Gates Left Open

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, September 20, 2009

Situation number one:  I don’t remember where we were coming from, but Linda and I had flown somewhere on the cheapest airline tickets I could find, and instead of returning at 11 one night, the plane was delayed and we got in at 4 a.m.  When I got home, I was in no shape to do anything except go to bed.  I was far too tired to be civil.  If the police had shown up at my front door when I got home that morning, I don’t know how it would have gone.  Maybe you’ve been that tired when you’ve come home late after a long trip.

Situation number two:  I have lived in a neighborhood where suspicious activity was reason to call the police, and my neighbors and I did that for each other if we saw anything untoward happening.  Once when I left my gates open, I saw some kids throwing rocks at windows in the front yard and then watched as they went running through my backyard.  When I caught up with them, they were strolling along in the alleyway like they hadn’t done a thing.  Maybe you’ve lived in a neighborhood where you’ve felt the need to call the police from time to time.

The first situation happened to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of this country’s leading intellectuals, an educated, erudite, urbane and urban writer, thinker, literary critic, and teacher.  On July 16, he was returning home from a trip to China and was approached by police asking him to produce identification.  Dr. Gates was apparently not inclined to be overly civil.

The second situation is one Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley walked into as he responded to a report that a pair of men appeared to be breaking into the front door of a residence.  He ended up arresting Mr. Gates in his own home for being mouthy and uncivil, and – some said – for being black.  The mess that ensued played out in the glare of international media coverage, some seeing it as a particularly heinous example of racial profiling by overzealous law enforcement, and others seeing it as an ungracious and less-than-civil homeowner overreacting to police who were doing their jobs and protecting property and keeping neighborhoods safe.

Throughout the coverage, one could hear repeated over and over on media outlets and by average citizens apocryphal stories of what Mr. Gates may have said to the officers or how the officers may have treated Mr. Gates.  Many of these stories seemed dubious at best since both sides had their own images to defend.

But it wasn’t the stories the actual players told that were so riveting in the end.  It was the incessant spin in one direction or the other, almost all of it concerning race.  Because of the racial subjugation and terror that colors virtually every page of this country’s history, we should not be surprised to find issues of race underlying our political as well as our personal relationships today.  The election of our first African American president is enough to put race on the front burner for a lot of folks.  Of course, race doesn’t stand alone as the only issue that divides us:  issues of class, gender, orientation, education - all have roles in dictating the rules of relationships between people, all of those issues capable of holding some people or groups back while assuring others of a big ol’ get-out-of-jail-free card.

The Henry Louis Gates arrest would be bad enough if it had lasted just the one day of the news cycle, another short-lived and perhaps-isolated example of race troubles in America.  But the accusations and hyperbole around issues of race hasn’t slowed down since July.

Just this month, after a formerly unremarkable representative from a Southern state broke protocol and yelled out ‘You Lie!’ at President Obama as he spoke to Congress, former President Jimmy Carter lamented what he called the racism of many of those who are critical of the President’s performance thus far.  And now a firestorm aimed at Carter for using the ‘r’ word to paint good, wholesome Americans as evil.  Even if Obama finds a way to stay above the fray, can we?  Should we?  Do we have a responsibility to our children and to our neighbors to explore this subject more deeply and find ways to keep the conversation going?

 

Conversations about race may be a bit treacherous for me because I am among the privileged classes:  white, straight, male, educated, able-bodied, privileged by accident of birth.  There was a time when my privileged word might have carried some weight.  But it was that same time when offering one’s opinions on race or class or those other things would have been physically dangerous for anyone without my particular privileges.

But because of my membership in this privileged stratum, here are some things I think I can say:

- I as a white person want to ignore the fact of my own privilege.

- I as a white person want to ignore my own culpability in keeping other people from exercising the same freedoms I take for granted.

- I as a white person dearly want to preach that separateness is an illusion even though I hold the majority of the privilege in this cultural equation.

Now, considering all that, some questions arise for me as I have as I travel around my own well-integrated neighborhood:

- When I’m walking alone or as part of a couple on a sidewalk, larger groups of people tend not to shift their trajectory so as to share the sidewalk as I approach.  Is the issue that’s operative here one of race or class or age or something else?  or a mixture of all of them?

- When I’m walking alone or as part of a couple past a group of people sitting on the front stoop of a house, do I like it better if they ignore me or if they mock me for saying a quiet ‘good evening’ as I pass by?

- When I’m walking alone or as part of a couple in my neighborhood and I meet a single individual or a group that takes the time to exchange pleasantries and acknowledge what a great day it is, have we transcended all this race and class and power business, or have I been bowed-and-scrapped to because of what I look like?

I don’t think I can find the answers to these questions on my own.  I think I will have to ask those I’m in relationship with, people of other cultural strata and with different levels of privilege than I.  But to do that, I will have to talk, and I will have to listen.

 

Another privileged person, David Brooks of the New York Times, sees this debate differently in an op-ed column this week.  Mr. Brooks says the current tumult between people in America today isn’t just liberal vs. conservative or black vs. white.  Rather, he opines, it’s populist vs. progressive.  The progressives, as embodied by President Obama and his supporters, are educated, urbane, and urban.  They think government can help ameliorate some suffering – just as progressives always have. 

Populists (whose media spokespeople you probably already know only too well – Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, Palin) set themselves up as “for the average person and against the educated classes, for small towns and against the financial centers” – just as populists and their spokespeople always have.  Now progressives, having won the fall elections decisively, are trying to push through their legislative agendas as you knew they would.  Brooks admits that the populist backlash to recent progressive initiatives is ill-mannered, conspiratorial, and over-the-top – just as populist reactions always are.  One blogger has distilled it this way:  “The progressive elite dismisses rural white America as illegitimate.  And vice versa.”  In this, Brooks asserts, race is not the main issue but only a subset of the larger picture, which has more to do with class.

 

Brooks may be right about populists and progressives, but as a political commentator, he seems to be looking only through his political lens.  Former President Carter may be right about racism being at the heart of reactions to President Obama, but as someone who still teaches Sunday school, Mr. Carter is notorious for seeing things through a particular religious lens.  And Newsweek, a medium that many see as a bullhorn for liberals and progressives, printed an article last week that asks, “Is Your Baby Racist?” ostensibly approaching the debate from a scientific viewpoint, with research studies and interviews with scientists to back it up.  But when confronted with real people in real time who are trying to build real relationships with one another rather than force their own views down the rest of our throats, the question becomes not so much political or religious or scientific – it becomes personal. 

One of the preachers involved with the Decade of Racial Reconciliation in Alton group said a few months ago, “I think everybody’s tired of being mad at each other.  I think it’s time to move on.”  One of the ladies involved with that same Racial Reconciliation group said during a meeting just the other day, “We’ve been meeting with various people and groups for years and years now and nothing ever changes.  We just keep meeting.  Nothing changes.” 

It has taken too long, and we can easily empathize with that frustration.  Perhaps, though, it’s in the meeting that things change or begin to change.  Perhaps it’s in the building of relationship that bridges come into being.  Perhaps it’s in the building of relationship that we get real with each other about our feelings and our fears and our biases and our bigotries.

It was former Secretary of State Colin Powell who said of the altercation between Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley that you would have thought that at some point there would have been a little adult supervision. 

I want to say to all my neighbors and to my friends at the table working on the Decade of Racial Reconciliation and to you and to me:  Yes, I know we’re too tired, and I know we’re easily frustrated after working for so long, but look around – we’re the adult supervision.  All of us.  We have to take responsibility.  We have to stay in the conversation long enough to let others tell us about themselves while we really listen.  And we have to speak our own truths and our own fears and our own concerns across boundaries of race and class and power in ways that don’t demean or denigrate or diminish.

I’m not saying any of us know exactly how to get there – I certainly don’t - but the gate’s been left open now for a discussion of race in America, and some of us must be willing to join in.  With a little more adult supervision, maybe we can integrate the political, the religious, the scientific, and get to something that’s real and personal and helps all of us live together.

All of us, though, over-privileged and under-privileged alike, can take heart in the words of Howard Thurman’s tale of standing with his mother in their backyard and watching Halley’s Comet high in the sky:

“Nothing will happen to us, Howard;  God will take care of us” she says.

And no matter how you understand that word ‘God,’ Mr. Thurman is right when he says, in his inimitable mixture of responsibility and humility, “Here are the faith and the awareness that overcome fear and transform it into the power to strive and to achieve, and not to yield.”

So may it be.