"Where your treasure is, so your heart will be."

I read an article a few days ago which explained the chasm between white wealth and black wealth in the United States. The wealth gap is the same as it was 50 years ago. For every $100 of wealth gained by white families, black families gain about $5 in wealth. This disparity in wealth is dreafully unacceptable. I laughed out loud in disbelief as I read the statistic. This statistic is cruelly ironic. As America continues to believe in a narrowing of income disparity, the reality is antithetical. The American belief in racial progress is a belief measured in feelings not dollars. While black people continue to struggle to exist in this country, white America feels like progress is being made. 

Subsidies. Numerous industries are subsidized by the government. Farmers are one of the more famous group for their government subsidies. Corporations use lobbyists to exchange money and determine legislation in an act of legal bribery. The government invests in these industries for the good of our domestic and global economy. With every county which fawns over businesses, wining and dining them to build a plant in their city, the black community, numb from repeated disappointments, simply shakes their heads and gets back to work. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to work multiple jobs and barely have the ability to cover basic living expenses? Meanwhile the taxes you paid to your elected officials dispense millions and billions of dollars in exclusive private enterprise and military adventures. Our government reluctantly covers children's healthcare, but our government willingly spends millions on new stadiums!? Why? 

Return on Investment. Black people are literally viewed as a bad investment. I have no reason to believe anything different. Welfare, the most iconic government subsidy, is aid. Aid is given freely to help those in need to survive, never for them to thrive, and is rarely expected to be repaid. An investment is expected to yield a return. We are citizens of a government that does not see us as worth their time or money, the two components of investment. Programs which are critical in building our children and investing in our communities like: headstart, before and after-school programs, and early literacy programs are the first items cut in times of alleged financial constraint. It is not hard to imagine the undercurrent of hopelessness and futitility which nestles in our thoughts, actions, and choices. For generations the black community beleives, through repeated observations and personal experience, the government sworn to protect and help us, has no significant interest in improving our lives. It is clearly evident that the Federal government's money is not with us, so their heart remains absent, like so many of our fathers. 

Flag Revelations

The debate about the symbolism of the Confederate Flag reflects is a prodcut of the historical ambiguity of the Civil War. The Confederate flag was used by the Confederacy. The Union forces defeated the Confederacy. What happened to the leaders of the failed coup d'etat? Robert E. Lee retired and died of old age. Jefferson Davis retired and died of old age. The General of the Confederate army and President of the Confderacy were not treated as traitors of democracy but as discharged combatants, and arguably as war heroes. When the leaders of treason are left to suffer the pangs of their conscience rather than justice for their crimes, what is a southerner to make of that? In showing grace to those who actively worked to destroy the Union, we failed to repudiate the act of secession. The United States neglected to provide punishment commensurate with the actions of the rebels, and Southerneres were allowed to rebuild their society with racism and terrorism. In a broad sense, the southern way of life remained unchanged, which can be interpreted as a type of victory. Humans are motivated by rewards for pro-social behaviors and penalties for anti-social behaviors. The penalties leveled against the rebellion and it's leaders are grossly disproportionate in relation to the destruction they wrought and the evils they sought to maintain. 

More than 150 years after a clear Union victory, there are large portions of Americans who revere a flag of treason and rebellion as a symbol for southern pride. A southern pride which would have me in shackles. I find it difficult to convince my fellow Americans and Southerners to adopt my position when the reconstruction period is still underway. History books place a clear end for Reconstruction but voting rights for African-Americans still lag in southern states. African-Americans are still discriminated within financial institutions. The sharecropping system which kept African-Americans in economic bondage, has been replaced with low-wage jobs and shameful public housing. Non-profit organizations are fighting to bring a true end to the Reconstruction era. 

The Union failed to dispence justice to it's enemies. As a result our nation never healed priperly. We continue to remain divided because we chose to be silent about injustice. We preferred to create legends and heroic narratives of our past rather than telling the truth. 

With Love

"...the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from his Letter from the Birmingham Jail

These words from 1963 bring fresh perspective to our current times.  The broadscale white culture appears to have a commitment and dispositon towards this negative type of peace. Maintaining a negative peace comes through the consistent practice of conflict avoidance. Tension cannot exist as long as conflict is avoided. The absence of tension demonstrates a rejection of truth. Communities which avoid conflict refuse truth due to the polarizing nature of truth. Truth is either accepted or rejected and leaves each individual a choice. I think at the core of humanity we are all averse to conflict. However, within black society, saturated by conflict, both historically and currently, it is ludicrous to expect a conflict free existence. For many African-Americans, there is a choice to surrender to the pressures of being black in this country, or actively combat the tension, which comes with our existence in a nation made by us but not for us. 

I do not believe oreder and justice are mutually exclusive. In this current established order there is neither order nor justice. Where is the order in ghettos? Where is the justice when families are ripped a apart due to the xenophobia of neighbors and our elected officials? Order and justice are illusions, believed only by the wealthy. Ask the poor, suffering, and discarded their perspective on order and justice. They know better than most the soul of America.

I believe and pray that white America will become more concerned with justice than order or loyalty. From the first African forced upon a transatlantic vessel until the 1970s, white people, first white colonists and later white americans, performed, legalized, and justified some of the most heinous crimes against my ancestors. The mixed blood in my veins is the evidence of just one such atrocity. There are grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents who have been a part of lynch mobs, covered up assassinations, and acquited murderers in the court of law. Rather than openly condemn their families for their actions, they make excuses, or worse keep it a family secret. For all of the backlash black Americans receive for our non-cooperation with the law, white Americans have done it for longer and more effectively. 

For the white American Christian I am especially grieved. We share a Savior and Redeemer but you will not share in my suffering. Our brotherhood and familial ties will reach an apex as you choose your comfort instead of working towards my liberation. 

I have spoken to numerous white friends and shared the burden I carry in my black skin. I explained the emotional scars etched in my conscious for being born a few shades to dark in the wrong country. They hear my stories and are moved to explore the issue more or broaden their perspective. What I yearn for is the day my white brothers and sisters drop to their knees in prayer and allow our Counselor to guide them into proper recourse. As I have fought through tears to believe I am made in the image of God, I wait in deep expectation for the Holy Spirit to shape away the superiority and apathy that remains in the hearts of my brothers and sisters. 

Unfortunately, far too often my white friends sink into self-pity, guilt, and paralysis. They experience sorrow and respond as if they are the source of their salvation. They aim all of their pain and guilt onto themselves. Rather than continue to wound themselves with personal and ancestral guilt, the cause of justice become an intellecutal pursuit instead of a God-given conviction. So many of my friends explore the topic of racial reconciliation instead of living to bring about racial justice. For true reconciliation to occur, justice must accompany it. The presence of justice to those held in bondage is a form of love sorely absent in this country. 

Friends, the guilt you feel from your inaction, apathy, and participation in racism is what God desires from you. Christ died so we can have relationship with God the Father. Let us not waste that gift in an effort to preserve the facade of order, justice, and personal goodness. Until this happens we will never have the relationship God intended for us to have, which is a great loss for us all. 

Lovers and Laws

"A law is unjust if it inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from the Birmingham Jail

What if we black Americans quit paying taxes?

When the British colonists were mistreated by the crown and denied certain privileges as tax-paying citizens, they refused to pay taxes. Taxes are the governments compensation for the services they provide. Unfortunately in the United States, the quality of these services oscillates depending on the skin color of the citizen. We as black Americans continue to receive a sub-standard package of American liberties, despite the labor and life we have placed in American soil. Our elected officials rest on the accomplishments of 50 year old legislation. Our police force cannot distinguish whether we are worth protiecting or destroying. Government subsidized housing is a prison in waiting. Welfare payments help in maintaining poverty rather than eliminating it. The government has not done it's due diligence in protecting black citizens, or conferring and maintaining the rights we were to receive upon our inclusion into the citizenry.  We are long overdue in receiving the full measure of our rights. If we continue to be treated as less than citizens, then it is reasonable to respond accordingly.

Paying taxes is one example of a number of laws we would be within our conscience to break. Black Americans put our bodies and blood into building this country but were absent during the discussions on creating a new polity. Black Americans were not invited as a special interest group to review the Constitution upon it's signing. I shudder to think of the cruel irony felt by slaves upon hearing existence of a Declaration of Independence and learning that their bonds would remain. For almost 100 years those bonds remained until the President Lincoln freed the southern slaves.While I am grateful for the liberty my ancestors recieved, they were freed into yet another foreign world, struggling to become fluent in capitalism and politics when days earlier it was illegal for them to be able to read. The legal and financial framework of this nation  preceded the Emancipation Proclamation. A class of thousands of new citizens with no education flooded the workforce with nothing more than a desire to make things better for their children. Despite these derelict beginnings, black people learned to survive and eventually thrive until it became en vogue to demean us, terrorize us, and treat us like animals once again. This country was not made for us. We continue to try to be a part of it, but like a scorned lover we continue to be rejected. What will it take for us to be accepted as Americans?