racism

Tarnished Silver

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

What if every human being was born with a soul made of the purest silver?  And what if over time that silver became tarnished, as silver does?  

I have been trying to understand what is at the root of Wednesday’s atrocious attack at the Capitol building.  Hatred, fear, and grief come to mind, as does racism, anti-Semitism, and a desire to believe lies when they are way more convenient than the truth.  Also idolatry.  And manipulation of power.  And I am trying to understand all of this, rationally, intellectually, coolly, because when I go to the feelings place, I confront my own rage and grief and, yes I confess, hatred.

How did we get here?  I know that, intellectually.  I know that this was a long time coming and isn’t over yet.  But what happened to these people, to the guy who was wearing a Camp Auschwitz t-shirt, as if the murder of six million Jews was something to be silk-screened? Is his heart tarnished beyond all recognition?  What filled him with such hate and willful ignorance?

In this morning’s local paper I read an article about an incident of road rage in which a white woman pulled over a person of color, screamed racist epithets at him, and kicked his car because he was trying to merge lanes. What happened to her? I don’t think we can write this off and explain she was having a bad day. That hate has been building in her, nurtured, nourished, fed, stoked.

What is so terrifying about the color of a person’s skin?  What is so grievous about a person’s religion?  Why do some think that having a uterus makes half the world lesser?

And how will we ever restore the silver?  Can anything undo the tarnish that has built up over centuries of lies and whispers and sin?

Some of my faithful friends would say that only Jesus can restore us, and while I agree with that a little, I think saying that absolves us (or at least us Christians) of working on our own stuff.  Yes, Jesus saves, but as someone who tries to follow him, his teachings, his moral and ethical code, I must hold myself accountable and confess, repent, do penance even.  I do not equate following Jesus with aligning myself with any political leader.

Can any of our souls regain their luster?  Are some so tarnished that they have started to fail, erode?  I leave that up to God.  But I do wonder what might remove some of the grime.

For a while I’ve been toying with the idea that behind hate and fear lies grief.  After Wednesday, I’ve had to revisit that.  I do believe that behind some hate and fear lies grief – grief over the things that used to be, mostly, grief over a way of life that some think has been lost. But there is more going on here.

The hate and anger we saw on display Wednesday, the glee with which those domestic terrorists stormed that building, is fueled by more than grief.  It has been fueled by outright lies, by the allure of conspiracy, by whispers that we can make this nation great again if only we get rid of those people.  It has been nurtured online, in private chatrooms, on Twitter and Facebook.  It has been mispresented in the media.  It has been deliberate.  

In the last forty-eight hours I’ve had many conversations about this.  My mom, hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, was so angry she couldn’t sleep on Wednesday night.  My daughter wasn’t surprised at all.  My congregants are all over the map.  My friends despair; one said it reminded her of 9/11.  One person, a friend who’s been politically active since the 60’s, said she couldn’t believe that this would be the state of things at this point in her life.

I am not hopeful.  And I tend to be a hopeful person.

So I go back to thinking about this.  What can restore the luster?  Acts of kindness.  Works of justice.  Unseating the powerful.  Listening.  Holding fast to the truth and calling out lies.  Suspending some Twitter accounts indefinitely.  For some of us, prayer.  For some of us, confession, penance, and repentance.  For some of us, arrest and jail.

Then again, to slightly twist Robert Frost, maybe nothing silver can stay.

Talking with my child about race

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

racismLast night my daughter and I attended a one-woman show that our church was sponsoring.  Damaris Webb, a native Portlander and actress, presented “The Box Marked Black: Tales from a Halfrican-American growing up Mulatto.  With sock puppets!”  If you live in the Portland area, I urge you to google Damaris Webb and see her next show.

On the way over to church, my daughter said, “Mom, I’m the only one in my class who doesn’t know what the N-word is.” On the one hand, it occurred to me we might be getting something right – she doesn’t know that word, and she’s never heard us say it.  On the other hand, I’d like for us to teach her about that word.  So I told her that she might hear it in the show, and we would talk about it on the way home.

And so we did.  She heard the word twice, but I’m not sure it registered with her as much as the scene with sock puppet Kizzy from “Roots” and sock puppet Laura from “Little House on the Prairie”.  (It made sense within the show, and was rather hilarious.)  We talked about the N-word, and how she was never allowed to say it.  The closest parallel I could make for her was that using the N-word is like Hermione Granger being called a Mudblood in the Harry Potter books.  I’m not sure she knows the B-word or the C-word, so I thought Harry Potter was a safer reference.

And then, because it came up in the show, we talked about the mini-series “Roots”.  She knows a little bit about slavery and the Civil War – she knows more about the Civil Rights Movement.  I said to her, “Do you know how people got slaves?  They were captured in Africa and crammed into ships and taken to the United States where they were sold.”

“That’s TERRIBLE,” she said.  “They are human beings!  They aren’t things.” Then we talked about the people who knew slavery was wrong and fought it for a long time, and we talked about the Civil War.  “Mom,” she said, “if we hadn’t won the Civil War and if the slaves weren’t freed, there would be so many people who wouldn’t be in my class.  There would be so many teachers who wouldn’t be at my school.”

When my daughter was a toddler, I read an article saying the right thing to do was not to teach your child to be color-blind.  Rather, allow your child to see the differences, and talk about them.  So that has been our approach in teaching our child about race.  Yes, people look different.  That doesn’t mean they should be treated differently.  But because some people look different, they are treated differently, that’s wrong.

I hope we have more of these conversations, and I hope I said the right things to a nine-year-old.  The conversation will be different when she is 12, or 16, or 21.  I hope she continues to feel the injustice of slavery, of racism, of prejudice.

But I think our upcoming conversation will be a little different: we passed a sign that read “Best Ass Contest”; she said, “Mom, that’s so funny but I don’t think it’s about donkeys.”  God, help us parents.

On poverty

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

Last week I went to the dentist to have a little problem fixed; my bill, after insurance was figured in, was $963.  I put it on my Discover card and consoled myself that at least I would get a little cashback bonus for my trouble.  And then I got to thinking: I have dental insurance and a credit card and a decent paying job, but $963 does make a dent.  What do people do who don’t have dental insurance, or credit cards, or decent paying jobs?

They don’t get their teeth fixed.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about poverty, the cousin of racism.  I know many people in my various circles of family, friends, and church who will not hear one more word about white privilege, racism, or any of it.  I don’t agree with their position, but I also know that however eloquently or loudly people proclaim their message, others simple will not hear it.

But I wonder if these same people who will not hear one more word about racism will listen to a word about poverty.  I think the two are very much entwined, though poverty may cast a wider net.  I think as much as we have a problem with racism in this nation, we also have a problem dealing with the reality of poverty.  I am not an economist, a social scientist, or a psychiatrist, but I do read a little in these areas.  I am a pastor in a faith tradition that teaches that we must always have special consideration of the poor, who will always be with us and who will always rely on our goodness or guilt or generosity.  Some friends would say that Jesus has put this on my heart this season, and so I share my thinking with you.

Walmart-strikers-food-bin-return-e1416863017929I think about those Walmart workers who are not paid a living wage, who gave back the food donated to them at Thanksgiving saying they would rather have a raise than a turkey.  I think about the Walton family’s wealth.  I think about the discrepancy between what a CEO makes and what the janitor makes.  The figures don’t add up.

A recent study showed that there is a point at which more income does not equate to more happiness.  “Emotional well-being also rises with… income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.”  (http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.abstract)

I think about the cycle of poverty.  Brain research has shown how brains under stress get rewired.  Children who live under the stress of poverty, food insecurity, abuse, and other factors essentially run the risk of having their brains rewired.  They get stuck in the “fight or flight” response mode.  Toxic stress also cause long term physical damage as well.  Harvard University has done great work on the developing child, and I commend their research to you. (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/key_concepts/toxic_stress_response/)

I think about world poverty.  After the nation of Liberia ended a fourteen-year civil war, there were only five doctors there to care for four million people.  Ebola has ravaged parts of west Africa because the poverty there has insured inadequate medical care, sanitation, communication, and support systems.  What is fueling the so-called immigrant crisis on our U.S. southern borders?  Poverty, in part, in Central American countries.  Violence, corruption, and crime also play their part, but those might all be rooted in poverty.

Last week I attended a meeting of city officials, housing department staff, and religious leaders in my part of the city to talk about undoing and repairing the effects of gentrification in North and NE Portland.  Some of that is tied to Portland’s shameful history with regards to the African American community here, displaced three times in the twentieth century.  But some of it is tied to the gap between poverty and wealth in this community.

It’s no coincidence this is on my heart in December, this month when we spend so much money on things, and some money on organizations that help people.  It’s also a month when many non-profits received a good portion of their annual donations as people take advantage of the tax credit available through charitable giving.  In our little family, we spend more on ourselves than we do on others, but we do give some money – to our church’s Angel Tree project, to Habitat for Humanity, to Heifer International.  My parents asked that this year our present to them be a gift to their church’s school in Haiti.  They know they don’t need one more thing.

I am no communist.  I don’t think we should all throw all we have into a big pot and everyone gets an equal share.  (Sorry, disciples in Acts 2.)  But I do wonder how much is enough.  I wonder what would happen if some gave up a bit of their abundance – would that help another get out of some of their poverty?

Faces-Poverty