One Year Later

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore –

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over –

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

(Langston Hughes)

On August 9 the nation will remember the one year anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown by Officer Darrin Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. When the event occurred I was vacationing with my wife in Maine, and the shooting did not make the evening news. Yet within a day, the nation and the world began to learn of a stirring taking place in Ferguson in a way that shook Black people to their painful soulful core, and led to an eruption that has continued to smolder. There were peaceful marches, overshadowed (in the media) by angry looting, and police dressed in combat gear reinforced by the National Guard. From the politicians and police there was a call for order and but from the communities of color around the country there was a call for justice. Officer Wilson was not charged, but that cry was not silenced and the call for justice continued to grow. 

Pretty soon, we were hearing other names like Tamir Rice (Cleveland), Eric Garner (NYC), Brandon Tate Brown (Philadelphia) and Freddie Gray (Baltimore). And there was Charleston and the Black churches burned in its aftermath. Just this past month Sandra Bland (Texas) and Samuel Debose (Cincinnati) were added to that list. There were a few retaliatory reactions such as the murder of NYC police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, and tensions between members of the Black communities and police departments in communities across the nation grew tense to the brink of breaking. And the movement that has come to be called “Black Lives Matter” emerged and continues to grow.

For many White folks this eruption of anger and frustration came as a surprise. We  Whites hadn’t been paying attention. We had seen glimpses like the riots after Rodney King’s beating and the marches after the death of Trayvon Martin, but then things slipped out of our view and we got lulled back to sleep. We thought that Michael Brown’s shooting was somehow unique, out of the ordinary, and a deviation from a racially peaceful norm, even though it was all too normal for Black and Latino men in this country. We didn’t understand the reactions of anger, frustration, despair and even hate, but that was  normal too in communities of color. Back in the ’90’s Cornel West had written of nihilism in many poor communities of color. In the 1980’s Peggy McIntosh had written about the “invisible knapsack” of White male privilege. If given a chance to tell their story, almost every person of color I have known personally has shared a story of being stopped, frisked, and harassed just for “driving while Black.” No this wasn’t new. What was new was that the anger got coordinated and organized, and reached what Malcolm Gladwell calls the “tipping point.”

I wrote recently of my sense that we are in a Kairos moment, a coming together of folks and forces that portend a shift in the tectonic plates of history. When these kinds of seismic shifts take place, it is unpredictable, frightening and chaotic. As I look back over the year since Michael Brown’s tragic death, I don’t recall a year of such social dynamism, since I was young person watching the Civil Rights and anti-war movement unfold in the 1960’s. People look back to the '60's with a nostalgic longing for the passion and the fervor, but we have forgotten how divisive, strident and unsettling life was then too. Just like now, folks in the '60’s didn’t know where would end up but they knew things needed to change; so too now.

One year from the events in Ferguson, we are no closer to really engaging the issue of institutional racism in our criminal justice system and our society in general. A lot of important leaders from the President on down have said some significant things, but the patterns of violence, degradation and exclusion have not changed. Far too many Whites deny they have any role or responsibility for addressing the deep cancer of racism built into our culture and societal structures. Others think it either useless or hopeless.  However, the Pew Research Center recently reported that there has been a significant spike in the last five years of Americans (43% to 59%) who think there is a significant problem with racism in this country. While among Whites that percentage is only 44%, it is much higher (17%) than only five years ago. Perhaps we Whites are slowly starting to wake up that America’s original sin cannot be ignored. Whether we get on board or not, the movement for change has begun.

I close by inviting you to listen to another Langston Hughes poem, “The Kids Who Die,” recited by Danny Glover and set with images from past and present. Written in 1938 in the height of Jim Crow, this poem has a haunting relevance. May we hear and not turn away. May we walk in Mike Brown’s memory, people of all races, ethnicities and creeds with our “hands up” toward that dream that has been deferred far, far too long.

Philly's Own Ferguson

Last night I attended a community meeting at Catalyst for Change Church in West Philadelphia entitled “Philadelphia After Ferguson: A Meeting to Discuss Policing, Politics and Perception”. An impressive group of leaders including representatives of several activist groups, an editor for the Philadelphia Daily News, and representatives of the SEPTA police and the Philadelphia police Department made up a panel that was supposed to engage one another and the crowd in a dialogue. However, it quickly became evident that the event should have been entitled, “Philadelphia’s Own Ferguson: The Case of Brandon Tate Brown.”

Brandon Tate Brown was a 26 year old Black man who was shot by a police officer in the head on Dec 15, 2014. The name of the officer involved has not yet been released nor a copy of a video that was taken of the incident. Brown’s mother, Tanya Brown Dickerson, spoke to the packed sanctuary of several hundred people about the death of her son, and described the ordeal she went through, even trying to find out what had happened to him. She told how throughout the night she called her son’s cell phone and did not learn of his death until it was reported on the news the next morning. She asked for information about the officer who killed her son and a copy of a videotape that was taken of the incident. 

Then the moderator and media personality Chris Norris, instructed the crowd that the proceedings would follow a question and answer format designed to encourage dialogue among the panelists and the gathered crowd. However, almost immediately a group of Tanya Dickerson’s supporters began demanding that Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel “release the tape” and the name of the officer. Bethel responded in bureaucratic-ese saying the “investigation was ongoing.” He apologized to Ms. Dickerson that her son’s death had not been reported directly to her by the police (instead of the morning news), but beyond that made no promises to meet her requests. This only enraged her supporters more, and what was supposed to be a “discussion” turned into a shouting match.

As the event continued, the embedded racism in both the conduct of the police and the media became clear. While the name of the officer is being protected by the police department and the police union, Brandon Tate’s name and past criminal record were in the news even before his mother knew he had been shot. While police officers are able to hide behind the “blue code’ where no one reports a corrupt officer, community members can be arrested for obstruction of justice if they don’t “snitch” on a neighbor who has committed a crime. Kelvyn Anderson, president of the Police Advisory Board, a community group supposedly established to review such incidents, has gotten no information and told how it took over a year to get a meeting with the Police Commissioner when he first was hired. Thus the anger and frustration of the mostly Black crowd was palpable and understandable.

Yet I also don’t think much of anything productive was accomplished. There was a lot more shouting than listening, with members of the Brown advocacy group shouting over panelists even when they agreed with them. Moreover, the organizers of the event either were unable or unwilling to rein in the proceedings and abide by the very ground rules they had set. Rev. Mark Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel AME and a leader in POWER, at one point compared the event to the SRC meetings where people come and vent and nothing changes. People who supposedly were in support of each other’s positions were interrupting and shouting over one another. After nearly two hours, the pastor of Catalyst for Change, called the meeting to a close, and surprisingly everyone abided by his call for a moment of silence in memory of victims like Brandon Tate Brown, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others. Then the meeting ended and I doubt anyone went home any wiser or feeling heard or satisfied.

While the process was supposed to be a question and answer dialogue, I was struck by how few people actually knew how to ask good questions. Most of the questions asked were rhetorical; that is, they were statements disguised as questions, and even when someone tried to address a question, there was no willingness to hear anything other than the answer the questioner wanted, which in most cases  were details about the Brandon Tate Brown case the police were not willing to release. As a result, instead of engendering greater understanding, the proceedings hardened people’s positions and raised defensiveness and distrust.

As one of the few White people in the room who was not a reporter or a police officer, I listened and watched. I sat next to a young East Asian man from the neighborhood, who at one point asked me if I thought he should try to speak; I rolled my eyes with a “good luck.” Several others tried to get a chance at the mike  and also went unheard.The few who were able to speak pointed out that the local community had a responsibility as well, and that depending on politicians to address all problems was shirking their own responsibility. Thus, I think there were far more perspectives present than the few that made themselves heard, and that was unfortunate.

I have thought and written a lot about what it means to be a White ally in recent years, and as I sat there last night, I wondered what it meant to be a White ally in that context. In that contentious setting my role as an ally was very unclear. The injustice is real, and the anger, frustration, grief and fear many Black people hold in many neighborhoods are understandable and real. As one of the police officers on the panel acknowledged, while violent crime has gone down over the last several years, mistrust of the police has sky-rocketed. Last night that mistrust  was evident, and to be honest I don’t know how they can get it back if “Philadelphia After Ferguson” is any indication.

[Pictures taken by the author; and Philly.com)

The God of Interruption - An Advent Meditation in the Light of Ferguson

For me, the period of time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is usually a kind of personal sacred time. Each year I begin this five week season by making a list of all the people, events and things in the past year for which I am thankful. Then I go thru Advent with a sense of yearning, anticipation and renewed hope for a better world. Advent then culminates with the celebration of Christmas with its mixed focus on the birth of Jesus, the coming together of family, and the sharing of presents. Then a week later we welcome a new year and I write down hopes for the year to come. I began this practice nearly 40 years ago when I was in college  and it has served as sort of liminal time where I move from one year to the next, from being fatigued and doubting to having a renewed hope and focus for the future.

However, this year my Thanksgiving to New Year’s sacred time has taken on a different feel. Two days before Thanksgiving the decision was announced that Officer Darrin Wilson would not be indicted in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. A week later a similar announcement was made regarding the officers responsible for choking and killing Eric Garner. Almost immediately demonstrations erupted around the country. Die-ins were held in select shopping malls on Black Friday. In cities from east to west groups of young people marched with hands held high signs saying “Don’t Shoot,” “I Can’t Breathe” and “Black Lives Matter.” Here in Philadelphia there have been marches that interrupted the city’s Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, a die-ins at major intersections during rush hour and following a Philadelphia Eagles game, a service of the Seven Last Words of Black people, and numerous marches throughout the city. Even larger gatherings have occurred in New York and Washington bringing attention to this issue on both a local and national scale.

While I have not participated in any of these marches or demonstrations, I have watched them closely and have been a part of numerous conversations both formal and informal. In these conversations there have been a wide range of emotions expressed from anger to guilt to confusion. Many of my white friends have wondered where and how and whether they should fit in the demonstrations. Others have wondered where the demonstrations will lead and what if any changes will come about because of them.  Some media commentators have focused on the few instances of violence and have questioned whether demonstrators  are “hurting their cause" by interrupting normal activities and generally causing disruption. To be sure in many ways at this point the demonstrations appear to more about expressing anger and frustration at police brutality and more generally a unjust criminal justice system, than calling for concrete specific change.

However, as I have studied the history of social movements, and particularly the Civil Rights Movement, what appears in hindsight to have been a clear, focused effort toward social change was at the time it occurred often chaotic, controversial and confusing. For that reason, I share the demonstrators’ anger and frustration, and at the same time I have hope that emotion can be channeled into concrete action for positive social change. However, if history teaches us anything, that process will be haphazard, confusing, frustrating and filled with stops and starts. Thus it will require clear leadership and perseverance over a long haul.

Coincidentally as I have been going thru my "sacred time," the demonstrations have given me a renewed appreciation for the disruptive nature of the birth of Jesus in his time. The Christmas story we hear usually focuses on a mother, father and a child born in a barn accompanied by angels and wise men. However a part of the story often overlooked is the social chaos that ensued because of his birth. According to the gospel of Matthew, when King Herod realized a child-king was being born in his midst, he ordered mass infanticide in hopes of killing his would-be adversary;  the people of the land were terrorized. As a counterpoint to Herod’s action in Luke’s Gospel when Mary learns of her pregnancy, she sings a song which in part said:

God has brought down rulers from their thrones 
but has lifted up the humble.
 God has filled the hungry with good things, 
but sent the rich away empty.

Then when the infant Jesus was presented in the temple a few days after his birth, the prophetess Anna and the prophet Simeon proclaimed the child was the harbinger of a new age..

The birth of Jesus, while at one level benign and blessed, at the same time set in motion a process of significant change. Contrary to the image of a silent blessed night, the birth of Jesus was accompanied by violence, chaos and fear, as well as hope for a better day. At the heart of the Christian story is a God who enters history for the purpose of interrupting and disrupting the status quo in order to bring hope and justice to hurting and oppressed people.

Angela Glover Blackwell, the CEO of Policy Link, an organization dedicated to promoting equitable and sustainable economic development in low income communities, grew up in St. Louis and recently spoke about the events in Ferguson over the past few weeks. Like Black people in nearby Ferguson, Glover as a child remembered being treated as a second class citizen because of her skin color. Reflecting on recent events in light of Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s, she suggested that the demonstrations are a sign that people have hope. When people have hope and their expectations are not met, they get angry and act out. Thus, while recent events may appear on the surface to be chaotic and at times even violent, Blackwell believes they are a sign that people want better and are willing to speak up and work for it.

In the same way, the birth of Jesus was a sign of hope for his time and for ages to come. Perhaps in interrupting and disrupting our normally festive Christmas season, these demonstrations remind us that God is again breaking in to move us to work for a society where race and class are no longer the determining factor as to who is treated fairly and humanely, and who is not. They are a sign that people of faith and conscience, working together can and must fight to create a world where the lion and the lamb can lay down together and where the young black man and the white police officer can achieve reconciliation at a table of mutual respect, common concern and equitable justice.

The Meaning of Ferguson for White Folks

Over a week has passed since the announcement was made that Ferguson police officer Darrin Wilson would not be indicted for the killing of Michael Brown. Over the last week there have been demonstrations in Ferguson and cities around the country protesting the non-indictment and its relationship to police brutality, a racially discriminatory criminal justice system and other forms of institutional racism. Many articles, blogs and TV commentators have reported these events and others observers have sought to analyze the meaning of these events as they relate to the state of Black America and racism in this country. While the St. Louis Grand Jury did not indict, the U.S. Justice Department has initiated its own investigation into the event. Moreover, there has been a vigorous discussion and even debate among Black Americans over how to interpret these events. One topic that has been noticeably absent in these discussions is the meaning of Ferguson for white folks.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, David Brooks, the respected NY Times columnist participated in his weekly National Public Radio discussion on the political issues of the previous week and said this about the reaction to Ferguson: 

“[President Obama in his reaction to Ferguson has shown] the ways we're still living with legacy of the civil rights movement - in that era - and the ways times have changed. The civil rights movement was as clear as you get to a right versus wrong issue as you get in domestic politics.

Now when we talk about racial matters, we're dealing with a variety of subjects - the legacy of racism, the problems we have with our sentencing, disappearance of working-class jobs, family structure - and to me what's happened is that racial issues have become embroiled in a whole series of very tricky domestic issues. And so what was once a pretty clear right versus wrong moral cause has become a moral cause, but much more ambiguous …” [emphasis mine]

Brooks’ comments reflects a common perception among most White Americans that during the Civil Rights Era the issues of racial justice were clear cut, but now it is much harder to sift out racism from other domestic issues. Moreover implied in Brooks’ comments is the idea that in many ways we should be past all these “racial matters.” Yet, had we been in Montgomery in 1955 or Little Rock in 1957 or Selma in 1965, these “racial matters” were equally entwined then as now with “domestic issues” like economics, education, the right to vote, and the nature of culture. Looking back the issues may have seemed to be a case of “clear right versus wrong,” but not for the folks who lived during those events.

Yet, for many Black Americans, the issues are still clear. If the Pew Research Center is to be believed there is a huge gap in how Blacks and Whites interpret these events. In August of this year Pew reported that 80% of Blacks polled thought Ferguson raised important racial issues, while only 37% of Whites thought race had anything to do with Ferguson. For Black folks the issues are clear; it is White folks who don’t seem to see things clearly. The gap in perception itself reveals that Whites and Blacks are living in two Americas with two widely divergent views of the deeper meaning of these events.

As uncomfortable as it may be, we who are White must recognize that in many ways we are Darren published testimony before the Grand Jury Darren Wilson expressed his fear of Michael Thomas likening himself to “a five year old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” Darren Wilson is not a small man. He is 6’4”, and an armed police officer.  Yet in his fear he shot Michael Brown 12 times; how could not that literally be overkill? But more to the point, if I am honest, I have to admit that I understand his fear. Though I was raised by progressively minded parents and consider myself to be strongly anti-racist, deep in my psyche I have absorbed the image of the scary black man, and the irrational notion that young Black men are to be feared. A former teacher of mine, Dr. Charles Tillman referred to white racism as a form of mental illness; this deep fear is a clear example of how sick some of us White folks can be, and we don’t even know it.

Wilson, and the all-white Ferguson police force is White America. We would like to think that Officer Wilson and events in Ferguson, are an anomaly, but they are not. In his

The political leadership of Ferguson is America, too. In a town that is 70% Black, only one councilperson is Black, and the police force is all White. While we have a Black president and many other political leaders of color, when we look at the Congress, state governors and political leadership of the nation, the percentage of White leaders far outpaces the number of Whites in the country. And just like David Brooks, most of these leaders just don’t get that racism is a problem. More than that, the systems in place, be they criminal justice, education, health care, and other systems, are designed to serve Whites more fairly than people of color. The results are found in how much better these systems work for the average White person versus how they work for people of color.

The point of seeing ourselves in Ferguson is not to raise guilt or to get into a debate on the details of the case, but rather to recognize that as Whites in the United States, we are (in most cases) the unwitting beneficiaries of a system and a culture that provides us with advantages and opportunities that people of other races do not enjoy. This is not to diminish the hard work and individual success that many Whites enjoy; it is only to say that the game is rigged and we didn’t know it.

Furthermore, if the emotions and issues raised by Ferguson are ever to be fully addressed, we who are White must be as much a part of the conversation as our Black counterparts. In our churches, coffee shops, dinner tables and wherever White folks gather, we need to ask ourselves: what does Ferguson say about White folks like us? How are we like the leaders and police force in Ferguson? How are we like Darren Wilson? How must we and the society we live in change, so that the Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins of this world not only can survive, but have a fair shot at success in this country? When we get to our deep feelings and hidden thoughts, the answers may not be politically correct, but they will be honest.

As any therapist will tell you, healing from any mental illness (and racism is a mental illness), begins with honesty. We White folks need to get honest about Ferguson; it’s not just a Black problem, it’s our problem too.

[Images from Google Images]

Ferguson

Today, as I was preparing to board an early morning flight to Minnesota, where I will join my family for Thanksgiving, I heard the news of the St. Louis grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson. After briefly summarizing the prosecuting attorney's 45 minute statement, the reports centered on the response of the crowds in St. Louis and Ferguson. While mentioning the appeals by Brown's parents, African American leaders and even Pres. Obama to protest non-violently, the reporters went on to focus on the looting and shooting that occurred. I was struck by the contrast by the news reports and individual interviews of people on the ground who said that had heard some gun shots, but had not seen violence or guns. More disturbing than this skewed reporting was near lack of analysis of both the case itself and the larger meaning of these events.

No doubt many authorities, as well as a majority of White Americans, will want to say the grand jury's decision has been rendered, let's pack up and move on.   However, to many African Americans  ˘ this case is representative and symbolic of what it means to young and Black in America. Many will rightfully ask: Had the roles been reversed (a Black teenager shooting a White police officer) would the prosecutor and grand jury needed 105 days to render a decision? While it is good that the grand jury took such care to examine all the evidence and we must recognize the conflict of accounts between eye witnesses and Officer Wilson himself, but we dare not miss the larger issues at stake.

In a brief review of the history of Black America in the 20th century, one can't help see parallels between Ferguson and lynchings of the early 1900's and the state violence against protestors in the 1950's and 1960's.  These are not isolated incidents but part of a larger historical pattern where young black bodies are expendable in the pursuit of "law and order." Yes, we have come a long way from lynchings and Bull Connor's dogs and hoses in Birmingham, the riot gear and the National Guard being called out in Missouri should cause us to wonder if we have come as far as we think we have.

Just days before the verdict a 12 year old boy was shot by a police officer in Cleveland for waving a toy gun around. In Philadelphia and cities across the country, school districts that serve the predominantly low income Black and Latino students are underfunded and provide substandard education despite heroic efforts by teachers to make up for scarce resources. Lawyer/authors like Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow) and Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy) have documented that the criminal  justice system disproportionately and more severely sentences Black and Latino men.  Whether talking about education, housing, health care, employment opportunities and general quality of life issues, if you are poor, Black and/or Latino/a your access to the opportunity in this country is circumscribed by your race and class status.

Michael Brown's death occurs in this context, and while the legal case may have been dismissed, the larger meaning of this event remains.... and must be addressed by a new Civil Rights Movement. One of the promising thing in Philadelphia is in response to the verdict, youth-oriented organizations led a peaceful march that their elders supported and praised. While I was not able to be there several leaders of POWER, the interfaith social justice network, were. Every death is one too many; every injustice is one too many. However, if these events can galvanize young people to address these injustices with the support of those of have lived thru injustices before, there may be some good yet to come from this tragedy.

White Folks and Ferguson

A recent New York Times article on the ongoing events in Ferguson, MO was entitled “Among Whites, Protests Stir a Range of Emotions and a Lot of Perplexity.”  The article points out that while many whites want to be sympathetic to the concerns of the protesters, they do not understand the anger and frustration of the black community in Ferguson and around the country. I read this article with great interest because as I have read the articles and blog postings, and watch the televised news reports and videos of the events in Ferguson, the only whites I see are in police uniforms or riot gear. I kept wondering: where are the white folks like me, who are deeply troubled and horrified by the events of the past few weeks? I know I am not the only one, and yet we seem invisible in the media’s eyes.

Now having said that, I recognize that across the nation support among white folks for the protestors action is far less, only somewhere in the 30-40% range, compared to 80% among African-Americans. (See the Pew Report that reported this). Many well-meaning whites want to believe that we have moved past the violence of the 1950’s and 1960’s that the murders of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and others seem to represent. Whites tend to trust the police and the criminal justice system, and find it difficult to believe the kind of statistics that Michelle Alexander lays out in her book The New Jim Crow that show that blacks and whites committing the same crimes routinely get drastically different sentences when they go thru the court systems. Moreover, whites choose to believe that most of their fellow whites want to think the best of others, and would prefer “not to see skin color” (what Bonilla-Silva calls colorblind racism ) as a way of dealing with racial differences.

Over the past two years I have been writing a book entitled White Allies for Racial Justice, (scheduled to come out Fall 2015, Orbis Books) which chronicles the stories of 18 whites in U.S. history from colonial times to the present, who have worked for racial justice in their time: pre-revolutionary, underground railroad, the abolitionist movement, the anti-lynching campaign, Civil Rights and anti-racist work today. An appendix at the end of the book lists about 50 others who stories could have been told had I more space and time; and these are the ones we know about. Throughout history there has been a committed minority of white folks who chose to stand with their brothers and sisters of color, often at peril to their lives and ostracism from family and friends, because they believed that all people deserved to be treated as human beings worthy of dignity. While these stories don’t deserve the same attention as the stories of those like Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Robert Moses and others, for many people both white and black, this is unknown dimension of the struggle for racial justice in the United States.

So I assume that there many white folks in Ferguson, as well as communities around the country, who are not only sympathetic but also are willing to take the steps necessary  to actively stand with their brothers and sisters of color in this time of crisis. I share this only because all those white folks who seemed perplexed by the events need to know that what is going in Ferguson is not just a “black issue”, but rather a human issue that includes people of all races and cultures. Too often whites, in our of confusion or fear of being considered prejudiced or racist, pull back into silence, and either deliberately or unconsciously make a crisis like Ferguson “their problem” rather than a shared problem.

 Those of us white folks who seek to be allies  not only have the capacity but also the obligation to speak to our fellow whites to help them see that Michael Brown is their son, their brother, and their friend too. While we may not get the media attention (nor necessarily should we), we need to persistently and forcefully make the case that the injustice in Ferguson impacts all. 

There is no way one can deny the anger and angst that the history of injustice and violence in this country has helped create in people of color in our country, particularly African-Americans. What we see on the television screens, YouTube channels and news articles is not some sort of aberration, but rather a simmering cauldron burning beneath the surface that in cases like this erupts like a volcano. We whites need to understand this history and that angst, and those of us who have inkling as to what is going on,  we need to help our fellow whites understand that too.

[Pictures - I am standing in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA (MLK's home church); Anne Braden, ardent civil rights activist in Louisville, KY; Memorial to Viola Liuzzo, killed following the March from Selma to Montgomery, March 1965).

From Ferguson to Philly to Williamsport

Over the past week or so I have been holding four seemingly unrelated events together in my mind because in a strange way they seem to capture the essence of racial politics in our country today: the ongoing conflict and grief in Ferguson, MO over the shooting of an unarmed African-American boy Michael Brown by a  local white police officer; the shooting of a seventeen year old African American boy  by another African American young man as the former was coming out of a concert for peace on Wednesday, August 13 in Philadelphia; the ongoing financial crisis facing the Philadelphia public schools due to the Pennsylvania State Legislature cold-hearted unwillingness to give the schools  the funding they need; and finally the Taney Dragons Little League team from Philadelphia who are currently playing in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.

In  Ferguson, the more information that comes out, the more it appears that the death of Michael Brown was a case of a policeman venting his racial hatred at an innocent young man. Not that Brown was without fault; he can be seen on video tape from a store where he brazenly took something without paying. Yet when confronted by the police he was unarmed and the autopsy indicates he was killed execution style. Were this an isolated incident, the reaction might seem out of proportion, but the rage and anguish in the black community of Ferguson and across the country speaks to legacy of slavery, lynching and racial violence that continues to afflict and murder young black men in this nation.

Yet as my friend Gwen Ragsdale, curator of the Lest WeForget Slavery Holocaust Museum, an institution dedicated to telling the story of African slavery and its continuing effects on communities today, has always told the groups I have brought to the museum, “While the white man for centuries committed violence against us, now we are doing to ourselves.” That is why the shooting at the peace conference is so horrific. Not only is there tragic irony in the event, but it demonstrates yet again how poverty, racism and violence mixed together create a volatile mix that leads young black men killing each other in so many communities across the nation. The legacy of racial hatred seen in Ferguson has now been internalized such that statistically speaking I as a white man am safer in many black communities than black and Latino men who live there.

Yet the ongoing financial crisis facing the Philadelphia Public schools illustrates how this legacy of racism is not only seen in horrific acts such as mentioned in Ferguson and Philly, but is also seen in laws and policies of a government that promises fairness and equality for all and yet in reality practices equity for some and injustice for others. Were the children and grandchildren of the legislators assigned to the Philadelphia public schools, in one week sufficient funding and more would be provided. Yet hiding behind the veil of seeking a “balanced budget” that balances itself on the backs of the poor to serve the needs of the corporate elites and the wealthy, these legislators allow the city schools to languish with insufficient funds. This is institutional racism in action, a legacy that goes back to the era of Jim Crow, redlining and educational segregation. Moreover, the inadequacy of the educational system contributes to a 50% dropout rate, many of whom end up involved in street violence as was seen at the peace conference. The “school-to-prison-pipeline” is alive and well, and not coincidentally in Pennsylvania, the prisons get financial increases while the schools get little more than crumbs.

It is a pretty bleak picture, but that is why I need to bring into focus the Taney Dragons, a team from Philadelphia playing in Williamsport at the Little League World Series. The Dragons are a multi-racial, cross-city collection of kids who love baseball, play it well and in so doing have captured the heart of the city and to a degree a nation.  When I watch the Dragons, I think therein lies our hope. The hope is in the fact that despite the violence on their streets and the stress in their school system, these kids have come together to play some high quality baseball. More than that, they embody what a truly equitable, democratic, multiracial, multicultural society should be. According to Little League rules, every player on a team must play and have at least one at bat in every game; and at least in the Dragons case, all seem to have contributed to the team’s success. While the media has focused on Mone Davis, a thirteen year old girl with a 70+ mph fastball, what has impressed me is how well these kids play together. And Mone herself, when she is asked a question, always refers back to the team, and not herself as an individual.

I am saddened and sickened by the events in Ferguson, I grieve the young men of color who see their lives only ending either in death or prison, I am outraged at the intransigence of the Pennsylvania legislators who will not release the funds to assure Philadelphia school children have a quality education; but I revel in the hope provided by the Taney Dragons. Just like the beloved community that Dr. King often spoke of, the Dragons remind me of what it is we struggle and pray for – a world free of hatred, racism, violence and injustice – a world where all contribute and all are equally part of the team we call society.