Rev. T Richard Snyder

May 18, 2008

One brilliant Spring morning my mother and father were standing side

by side looking out the window. "Look at the beautiful sunrise, my

mother exclaimed." "This window is filthy", my father replied. And

herein lies for me a clue to the issue of race and racism in the

United States.

During the past several months we have been offered a vivid picture

of the complexity of race and racism. On the one hand, we have the

dream being offered by Obama-the dream of a new kind of world, the

dream of a nation in which every person, regardless of race, has the

opportunity to a full education and work that is meaningful. On the

other hand we have the nightmare that shapes the preaching of the

Rev. Jeremiah Wright-a nightmare of oppression, of second class

citizenship, even of genocide.

So what are we dealing with--a beautiful sunrise or a filthy window-a

dream or a nightmare?

We do not have to go back very far in history to discover the same

tension being lived out. There was Martin, the dreamer, who saw a

nation that lived up to the principles of its constitution: who

dreamed of a day when his children would be judged by the content of

their character rather than the color of their skin: a day when

whites and blacks would one day join hands; when all could proclaim,

free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I'm free at last.

And there was Malcolm, the firebrand, for whom life in the United

States was a nightmare; a nightmare of brutality, of exclusion, of

hatred, of genocide, of the devastation of an entire race. For

Malcom, the nightmare was so terrifying that he considered whites a

"race of devils". As was clear from his later speeches, he was

speaking of the collective "white man" whose cruelties of slavery,

Jim Crow and segregation had damaged every single black person.

Martin spoke largely to the white community, trying to convince us to

live up to our best ideals. He believed that the problem of

segregation led to lack of communication, which led to ignorance,

which led to fear, which led to hate. Martin placed his hope in

whites coming to their senses. Malcolm spoke largely to the black

community trying to help them see the depths of their situation and

to discover the strength and capacities within themselves that they

themselves had too often ignored or denigrated. Malcolm placed his

hopes in blacks claiming what was rightfully theirs, by any means

necessary.

The conversation today is strikingly similar. A presidential hopeful

seeking to reach out to the broadest possible audience, challenging

all to live up the best within ourselves and believing that a truly

different world is possible if we work together. And a preacher who

speaks in the context of the black church, to blacks, out of the

black tradition, speaking the hard truths about his community's

tragic conditions and what he understands to be the fundamental roots

of the tragedy, viz. the white power structure. Like Martin, Wright

distinguishes between collective whites and individual whites.

Unlike Martin, he does not advocate change by any means necessary.

What are we to make of this? We who live in the whitest state in the

nation, we who do not have to face the day to day realities of ghetto

life, or reservation life, or the life of an undocumented citizen.

We might try denial. The window isn't filthy-maybe its a little

smudged, but not really filthy. Sure life is tougher for some people

of color, but its not really a nightmare. That Jeremiah Wright-he's

a raving madman or an ego maniac.. Such denial may allow us to remain

at ease within our islands of privilege, but it will guarantee that

the disease of racism continues to spread.

Then there is guilt. We could beat our breasts in contrition and

become suckers for every Al Sharpton who comes along to milk our

guilt. We could turn off our critical facilities and become

paralyzed. There is a vast difference between feeling guilty and

taking responsibility. Taking responsibility demands that we take

actions to rectify the situation. Wallowing in guilt won't change

anything.

But, even if we acknowledge the nightmare, there is always cynicism

and despair. We know that there has always been injustice and there

always will be. So we think, if people of color gain the upper hand,

they will do exactly what has been done to them. Thee have been too

many instances of grace in the face of oppression to give in to

cynicism. Nelson Mandela and M. L King. Jr. challenge our cynicism.

If we wish to move beyond to denial, enervating guilt, and cynicism,

what are we to do?

I believe that we must first come to terms with the immensity of the

evil of racism. None of us who is white can ever fully understand

the depth, the tenacity, or the tragic consequences

of racism. But there is no excuse for ignorance of the nightmare. We

are responsibile to be as informed as possible, and to try to

understand what may seem incomprehensible to us.

This means taking inventory of the sources of our information--what

we read, to whom we listen, whose stories we know. Have we been open

to hearing truths that make us uncomfortable? The dominant media,

the dominant story line, the dominant history in our nation is

white. If those are our primary sources of information, it is no

wonder that some of Jeremiah Wright's statements come as a shock.

How could an intelligent, highly educated person think that it was

possible that the U. S. government was responsible for introducing

AIDS into the black community, as Rev. Wright suggested?

But let us look at the history from which this notion arises. Wright

knows his people's history. He knows about the U. S. government's

Tuskegee Experiment in which the US. Public Health Service from 1932

to 1972 deliberated allowed 399 poor black sharecroppers to suffer

and die from the ravages of syphilis in order to have control group.

President Clinton's formal apology to their descendents recognized

the immorality of our government's action and acknowledged that it

was racist. In the light of that history, can we not imagine why the

ravages of AIDS in the black community might conceivably be viewed as

a government plot?

With a broader reading of history and a broader base of information,

we may be able to understand the paranoia some people of color feel,

given the history of slavery, our treatment of the Chinese laborers

who built our railroads, our systematic eradication of entire Indian

populations and our subsequent reneging on our treaty obligations,

our internment of Japanese-Americans, our conquest of Mexican lands.

If we know their history, we will not be surprised when people of

color suspect that our government's tragic response to Katrina is one