"This is their experiential moment, that moment when the weight becomes too much, when the abstract becomes real, when expectations of continual, inexorable progress slam into the back of a slow-moving reality, plagued by fits and starts and sometimes prone to occasional regressions."
Recently I read these words in a New York Times op-ed column by Charles M. Blow that captures a realization I've had while participating in the demonstrations sparked by Ferguson and Staten Island. Blow writes that he grew up, like most of us, learning about the black freedom struggle that has existed in this country since its founding. But he didn't have a connection to it until the killings of Rodney King and James Byrd, Jr. Those events awakened in him the fervor of the Civil Rights Movement and showed him their relevance in his own day.
Just a few months old in 1991 when Rodney King was killed, I learned about the tragic event in the same way that I did Jim Crow: in history class. And although I've learned a lot about what modern systemic racism looks like, including mass incarceration, I haven't yet felt the fervor and urgency of the black freedom struggle that has at points gripped this nation and moved it to action, such as when slavery and then Jim Crow ended.
That fervor has again been awakened in this country, and my generation is once again taking up arms for true equality. And I feel it.
To participate in this movement I recently attended "Strange Fruit: Seven Last Words of Seven Black Lives," an event hosted by POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild), an interfaith group of congregations committed to justice in Philadelphia. The main feature of "Strange Fruit" was seven sermons reflecting on the last words of black men and women whose known killers (most of whom were police officers) went unpunished. The service also included worship, poetry, prayer, an update from those on the ground in Ferguson, and demands POWER is issuing in response to such unpunished killings.
The event opened up to me in a mysterious way the deep and long struggle of black people in this country. As I listened to poetic words and sounds, submitted to culturally different worship styles, and heard a people cry out to their God, I realized that I had stepped into an ancient struggle, a pain, a perseverance that has endured hundreds of years. We mourned the loss of people slain for their black skin, a dirge that has been sung over and over. We lamented the reality that black sons and daughters could be next. In the prayers, sermons, and songs I saw the resilience of the black soul and felt its strength, its warm embrace, and heard its deep, melodic refrain.
I also witnessed a mobilization--people organizing, demanding, crying out for justice to the powers that be. It was a collision of history with the present struggle. The demands, although distinct in their particularities, have been the same for centuries. And here they were in my context, in reaction to current events, sometimes made by people my age. Everything seemed at once new and ancient--like the gurgling of molten lava to form a new island.
There I stood in the middle of the ancient struggle. Suddenly it was not just the struggle from ages past, but it was of my time, of my generation and, though I am not black, it was mine.
As my generation boldly steps forward to claim the struggle in a new way and determines to no longer be dragged backward, we can find hope in the advances of generations past, the faithfulness of God to respond to the cries of His people. Blow titled his article "This Is Your Moment." Indeed, this moment is ours, but it carries the momentum of a few hundred years. Let's push forward like so many before us in the ancient struggle against racism--our struggle.
Recently I read these words in a New York Times op-ed column by Charles M. Blow that captures a realization I've had while participating in the demonstrations sparked by Ferguson and Staten Island. Blow writes that he grew up, like most of us, learning about the black freedom struggle that has existed in this country since its founding. But he didn't have a connection to it until the killings of Rodney King and James Byrd, Jr. Those events awakened in him the fervor of the Civil Rights Movement and showed him their relevance in his own day.
Just a few months old in 1991 when Rodney King was killed, I learned about the tragic event in the same way that I did Jim Crow: in history class. And although I've learned a lot about what modern systemic racism looks like, including mass incarceration, I haven't yet felt the fervor and urgency of the black freedom struggle that has at points gripped this nation and moved it to action, such as when slavery and then Jim Crow ended.
That fervor has again been awakened in this country, and my generation is once again taking up arms for true equality. And I feel it.
To participate in this movement I recently attended "Strange Fruit: Seven Last Words of Seven Black Lives," an event hosted by POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild), an interfaith group of congregations committed to justice in Philadelphia. The main feature of "Strange Fruit" was seven sermons reflecting on the last words of black men and women whose known killers (most of whom were police officers) went unpunished. The service also included worship, poetry, prayer, an update from those on the ground in Ferguson, and demands POWER is issuing in response to such unpunished killings.
The event opened up to me in a mysterious way the deep and long struggle of black people in this country. As I listened to poetic words and sounds, submitted to culturally different worship styles, and heard a people cry out to their God, I realized that I had stepped into an ancient struggle, a pain, a perseverance that has endured hundreds of years. We mourned the loss of people slain for their black skin, a dirge that has been sung over and over. We lamented the reality that black sons and daughters could be next. In the prayers, sermons, and songs I saw the resilience of the black soul and felt its strength, its warm embrace, and heard its deep, melodic refrain.
I also witnessed a mobilization--people organizing, demanding, crying out for justice to the powers that be. It was a collision of history with the present struggle. The demands, although distinct in their particularities, have been the same for centuries. And here they were in my context, in reaction to current events, sometimes made by people my age. Everything seemed at once new and ancient--like the gurgling of molten lava to form a new island.
See me pictured at "Strange Fruit" in bottom right corner.
There I stood in the middle of the ancient struggle. Suddenly it was not just the struggle from ages past, but it was of my time, of my generation and, though I am not black, it was mine.
As my generation boldly steps forward to claim the struggle in a new way and determines to no longer be dragged backward, we can find hope in the advances of generations past, the faithfulness of God to respond to the cries of His people. Blow titled his article "This Is Your Moment." Indeed, this moment is ours, but it carries the momentum of a few hundred years. Let's push forward like so many before us in the ancient struggle against racism--our struggle.
