The eCrozier

Sanctus bells have served an important role in the Church’s worship. Traditionally, they were a call for the congregation gathered to pay attention to what was happening at the altar. In a time before pews and when the mass length was much longer, Sanctus bells called people out of whatever distraction, or dare we say sleep, to give their attention to the Blessed Sacrament of the Church that was being celebrated at the altar.

Our culture receives the ring of a Sanctus bell from time to time to call us to attention. It can call us to a deeper awareness of the kind of culture we’ve nurtured over hundreds of years. Such a ring can also sound out a truth about ourselves we may not wish to hear (e.g. we’ve been asleep). We’ve received a number of clear Sanctus bells over the last year. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and now Walter Scott were all unarmed African-American men killed by a member of the police force. They’re not the only ones. There are many others who have received less notice and media attention.

A simplistic response to these particular Sanctus bells would seek only to blame the individual police officers involved. They’re the few so-called “bad apples.” To solve this problem then means to get rid of these policemen. But that is akin to a physician treating a cancer in someone’s leg deciding just to cut off the leg and not look at the patient’s whole body for other signs that the cancer might be present as well. The cancer of racism has infected the whole body of America. For generation upon generation it’s infected us all with irrational fears and false conclusions about one another. It’s distorted and deranged our ability to see and understand clearly.

Police officers have a difficult, dangerous vocation. We can’t expect them to be social workers or clinical psychologists. They’re formed and shaped by the same culture in which we were raised. Their police training can’t trump the culture of racism. It’s too big and pervasive. They’ve become a reflection of the deeper problem racism creates. That helps explain what happened when Officer Thomas Slager of the North Charleston Police Department stopped Mr. Walter Scott for having a broken car taillight. Because of racism’s cancerous effects, each one “knew” something about the other. Mr. Scott “knew” of the historical power of the police to kill black men, even for a broken taillight. So, he fled. Officer Slager “knew” of the power of black men, even an unarmed one much older than he, to possibly kill him. So, he shot Mr. Scott in the back four times as he fled. What they “knew” about each other led to this tragedy.

Officer Slager should face criminal consequences for this murder. It will be overly facile, however, if we believe that’s all that needs doing. We must learn to “unknow” the distorted and deranged “knowledge” that racism has bequeathed to us. That’ll be hard work for us all, but it’s work we all must do. We haven’t done this work either because we didn’t want to believe it was still necessary or because we never believed it was necessary in the first place. I hope it’s the former and not the latter. Because if we remain willfully ignorant of what racism has done and is still doing to our body politic, we’ll ignore the cancer that infects us all. The Sanctus bell is ringing loudly and clearly.

+Scott

Recently I was talking with a young woman when a man about my age joined our conversation. When he learned the young woman was a 21 year-old college student, he said: “Ah, to be free, white, and 21!” I cringed. The young woman was probably too young to know of that saying. I wasn’t. It was the declaration of privilege by which I came of age. It meant that if you were those three things, then nothing could stop you. You had it made. You had all the privilege one needed in America.

Now the man who said this was well-educated, clearly a professional, and should’ve been aware of the import of his words. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, just assuming he was trying nervously to break the ice of our conversation. Words, however, have power. By repeating a saying of our common, racist past, he was unwittingly (I hope he was) perpetuating the sinful assumptions of one race’s privilege over another. It seems our racist past isn’t past. It’s still playing in our brain’s recording studio, occasionally spilling out when the mute button isn’t functioning right.

When he left I had to explain to the young woman the context and background of that old saying. She looked at me as if I were an anthropologist explaining the odd cultural practices of an obscure tribe from a distant land. And maybe that’s a good metaphor. My white tribe in this culture has assumed our privileges without realizing them. When my two sons were teenagers, I never had to talk to them about how to appease the police when walking down the street or driving a car. It never would’ve occurred to me then to think that I might have to do so. Not so with black fathers.

My oldest son got arrested for “stealing” two donuts from a grocery store when he was 18 years old. He’d gone to the store with his best friend, Jose, to shop for our family. While in the store, they did as we had done when they were children. They got two donuts out of the display case and ate them, intending to pay for the consumed donuts when they checked out, as we did when they were youngsters. They bought our groceries with our debit card, but forgot to pay for the two donuts. Security guards detained them as they left the store and the police arrived within minutes. My son, God love him, got a little mouthy and testy with the police claiming it was clearly his mistake: He simply forgot about the two donuts. After all, he’d just bought over $90 in groceries, so he’d pay for the two donuts now. The store manager would have none of it. The police arrested them. If his friend hadn’t looked like a “Jose,” my hunch is his white privilege would’ve been enough. They never would’ve been monitored as potential thieves while they walked the aisles of the grocery store that day.

And that brings us to Michael Brown’s horrific death in Missouri, which has dominated the recent news. The box of cigars he carried could’ve been two donuts. And maybe Michael Brown got a little mouthy and testy with the police officer? Or maybe he didn’t? But six bullets later he was dead in the street. Six bullets! Count each pull of the trigger. My son just celebrated his 27^th birthday. I wonder if Michael Brown had been “free, white, and 21,” would he still be alive today? Our racial history says that’s highly likely.

+Scott

The outrage and then the counter-outrage over Paula Deen’s use of the N-word should have been predictable to anyone who has been paying attention to race relations and racism in our country. First comes the shock by well-meaning people that anyone in this day and age, especially a contemporary icon of the culinary arts, could possibly still use that word. Then comes the counter-outrage from other well-meaning people who either (1) want us to get over all this hyper-sensitivity around race, or (2) think those shocked by her comments are totally over-reacting, or, (3) excuse and justify her word use because she is merely “a product of her generation and where she was raised.”

All of those responses have some small kernel of truth to them. All people of good will, and especially those of us who attend ourselves to discipleship in Jesus, wish we could finally move on, be less reactive to mean-spirited language (no matter who utters it), and be more merciful to those who, like Ms. Deen, have yet to grow up emotionally and spiritually beyond the limits of the way they were raised.  We all wish this, but we as a culture still have too much unfinished business around race relations and racism for this wish to be realized just yet.

One of the reasons, I believe, we still have unfinished business is our collective self-deception and self-denial when addressing this subject. Our self-deception shows itself by all the heat that gets generated when someone like Ms. Deen makes such immature comments. We prefer to bask in the heat of outrage, rather than stand in the light of truth that comes from really listening to one another’s experience of race and racism. And because there’s more heat than light on this subject, our self-deception leads us to a collective self-denial about the pervasive power this persistent sin has over all of us.

C. S. Lewis’ Uncle Screwtape would be chuckling away were he to witness all this. In addressing his nephew Wormwood, he might write: “We now have them right where we want them. Keep them outraged by blaming one another and then by making further excuses for why no one should be outraged. That will keep them so resentful and so angry at one another that they will never stop, listen to one another, and then learn the emotional and spiritual maturity needed to deal with the sin faithfully together. So, Wormwood, keep up the good work!”

When the Devil is smiling and cheering us on, then we should wake up and take notice. And then we shouldn’t simply resign ourselves to it saying: “well, that’s just the way it is.” Race relations in our culture won’t improve, and we won’t faithfully address the sin of racism, until enough of us say “enough,” which will come by empathizing with one another’s pain, and fear, and hurt, and loss. It’s time to stop blaming one another. It’s time to do something about this sin. Outrage and counter-outrage will just continue to stir us up, distract us from the real work we must do, and make Uncle Screwtape smile.

+Scott

(The eCrozier is off to the wilds of the Galapagos Islands on an exotic holiday and will return around Labor Day)