Ordinary 13

The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7,9,13-15; Mark 5: 21-43

The murder of eight parishioners and their pastor at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina has raised up the interwoven issues of racism, gun control, white supremacy, the meaning of the Confederate flag, and our nation’s slave history. All unresolved matters. Like a cancer that metastasizes, we simply want racism and violence to go away but it doesn’t and thus it never heals.

Religious and civic leaders, politicians and pundits will condemn the hate; prayers will be offered and forgiveness extended and there will be the pledges of never forgetting – at least, until the next news cycle. All races will march hand-in-hand throughout our cities and we will gather and sing at candlelight vigils. The talking heads on television will spar and criticize whatever statement President Obama delivers and then the page will be turned and we will all go to work and school as normal. Until the next time.

I will never understand such senseless violence nor the attitudes of white supremacists and Neo-Nazi groups. I do not understand why there are such hateful attitudes toward people of differently colored skin as if Caucasian is itself not a shade of tan(?), a rather washed out colour compared to the richness and depth of other peoples tones.

The United States Catholic Bishops in a 1979 Pastoral Letter on Racism entitled Brothers and Sisters To Us stated: “Racism is an evil which endures in our society and in our Church. Racism is a sin: a sin that divides the human family… Racism is the sin that says some human beings are inherently superior and others essentially inferior because of races. They continue…“When we give in to our fears of the other because he or she is of a race different from ourselves, when we prejudge the motives of others precisely because they are of a different color, when we stereotype or ridicule the other because of racial characteristics and heritage,…we participate in the sin of racism.

Racism can be brazen such as the racial slurs, hate-filled posts and profanity-laced replies hurled at President Obama within minutes of opening his Oval Office Twitter account on Monday, 18 May 2015.

Racism can also be very subtle.

How many of us as children picked sides for a game with the rhyme:

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Catch a…in my day it was the N-word…by the toe.

If he hollers, let him go, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

I realized that as a child the N-word was simply a word, a sound, part of a rhyme. A word without reflection as to what is was or meant. We were about to play a game. Yet the N-word was passed on…by whom? Neither My parents nor any other adult taught it to me. It was passed on unchecked in the culture child to child while playing games. The Bishops state that: “The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds. They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority. Members of both groups give unwitting approval by accepting things as they are.” A child cannot be expected to reflect in the same manner as an adult – so the word was appropriated by me with all of it unknown and sinister history.

Consider the original image of Aunt Jemima on those maple syrup bottles, the black-faced entertainer, Al Jolson, the images of slaves in the movie, “Gone with the Wind” or the coverage of the 1960 race-riots in the news: Watts, Newark, Detroit, New York. Those images surrounded me when I was a child. The images are still alive on stations like Turner Classic Movies. Racism can be subtle. Subtlety is insidious because ideas are passed on from generation to generation without reflection.

I do not consider myself racist yet…I have had to wonder, when doing graduate work in Washington, DC why was I so uncomfortable one day when I realized I was the only white person on the bus. Everyone was polite, no one said or did anything threatening to me. I did not like the way I felt. I realized this is what Black America feels every day. And what now Middle Eastern America also feels every day. The same happened years later in New York City on a subway going into Harlem for an art exhibition. They are only going to work, shopping and school like every else, I said to myself. “They”. “They,” connotes “the other”; and the “other” is separate from us, different from us, threatening to us. Where did such thoughts come from within me? Why did they arise? Racism can be subtle.

How often have I found my pace automatically quicken when African-American youth or men are walking toward me? It is not even a conscious decision.

Have you had such experiences and thoughts? Do these experiences and thoughts make me racist?  …make us racist?

“Perhaps no single individual is to blame,” the Bishops state. "The sinfulness is often anonymous but nonetheless real. The sin is social in nature in that each of us, in varying degrees, is responsible. All of us in some measure are accomplices.” But that still leaves me with the unanswered and difficult question, why does a 21-year old young man entering the prime of life in the 21st century, hate so much he is willing to murder, to eliminate the object of his hate?

“Perhaps no single individual is to blame…each of us, in varying degrees, is responsible. All of us in some measure are accomplices.”