a law that says even if you have the option of running away, you have the option to stay and take a life instead.  That's a bad decision.  It's a bad law.  Lethal force by civilians should always be left for where there's no alternative.  It shouldn't be a choice.

But we have the power to repeal these laws.  It'll take effort.  It will take a movement.  But I believe it can be done in Florida, and it can be done here.  

We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest

15 July 2013 at 16:44
Yesterday at UU Planet, Peter Bowden wrote about how some churches were guilty of ignoring the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.  He said, "If it is Summer, that’s no excuse.   CLERGY, if you serve a congregation you are responsible for making sure this happens while you’re on Summer vacation."

I don't have a plan for how such things will be handled when I'm on vacation or study leave.  I was fortunate to be up and hear the news.  And, upon hearing it, decided that I needed to go to church, and after a little delay, realized that I needed to do something to address the verdict in the worship service, even though the worship service wasn't my responsibility directly that way.  Bowden is right, that it's always our responsibility, even when on summer vacation (or study leave).  We are responsible for the worship of the congregation, even when we're on leave.

There's a question about where to draw the line in terms of current events that need to be responded to.  It's there somewhere between 9/11, where obviously one does, and the smallest news event you can think of on the other side, where it's not a necessity.  The Trayvon Martin case is somewhere between 9/11 and nothing big, surely.  Perhaps some could make the case that for their congregation, it wasn't a necessity.  But you never know who may come through your doors looking for answers or comfort or to give voice to their anger.  I know it was the right thing for many in my congregation that I did show up on a study leave week to lead the congregation in prayer.

Here is, roughly, what I said, as I reconstruct it from my notes I made before the service:

Today many of us may have come here with the recent news of the not guilty verdict in the case of George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin.  We may be experiencing a wide variety of emotions in relationship to the news.  We may be angry, or sorrowful. Some of us may feel relieved, or even glad.  Some of us may simply feel confused.

We have a justice system in our country where the burden of proof is on the prosecution.  This may well be a case of self-defense. 

But we also have a cultural system in this country where a young Black man is assumed to be a threat.

This may be justice for George Zimmerman.

And yet, at the same time, there is no justice today for Trayvon Martin's death, and a young man has still died who should have had a safe walk home.

It is for him today that I ask a time of silence, reflection, prayer, or thought as we listen to "Ella's Song" by Sweet Honey in the Rock.


Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.

Blessed be, and Amen.

"Democracy" in Michigan

20 February 2013 at 15:35
Right now the Michigan governor is deciding whether or not to appoint an "Emergency Financial Manager" (EFM) for the city of Detroit.  A Michigan political blog, the Eclectablog, points out that if the governor does so, 49% of African-Americans in the state of Michigan will be residing in places under EFM rule.

Why this is such a big deal, and why the EFM law is such a big deal to begin with, is that an EFM replaces local democratically-elected government with a person appointed by the governor.  The people residing in cities run by an EFM still have a mayor and city council, but the mayor and city council no longer make any financial decisions, which is to say they have extremely limited power.

Here's Rachel Maddow, a year ago, as the first city, Benton Harbor, was getting its EFM explaining how this is anti-democratic. (She starts talking about the EFM law about six minutes in.)





If you think this isn't really anti-democratic, consider this...  Last November, Michigan voters voted to repeal the EFM law.  It was the only one of six ballot issues where the vote didn't go our governor's way.  And Michigan voters thought this would do away with the EFM law and restore democracy.  What did our governor and legislature do in response to this clear statement from the Michigan electorate?  They promptly replaced it with extremely similar legislation.  It was one of those lame-duck legislation pieces they swept through this year along with making us a right-to-work state and a host of other things (reproductive freedom curtailed, prisons privatized...).  But this time they did the same trick to it that they did to the right-to-work legislation: they tied it to appropriations so that this time it's not subject to voter referendum.  Yes, that's right.  Our government heard the will of the people to repeal something, and then replaced it with the same thing but in a way that makes it impossible to repeal.  And they did so so that they could replace democratically elected government with appointed officials.  Governor Snyder said, "This legislation demonstrates that we clearly heard, recognized and respected the will of the voters."   Well, heard and recognized, anyway.  I think it would be more truthfully phrased, "We clearly heard, recognized, and have found a way to work around."

This is what we call "democracy" in Michigan these days.  And you can say it's not another sign of the New Jim Crow if you want, but African-Americans in this state in particular are losing voting rights regardless. 

The New Jim Crow

30 August 2012 at 00:27
The new UUA Common Read book for the year is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and I, for one, could not be happier with the choice.  I read this book and preached on it last year after reading a Leonard Pitts article about the book.  The book was revelatory, even for someone who thought she was pretty liberal on this issue.  Two other people who I encouraged to read the book have had the same response.  I was so pleased to have the opportunity to hear her speak this year at General Assembly, and the experience in the room was electric.  She didn't have to say it out loud, even, but the thought that the New Jim Crow applies to the immigration system as well was surely at the front of everyone's mind. I'm looking forward to the Discussion Guide that the UUA will put online in October.  There is a discussion guide written by a UU, but it's the discussion guide to a discussion guide written for Christian churches--a guide of a guide, and, as such, I think is more limited in its usefulness than what the UUA will hopefully provide. 

As someone whose church is in a "prison town," I look forward to the conversations that may occur as a result of this Common Read choice.  This is an issue that would be good for UUs nationally to turn our attention to.  If you haven't read the book, go read it, even if you think you know what it says.  It will still open your eyes even further.

Who Do We Mourn?

28 March 2012 at 11:13
         I was deeply disturbed when Caylee Anthony went missing and mourned her death.  I know why, too.  She was of a similar age to my own daughter, and at least one person told me that Caylee reminded this person of my own daughter.  Caylee's big brown eyes, in particular, do have a resemblance.
         I cried when I read about Christina Taylor Green, who was 9 years old when she died in the shootings in Tucson.  She, too, reminded me of my daughter, a precocious, politically-involved, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl. 
         I know why I mourned these little girls who, for a moment, caught our nation's attention.  They were innocent, beautiful, and gone too soon.  And they were in the media spotlight -- beautiful little girls -- white little girls.  Their deaths were horrible, outrageous, and made us sad and also furious.
         Too often the children whose deaths we mourn as a society are like Caylee and Christina Taylor -- the white little girls.  Too seldom do we, as a society or as individuals unconnected to the family mourn young black children killed.
         This point about who captures our national attention and who we mourn and how there really is racism involved in this was brought home to me this week from an unlikely source -- a fictional one.  Like many others, I've read The Hunger Games and went to see the movie last week.  The character of Rue had a particularly tragic death in the book.  It's particularly tragic because she becomes a person who is important to the heroine, Katniss, and who Katniss particularly mourns, because she reminds her of her own little sister, Primrose.  Suzanne Collins, the author, describes Rue saying, "She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that's she's very like Prim in size and demeanor."  I know why I mourned Rue.  I had little sisters, too.  Rue was beautiful, innocent, and young.  Her character as portrayed in the movie also reminded me of my sisters and daughter. 
          But for some, the fact that they identified with Rue and mourned her death means that she can't be black -- even though the text says she is and the author has directly stated that she is African-American, too.  There are a number of twitter users who have posted about The Hunger Games following the movie saying thing such as, "why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie" (prompting, thankfully, spoofs such as "why does Frederick Douglass have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined abolition"), "call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn't as sad" (Yes, you're a racist), and "Rue looks nothing like I imagined her.  Isn't she supposed to be a pale redhead (or was that just in MY head?)?  Why is she black?" (Yes, it was just in YOUR head.)  For more, see what I think is the original Jezebel story here, more Jezebel commentary here, and a bunch of racist tweets here.
         Yes, too often the children whose deaths we mourn as a society are the white little girls, and too seldom do we mourn young black children killed.  That's why these people struggle with Rue being black--they mourned her, not realizing her race, and assumed her, therefore, to be white, despite textual evidence.  If you care, if she's important, she must be white.  We're used to not caring in our society about young black children who are killed.  And even more so those who are boys, boys killed too soon like Trayvon Martin.  Trayvon was innocent, beautiful, precocious, and gone too soon, too. His death was wrong, horrible, outrageous.  And remarkably, it, too, caught media attention and made us sad and furious.
         The fact that we are, really, conditioned through our media and our culture to be more sympathetically inclined towards dead white children and to find their deaths sadder and more outrageously wrong makes it even more clear how very, very wrong Trayvon's death was.  The fact that we are paying attention to it not because of his race but despite of his race shows how very, very horrible and wrong it was.  If you've listened to the 911 calls and heard him crying for help and heard the level of distress of the callers calling 911 you know it was brutal.  A beautiful, promising young man carrying iced tea, Skittles, and a cell phone, gunned down for the crime of walking while black and wearing a hoodie -- of course we are, and should be, outraged, sad, angry, furious, and tearful.  And there can be no doubt that if this was a young white boy, a high school football player, walking home from a store who was shot by a black man who happened to think he was up to no good for walking home that night, that the shooter would be behind bars awaiting trial, a trial at which he would not be treated kindly by the justice system.
         President Obama has said that the nation needs "soul-searching" in response to Trayvon's death.  In response, people are saying things such as "If Trayvon’s mother were white, would Obama give her a call?" implying that it is the president, not the shooter, who is the racist.  Of course, for Christina Taylor Green, Obama did speak at her funeral.  But facts never get in the way of racist attacks on the president.
         We do need a national soul-searching in response to Trayvon.  And especially if his death doesn't prompt sadness and outrage, we do need soul-searching.
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