To Make America What It Ought To Be

“In this country American means white. 
Everybody else has to hyphenate.”—Toni Morrison

We The People of Detroit
(www.wethepeopleofdetroit.com)

As most Americans know, February is Black History Month. We are grateful for this national focus on an alternative perspective of America. It is a perspective that is transforming us spiritually. At the memorial service for Dr. James Cone, Cornel West described the Black church like this:

A people who have been traumatized for four hundred years,
but taught the world so much about healing,
terrorized for four hundred years,
but taught the world so much about freedom,
hated for four hundred years,
but taught the world so much about how to love.

Yes. In our own spiritual journey, this is one of the traditions that we are humbly pledging allegiance to. Ruby Sales (left), a veteran of the Black Southern Freedom Struggle of the 50’s and 60’s, reminded a group of us white men in Washington D.C. in October, that despite all they’ve suffered (and still suffer), there’s never been anything remotely like a Black al-Qaeda in the United States. Instead, Black people have embodied belovedness in a million different ways for the world to see.

On the flip side of this coin, white folks like us have been severed from our souls by both supremacy and shame. We believe we are either better than or not enough. Whiteness is associated with skin color, but more importantly, it is a soul condition. It ought not be confused with the white supremacy coming from the KKK and the Trump White House. It is mostly subconscious and it teaches us to subtly second-guess those who are “suspect” (not white). Whiteness blocks us from mourning oppression. Instead, most of us are mired in melancholy—and insecurity, entitlement, defensiveness and rigidity. We remain oblivious to the perspectives and stories of “other” people. Most of us white folk do not really know Black and Indigenous and Immigrant people. We are stuck in our silos. And our shame.

A few years ago, we met Catherine Meeks, a Black professor and pastor who leads tours of historical lynching sites throughout the South. We’ll never forget what she told a room full of us mostly white folks at the Bartimaeus Institute in Southern California:

White people need to learn how to have real conversations with other white people. Don’t spend a second feeling guilty. It is a wasted emotion and it doesn’t serve anybody. For those of us who have lived at the foot of oppression, the last thing we need is white guilt. It just takes up your energy. Don’t choose to feel guilty. Choose to act.

This is why we need Black History Month. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that the work of the Civil Rights Movement was far bigger than securing rights for Black folks. It was an organized struggle to save the soul of White America. Black America has risen majestically in contexts of constant crucifixion. Suffering has shaped Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Howard Thurman, Fannie Lou Hamer (right), Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ruby Sales, Stacey Abrams and Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

These brilliant leaders have much to teach us about love, healing and freedom. So we study and attempt to follow their lead. We want to make this an everyday spiritual practice. So it’s helpful for February to remind us of this different way to be American. It reminds us that, while many want to make America great again, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called upon audiences “to make America what it ought to be.” The difference between these two mottos is everything.

We’ve compiled this list of reading recommendations for ourselves. We hope that they might be of some value for you too for this month and beyond. For starters, please read James Baldwin’s essay “On Being White and Other Lies” (1984)!

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010)

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (2015)

Between the World and Me by Te-Nehisi Coates (2015)

Killing Rage: Ending Racism by bell hooks (1995)

Black Prophetic Fire by Cornel West + Christa Buschendorf (2014)

I Bring the Voices of My People by Chanequa Walker-Barnes (2019)

Breathe: A Letter to my Sons by Imani Perry (2019)

The Cross and theLynching Tree by James Cone (2013)

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to WhiteAmerica by Michael Eric Dyson (2017)

Audre Lorde’s article “Poetry is not a Luxury”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963)

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam” (1967)

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Other America” (1967)

The New Yorker on William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign (2018)

For a practical workbook to get free from Whiteness, get your hands on Ethnoautobiography: Stories and Practices for Unlearning Whiteness (2013). And if you've got reading recommendations for us, please send them along!