The "R" Word

Rev. Peter Friedrichs

September 27, 2009

Imagine that it's late at night and you're taking your dog on a walk around the neighborhood before you turn in for the night. You round the corner of the street and there's a woman standing there. She is obviously distraught, so you ask her what's wrong and she tells you that she thinks that someone is breaking into the house across the street. Being a good, law-abiding citizen, you take out your cell phone and call 911. The conversation between you and the dispatcher goes something like this:

Now, imagine that you're someone else. Someone who's been away from home for awhile. It's been a long trip and you didn't sleep on the plane and you can't wait to get home. A friend picks you up at the airport and drives you to your house. He helps you onto the front porch with your bags and waits while you fumble around for your keys. Where did you put those keys? It's been a long time since you needed them, and you thought they were in your backpack. Where are they? You wish that the porch light was on so that you could see something. Man, are you tired. You're so close to your bed you can feel it. But you can't find your damned keys! You can feel yourself getting increasingly frustrated. Where could they be? Maybe they're in the side pouch of the suitcase. Nope. Not there. Then you remember, you put them in that small zippered pocket on the side of the backpack. So you wouldn't lose them. So you wouldn't forget where they were. You mentally kick yourself for forgetting as you reach in and, ahh, there they are. You're one step closer to your bed and sleep. You pull on the latch of the screen door and… it doesn't budge. You mutter a little swear under your breath. And then you try again and it still doesn't budge. So like a lunatic you start pulling at the door, wondering why it won't open. And then you remember…you went out the back door when you left, and you left the screen door locked. You're dead on your feet, too tired to walk down the steps and around back. So you do what you have to do. You rip the screen, unlatch the door, and force your way in. Your friend carries your bags in behind you as you switch on the lights and step over the mail that's accumulated on the floor of the front hallway while you've been gone. Man, you can't wait to hit the sack and sleep for, like, fifteen hours.

Now, imagine that you're a third person. In fact, you're a police officer. You've been on the force for more than a dozen years. You're confident and maybe even a little bit cocky sometimes. But you have a right to be. You've received citations and promotions, and you've even been selected to do some training of other, greener cops. You work in the affluent suburb of a large city, where there are lots of well-educated residents. Many are teachers and professors and there's a large student population in town. Most of the calls you get are for minor altercations, with an occasional mugging or incidence of domestic violence, but very little violent crime. It's not Mayberry, but it's not West Philly either. Tonight, like most nights, it's just routine patrol. The city is quiet with most of the students gone for the summer. Then, a call comes over the radio that there's a possible burglary in progress over on Ware Street. Your partner flips on the lights of your cruiser and lets the dispatcher know that you're responding. As you pull up to the house where the complaint has come from, you notice that the screen door is hanging open and that the front door is ajar. Cautiously, you and your partner mount the steps of the front porch. Following protocol, you announce "Cambridge Police" as you warily enter the house.

There are conflicting stories about what happened next in the home of Professor Henry Louis Gates last summer and we'll never know the truth. But the events of that night last July set off a firestorm of controversy, and accusations of racism on the part of the Cambridge police department, the good samaritan who phoned in the 911 call and Professor Gates himself. President Obama unadvisedly weighed in on the matter, asserting that the Cambridge cops had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates for disorderly conduct. And so the issue of race relations in our nation flared up once again.

Yet another charge of racism was recently leveled by former President Jimmy Carter. Referring to the nasty protests that took place recently in Washington and other cities around the country, Carter remarked that "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man. I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country." Hank Johnson, a democratic congressman from Georgia, threw even more gasoline on the fire by claiming that soon people would be putting on "white hoods and white uniforms again, and riding through the countryside."

Of course, we don't need to go to Boston or Washington, DC to find racial tension. As we've learned over just the past few days, the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission has determined that the members of a swim club in Huntingdon Valley this past summer were racially motivated when they canceled a contract with a city summer day camp comprised almost exclusively of African-American and Hispanic children. In their email exchanges to one another, the members were quick to reassure each other that their concerns were not race-based. But the Commission determined, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, that "the ladies doth protest too much."

Although some proclaimed, after Barack Obama's election last November, that we had entered a "post-racial society," I think we can all agree that that was more a statement of hope than a reflection of reality. Obama's election was a milestone, but it did not lift from around our collective necks the millstone of racism. Charges of racism and incidences of racism abound in our society. Members of the all-white swim club that canceled the contract with the all-minority summer camp object to "those kids" swimming in their pool. Protesters in Washington carry pictures of President Obama dressed like an African "witch doctor." A cop in Cambridge cuffs a highly esteemed black professor in his own home because he gets "uppity." And these are only the ones that make the nightly news. Day in and day out people of color are categorized and castigated merely because their skin color is different from mine and from most of yours. We continue to be a nation divided between those who claim satisfaction with the status quo and those who yearn for a world of justice not yet realized.

We must recognize that the chasm that divides the races in our country is very real and very wide, and we should not shy away from naming these incidents for what they are: racism. But we must also acknowledge that use of the "R Word" is itself highly charged. When we accuse someone of being a racist, or of committing racist acts, and even when we point out more subtle issues of systemic racism, it has a deeply polarizing effect. Use of the "R Word" immediately puts us at odds with each other, in conflict with each other. And those accused of being racist at best cover their ears and dig in their heels. At worst they lash out even more aggressively toward their accusers. Once we are in this place of "us versus them" the shouting begins and the opportunity for learning and growth and transformation ends. Once the "R Word" is invoked, as we have seen time and time again, it becomes impossible for meaningful dialogue to occur.

There is not a single person on this planet who has not or does not make certain judgments or assumptions about others based on their appearance. Whether you are white or brown or pink or black, whether you live in one of the Americas or Africa or Asia, whether you have an advanced degree in public theology from Harvard or you have never set foot in a school in your life, whether you drive a Prius or a Porsche or a pony, we all share at least this in common with each other. We are all, to one degree or another, racists. It is only a question of degree --degrees of willingness to recognize and overcome these tendencies in ourselves - that set us apart.

I will admit that I am defining racism in simplistic, personal terms. A racist is someone who makes assumptions or judgments about another person based on the color of the other's skin or similar physical characteristics. I am intentionally avoiding some of the nuanced language of racism that refers to its relationships with systems and structures of power and its perpetuation through long-standing institutions. I do this because once we go down that road racism becomes depersonalized. When we talk about systems and structures and institutions of racism, we are easily able to disassociate ourselves from them. Perhaps we are among the oppressed, so we don't have the power to change these systems. Perhaps we are among the historic majority who purportedly has access to power, but we feel powerless to bring about change. In either case, when we begin to talk about institutional forms of racism we lose our personal connection to it and our personal responsibility for it. And believe me, this is a deeply personal issue. Just ask those 56 young campers who were thrown out of the pool.

And so, I say again, we are all racists. It is part of our own inherent imperfection as human beings. We make judgments - and misjudgments - based on visual clues and inadequate information. I think we can all agree with the writer Toni Morrison when she says that "race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing."^[1] And yet we use it all the time to judge others. And it is in this that I find hope for the future. That's right. Hope. Because amidst all the bitterness and hatred that seems to divide us it is here, at our core, where we find our common, shared humanity. And when we are standing on common ground, we are standing on ground that may be made holy by our responses to each other and to each other's failings.

I think if we're ever going to solve this race thing, we've got to get beyond the name-calling and the finger-pointing, the "othering" that occurs when we hurl around the "R Word." And we've got to work on it consistently and deliberately and continuously. We can never expect to make meaningful progress with our "fits and starts" approach, an approach that is always reactive to a particular incident or event. It's like trying to put out a house fire with a garden hose. You're simply never going to catch up. Although the President's "Beer Summit" with Professor Gates and Sargeant Crowley was an attempt at reconciliation of their personal differences, it came amidst the controversy and after the incident, and was little more than a photo op.

I am deeply saddened by what those 56 campers from Philadelphia have learned about race from the actions of certain members of the Valley Swim Club. The damage done will take a lifetime to undo. And I'm left to wonder what a difference it would have made, had club members and camp officials sat down together and conducted an honest dialogue around race before the kids arrived that day. Bridging our racial divides is a matter of intention, not a matter of contention. Once the "R Word" is uttered, we have already ceded our common ground and lost the opportunity for real and lasting change.

Because issues of race are deeply personal, we must begin our quest for justice and harmony on a personal level. And all this takes is common sense and a little bit of courage. It's not rocket science. It starts with you. And with me. The bridges we build don't have to be the Golden Gate or even the Commodore Barry. They can be simple spans that cross small streams. Where we need to begin is with ourselves and with our neighbors. Reaching out beyond our normal boundaries and seeking to build relationships with those whose lives are just like ours, but whose lived experiences are different from our own. We need to broaden our perspectives and see the world through eyes other than our own. We must all choose to be border-crossers, seeking out connections that are rich in potential for mutual learning and growth. Daring to cultivate deeply personal relationships of love, trust and hope. Then, and perhaps only then, can we all join together to become a diverse, multi-racial community of commitment and influence that works together to deconstruct the larger systems and structures of racism.

Tonight at sundown begins the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. While Jews around the world observe this day as an opportunity to reconcile with God and to ask for God's forgiveness, let us, too, acknowledge our own shortcomings. Let us recognize that we all are possessed by prejudices that make us smaller than we'd like to be, and that diminish others as a result. That while we may have the best of intentions, we sometimes fail to act as we ought. And let us vow to each other, and to whatever divine source we may pray to, that through our mutual commitment and our common humanity, we may strive to create an earth made fair, with all her people one.

Blessed be.

Closing Words:

These are the words of author Sarah Patton Boyle, taken from her work entitled The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition, written in 1962:

The choice is not alone between fairness and unfairness to an oppressed people, but also between wholeness and division in the family of man. It is between integration and disintegration in our very hearts, between love and hate - between the highest and the lowest values I know.

^[1] Quoted in "And don't call me a racist!" (Ella Mazel, ed.), p 6

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