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A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell*
1:00 P.M. EST Feb. 17, 2011
Paul wrote in Romans 7:15 that “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.”
I paraphrase that statement as a way of addressing our flaws of
omission and commission on many matters, including race. Black History
Month is with us because, for a variety of reasons, black history has
been ignored, revised or distorted too often in our history books. We
find it difficult to explore honestly the reasons a study of black
history makes so many of us uncomfortable.
We know it is essential to be historically correct about the issues
in England that energized the efforts that established the United
States. We understand Israel exists in the main because of the history
of the oppression of the Jewish people. However, there is difficulty for
some people in admitting the existence of American slavery made
necessary the abolition movement and the reality of racial segregation
provoked and evoked the U.S. civil rights movement.
If we do not remember accurately the negatives of the past, reminds
Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George
Santayana, we may repeat them. Failure to remember the negatives
deprives us of the opportunity to celebrate the magnificent progress we
have made as a nation since slavery and legal racial segregation.
Journey to racial justice
Whatever our politics or our responses to the politics of President
Barack Obama, every American should have rejoiced at his election as an
expression of our national journey toward racial justice.
I prefaced my address/sermon at the Martin Luther King Jr. service at
Asbury United Methodist Church, Atlantic City, N.J., by giving examples
of our racial history that now seem so contradictory and foolish that
we want either to cry or to laugh.
There was a time, for example, when blacks were forced to sit in the
back of buses and the front cars of trains. The rail passengers who sat
in the front cars breathed in the fumes from the coal and wood that
propelled the engine. What did colored and white restrooms look like?
How did “white” and “colored” water in water fountains taste?
Harry Golden, a journalist in my home state of North Carolina, with
tongue in cheek, suggested “vertical racial integration.” He observed
that whites and blacks had no difficulty standing together in lines, but
when they sat, the gene that inflicted and infected the segregationist
took over (my words, not his).
Today those few people who speak of Islamic terrorists as a way
negatively to brand all of Islam would never speak of the Ku Klux Klan
as Christian terrorists who reflect negatively on all of Christianity.
When viewed through the eyes of faith, we can only see the reality of
our biased and bigoted contradictions as childlike foolishness.
Sins of omission
Most of us, in moments of candid introspection, acknowledge we have
committed sins of omission (silence) when we should have spoken and
acted. I have admitted times I should have challenged segregation, but I
quenched the spirit by remaining silent.
Students and leaders from Youth 2007 make a pilgrimage
to the former Woolworth's store in Greensboro, N.C.
A UMNS file photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
I finished college in 1955 and did nothing to challenge segregation
in Greensboro, N.C. However, in 1960, four young men from my college
created history by sitting in at the Woolworth's lunch counter I avoided
because of its practice of racial segregation.
I believe Black History Month provides a special opportunity and
challenge for those of us who claim commitment and adherence to the
Christian faith. We can ask ourselves how and why those who seek to
follow Jesus and claim to be “people of the book” (the Bible), in the
past and some in the present, use the Bible and circumvent Jesus to
justify their racial bias and bigotry.
However, as I point a finger of blame at those people, I know, in the
past, on matters of gender, I pointed three fingers at myself. Once I
used the Bible to justify my opposition to the ordination of women, just
as some used the Bible to support their racial biases.
I remember my grandmother Mama Irene’s saying, “There is so much good
in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it doesn't
behoove any of us to talk about the rest of us.” And I admit the good
and the not-so-good within me.
I suggest that a deeper exploration of black history, rooted in the
discipline of prayer, will touch those places in our lives that
transcend race. I believe the introspection this prompts will touch our
consciences and transform our lives.
*Caldwell is pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, Atlantic City, N.J.
News media contact: Barbara Dunlap-Berg, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5489 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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