WHOEVER HAS TWO COATS...

“WHOEVER HAS TWO COATS….”

            We are up in Chattanooga today at Caroline’s old home place in order to get a better view of the eclipse.   The lead story in today’s Chattanooga paper is about Nearest Green, a person held as a slave.  It is now acknowledged by all that he taught Jack Daniel to make the now-world-famous whiskey, but Mr. Green never got any credit or any money for it, nor have his descendants.  And that brings us to the second part of the blog on reparations.    

            In these days when we acknowledge the white supremacist roots of Donald Trump and his base, it may seem strange to talk about reparations.  When we’re wondering when the white supremacists will start shooting their guns that they carry so defiantly, it may seem far-fetched to even broach the idea of reparations.  Yet, I’ll take for my model the words of John the Baptizer in Luke 3 when people ask him how they can get right with God.  He tells them: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none (3:11).”  It is a recognition of the complicity of those who are comfortable in establishing the poverty of those who are poor, no matter what the economic system is. 

            In our capitalistic system, especially, this is a powerful call, because much of the wealth of the United States was built on slave labor.  As we saw last week, legal slavery in the US did not end until 1965 (except for those in prison – the 13^th Amendment still allows slavery for those who are incarcerated).  So all of us are wrapped up in this system – the idea of reparations is not just about “ancient ancestors,” as one person put it on Facebook.  The idea of reparations goes to the heart of the matter of the continuing power of race in America – those of us who are comfortable make money from it.  All the tortured faces in Charlottesville, all the shouts of “blood and soil,” all the weapons – these are designed to maintain the idea of white supremacy, so that the goods and energies of the system can flow to those at the top.  And, yes, some of those same white people in the white supremacy movement are unable and unwilling to discern that they are pawns for Trump and many of his cronies.

            Reparations would involve monetary payments to American people (and their descendants) held as slaves.  It is not a new idea.  Indeed, after Union General William Sherman captured Atlanta and began his march to the sea, he issued special field order #15 in January, 1865, confiscating 400,000 acres of coastal land in Georgia and Florida, giving out 40-acre plots to people formerly held as slaves.  It held for awhile, until it was rescinded by new President Andrew Johnson in the fall of 1865.

            This is a long and difficult process, and it is beyond the scope of this blog to go into much detail.  For those interested in it, begin with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “The Case for Reparations” in the June, 2014 issue of The Atlantic.  You can also see my article “Whoever Has Two Coats” in the February-March issue of Hospitality.  Randall Robinson’s book “The Debt” also goes into depths of this issue.

            The climate is not great for this idea currently, but it is time to begin this necessary step.  I want to suggest two small steps.  If you attend a place of worship, consider encouraging and pressuring your leadership to seek to offer floors of income to people held as slaves or their descendants.  When I was pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian, we provided such a monthly income floor for five families whose forebears grew up in slavery and who still suffered the consequences.  We were blessed to have generous donors who understood the call of John the Baptizer for reparations.  There are many problems and many issues in this process, but the bottom line is that it is a biblical call.

            Secondly, it is time now to seek to amend the US Constitution to change its “three-fifths” designation for humans held as slaves, so that they will now be recognized as the 100% human beings that they are.  This would require a discussion about why the “three-fifths” clause made it into the Constitution in the first place.  The short answer is that my white Southern forebears wanted to have their cake and eat it, too – they wanted to deny the humanity of those people held as slaves, but they wanted the political power of their numbers.  So, those human beings held as slaves counted as 60% human in calculating the numbers to be represented, and the white Southerners were able to strengthen their political power in the new nation.  A new amendment would help us think about and reclaim the vision of the Declaration of Independence that all {men} are created equal.  Begin thinking about and talking about this amendment, and contact your political representatives.   This movement is at the heart of the matter – “whoever has two coats…..”