"THINKING ABOUT MEMORIAL DAY"

“THINKING ABOUT MEMORIAL DAY”

            My father served in the Army in World War II, but I don’t know any other details because he left my family and never returned.  My mother gave me what knowledge I have.  She and my father were married on Christmas Day, 1945, and I came along late the next November – yes, I counted the months too!  I was part of the huge baby boomer wave produced by the veterans returning from World War II.  Only later in her life did my mother tell me that she had lost her almost fiancé, Bob Buford, who was killed in World War II.  After her death, I found several letters to her from him, and then I found a letter from his father to my mother, telling her that Bob was missing in action over France in 1944.  So, on this Memorial Day, I’m remembering all that pain from soldiers lost in all our wars, and I’m giving thanks for their service for our country.

            The veterans of World War II never talked about it much.   I remember three comments, two from Arkansas memories.  My mother’s friend Bob Wetzel had served in the Pacific quadrant, and he hated Japanese people.  He was incensed when President Reagan signed the law providing reparations to descendants of American citizens who had been jailed during the war, with their only offense being their Japanese heritage.   In that same vein, I remember Alan Keesee talking about fighting in World War II, and he indicated that basic training had taught them that their enemies were not human beings like he was.  He said that if he thought that he was shooting at a person, who was human like himself, that he could not have pulled the trigger. 

            Finally, my friend, and now adopted father, Gay Wilmore talked about his service in Italy in World War II.  Being African-American, he, of course, had a vastly different view of the war, but he was there in Italy fighting for his country.  He remembered the Italian farmers who used to constantly rebuild the terraces for their vineyards, even in the midst of bombing and killing and war.  When he asked them why they did it, they indicated that life must go on, that they could not be totally defined by the war.  He used that image often as a metaphor in his struggles with the power of racism in this country, a struggle that continues to this day.

            I want to also give thanks for those who have served our country on these shores in the struggles for justice and equity.  Some were martyred directly, like my friend Ethel Steverson’s cousin Vernon Dahmer, who as killed in his home by the KKK in 1966 in Hattiesburg.  Some were beaten down by the power of race and oppression like Fannie Lou Hamer.   These are African-Americans, and here’s an important trivia question for you:  does anyone know of any white Southerners who were martyred during the modern civil rights movement?   There were white folks martyred in the South during that time, but they were not Southerners.  Alabaman Bob Zellner came close in McComb, but fortunately for us all, he survived.  My friends Ed Loring and David Billings have not been able to think of any, but surely there must be some – let me know if you have leads or knowledge.

            I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and I did my alternative service in Nashville running a halfway house for men getting out of prison.  I was in seminary and gave up my deferred status in 1970 in order to try to start a movement with others to end deferments for ministers and seminary students.  I never felt that the Vietnam War was anything but a misguided attempt to kill and maim people of a different color.  In saying this, I do not intend to demean the Americans who served there – I had two friends killed in that war.  It did make me understand that there is a war machine that loves to create chaos and death and profit.  That machine is obviously not confined to our country – Putin and Kim and Trump all seem cut from the same cloth, all war mongers who never served in the military, reminiscent of the leaders who sent us into the disastrous war in Iraq in 2003.

            So, on this Memorial Day, I give thanks for those who have served our country, overseas and on our soil.  Like many of us, I tremble for our country under the presidency of Donald Trump.  I cannot imagine that he will not take us into a war, especially as his legal and obstructionist troubles mount.  It will not be a war under that banner, of course.  It will be a war for democracy, as they all are, but to paraphrase Mark Twain – do we need another bandits’ war under the flag of our country?

"ASIAN-AMERICAN MONTH"

“ASIAN-AMERICAN MONTH”

            On January 20, 2009, Caroline and I sat in the cold but wonderful weather near the Capitol as Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44^th president of the United States.  Four musicians played during that celebration, and one of them was cellist Yo-Yo Ma, an American of Chinese descent, who was born in Paris.  He came to the States when he was 7 years old.  In the toxic air of the current Trump administration, I’m thinking about that day, as I consider Asian-American Month.   This celebration of Asian-American heritage began officially in May, 1979 as a week and has now expanded to a month.  Dr. Ronald Takaki’s book “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America” is an excellent resource for this and for many other groups considered ”other” in the USA.

            The first large Asian group who came to the USA were Chinese in 1849 as part of the push to build the first transcontinental railroad in the world.  They were not slaves, but rather they came voluntarily as free labor.   And, of course, they were paid much less than those workers classified as “white.”  Yet, because of their work ethic, by the time the railroad was complete, 90% of the work force was Chinese.  As Takaki puts it: “the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad line was a Chinese achievement. “ They also built the agricultural industry of California.  They became farmers and miners, and later on, when they were forced out of many of these occupations, they became laundrypeople.  There were, of course, many acts of violence and racism and prejudice against them.  The white phobia became so great that in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, virtually ending Chinese migration to the States for a long while. 

            Japanese workers came to Hawaii in the 1890’s to work in the fields there.  By the 1920’s they were 40 per cent of the population.  They soon made it to the mainland in California and the West Coast.  Although they had felt the sting of racism in Hawaii, when they arrived on the mainland, they were slapped in the face with it.  Like those immigrants from China, they helped to build the agricultural giant that California became.  Their hard work and success gave them hope that they might become American citizens someday, but that hope was dashed in 1922 when the US Supreme Court ruled that Takao Azawa was not entitled to naturalized citizenship because he “clearly” was not “Caucasian,” as specified by the 1790 Naturalization Law.   And, of course, their “otherness” would be forever etched in disgraceful American history, with the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II.

            Korean workers came to Hawaii on January 13, 1903, and it is remembered annually as Korean-American Day.  They were imported here to be a buffer between the Chinese and Japanese workers.  The racism was so great, however, that the Korean government forbade Korean emigration to the States in 1905.  Before that, people of Korean descent had begun to come to the mainland, along the West Coast.  Their migration in larger numbers would wait until after 1952 and 1965.  For us Presbyterians, people of Korean descent are the most populous of the people of Asian descent in our denomination.  Indeed, there are more Presbyterians in Korea than there are in the USA. 

            This is a very brief intro to the group called “Asian-Americans.”  Their stories are varied and rich and full of accomplishment and endurance in the midst of the oppression of the American system of race.  There are many other groups, including Pacific Islanders, Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Laotians, Thai and others.  Please take time this month to remember this history and to add to it.  Here are two folk to add to Yo-Yo Ma in your thoughts about Asian-American month.  Dalip Singh Saund was the first Asian-American elected to Congress, serving in 1957-1962.  He was an Indian and a Sikh, and this distinction points out the labyrinthian complexity and foolishness of the American system of race.  Are people from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka “Asian?”  They are from the same continent, but they are often called “South Asian” in the American race system. 

            A third person is the first woman of color elected to Congress.  I thought that this was Shirley Chisholm, who was elected in 1968, but Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink was elected from Hawaii in 1965 and served 12 terms.  She was a third generation Japanese (Sansei), and was a strong anti-war candidate.  She also was one of the primary authors of the Women’s Education Equity Act, known as Title IX, a revolutionary law in American history.

            Let us keep these folk and so many others before us in this first part of the 21^st century.  Let us keep this history in our thoughts and hearts.  Though the old white men are roaring, the arc of history seems to be bending towards a multicultural society.  Given the continuing power of race in American history, I may be too optimistic here, but I’m hoping, hoping, hoping……

"MAY 14, 2018"

“MAY 14, 2018:  CELEBRATION, AMBIVALENCE, AND NAKBA”

            This is a big day in history.  First, there is still the glow of Mother’s Day, and I give thanks for my mother, Mary Elizabeth Armour Stroupe, who raised me as a single mom, while working six days a week.  As far as I knew, her goal was to be both mother and father to me.  She was bright and hard-working – indeed she was valedictorian of her high school class in Byhalia, Mississippi, in 1937, but since they were poor in the Depression, she could not afford college.  My grandfather did round up the money to pay for cosmetology school for her (I believe that they called it “beauty school” at that time), and she became a beauty operator, a job she held in some form for 35 years or so.  After I had my children, I gave much more thought to what my mother had done for me:  after standing on her feet all day and listening to the troubles of others, she would come home, play with me, and listen to my troubles.

            She was an intellectual and loved to read, always seeking more and more knowledge and wisdom.  In the mid-70’s she was blessed to be hired as the lead teacher in the Phillips County Community College of Cosmetology.  She and I had already butted heads by then over race, and she had made a dramatic change.  Indeed, she later hired a black woman co-instructor because so many black women were coming to the school, and they became fast friends.  I later heard that she scandalized her white neighborhood because she welcomed her friend in the front door of the house (this was in the late 70’s, not the 1940’s or 50’s).   All of her students had to be registered to vote, and on election day, if they did not come to class wearing a sticker that said “I voted today,” they could not come to class.  So, a big THANK YOU to my mother for all that she did for me.  And a big THANK YOU to all the other women (and men) who gave me mothering love.  May we all share that kind of love with one another.

            Today is also the 411^th anniversary of the landing of the English at Jamestown in Virginia to start the European invasion of the Americas in 1607.   Almost immediately the natives of the land were pushed back and out, and twelve years later the first African slaves would arrive in North America.  Two hundred and 31 years ago in 1787, the delegates would gather in Philadelphia to begin the process of drafting the US Constitution, in which slavery would be written into the Constitution, and racism too, as those of African and native descent were deemed 60% human beings.  Those decisions are still reverberating in our national lives and consciousness.

            Finally, on this date 70 years ago in 1948, the nation of Israel drove Palestinian natives off their land to establish the modern nation of Israel.  Today the United States is moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in honor of the celebration of Israel.  I have no quarrels with the existence of the state of Israel, or with their persistent and insistent quality of maintaining the state of Israel.  Although Israel and Judaism are not the same, those pushing for a religious state of Israel still smell the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau.  They rightly know that they cannot trust the West, or anyone else for that matter, to stand up for Judaism.  They must be the ones to enforce “Never Again.”  They look like they intend to do it, or to make the world pay a great price if it seeks to return to the Germanic approach of the 1930’s and 40’s.

            Yet, today the democratic nation of Israel looks more like apartheid South Africa or the white South in which I grew up in the 1940’s and 50’s.   Today the Palestinian natives call this day “Nakba,” an Arabic word for “catastrophe.”  It marks 70 years since the Israelis drove the Palestinians from their homes and off their land, never to return again.  Buildings burned and houses razed, and now non-Arab Israelis moving into those places.  I wish that I could say that justice will be served, but I’m sitting on my porch right now in Decatur, sitting on land once occupied and owned by Cherokee people, removed themselves by the Presbyterian president Andrew Jackson.

            I hope that Israel will change its course and will shame us by treating the native peoples with justice and with dignity.  I’m not hopeful, but I also worship the God who is with those on the margins. I hope that like the Mother Bear of the Bible,  she is coming quickly to rescue and stabilize her cubs.  Or at least, to be like my mother and to celebrate, in front of every one, that She is now proclaiming welcome to those previously seen as enemies.  May this May 14 bring that kind of witness by us all.

"JAMES CONE"

“JAMES CONE” 

            On Saturday, April 28, my friend Gayraud Wilmore called me to tell me that James Cone had died that morning from cancer.  Gay and James Cone were long time colleagues and friends, having written together two volumes of a seminal work on black history and black theology:  “Black Theology:  A Documentary History.”  I had known that Dr. Cone was gravely ill, but like many of you, I was taken aback by his death.   One of my white theologian colleagues called Cone the greatest American theologian of the 20^th century and perhaps of all of American history. 

            He and I share a couple of similarities:  he was short, and he was from Arkansas.   He was born in Fordyce and grew up in Beardon, in towns between Pine Bluff and El Dorado.  Growing up in white supremacy, I never knew him or knew who he was until his book “Black Theology and Black Power” burst upon the scene.  He argued persuasively that there was a river (to borrow from Vincent Harding) of black theology and black power that had been flowing through American history, and that it was now bursting out from its underground streams to make its impact upon our lives together.

            James Cone published many other books, and although I never met him, his work had great impact upon my thinking and my perceptual apparatus.   He influenced me in many ways, but three stand out for me.  First, although he was not the origin of it, he spoke in new ways about the value of the black experience.  Though the word “black experience” is complex and has many meanings, Cone basically used it to describe a fundamental sense of being marginalized by the culture.  No matter how much money one has or what status one has achieved, there still can, and often will be, those moments when white supremacist culture rises to remind one of their marginalized status.  Though Cone lamented this reality, he did not hang his individual or cultural head in shame.  In fact, he sought to appropriate “blackness” as a more profound way into the human spirit, as a safeguard against the dominant white supremacist culture.  Indeed he used it as a springboard to a deeper meaning of life, and he joined in and added verses to the idea that “black is beautiful.” 

            Second, as a Christian theologian, he moved the Gospel message and the Biblical message from the domination of European models to the black experience.  He helped us hear in ways that we had not heard before:  Jesus was black.  In the life of Jesus of Nazareth, we see the movement of blackness into the Trinity, into the Godhead herself.  Those who have been reading my series of articles in Hospitality Magazine will recognize that Cone (and Gay Wilmore and Jacqueline Grant) is a primary source of the black Jesus.  In referring to Jesus as black, Cone reminds us of two important things about the Gospel that we often forget (or choose to dis-remember) in our affluent, capitalisitc society.  First, Jesus was not white.  Jesus was dark-skinned, a brown Palestinian Jew.  In our color-soaked society, this is revolutionary.  The Lord and Savior claimed by the white evangelicals, who elected Trump as president, is dark-skinned.  But, Cone was not content to stay on the skin-color level.  He asserted that Jesus was “black,” that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus are rooted in the black experience in the West, and indeed in all sectors of life.  Jesus was black because Jesus was oppressed, living his life on the margins, lynched by a mob under the tacit approval of the Roman empire, and raised by a God who brought new life into the old, dead world.  Cone pushed this idea to its most powerful form in emphasizing that Jesus pointed us to the “God of the oppressed,” the title of one of his fine books.

            Cone’s third primary emphasis for me was his insistence that those who are classified as “white” must come to terms with our addiction to race and racism before we can make steps toward salvation.  I’ve listed elsewhere the seven steps that we as “white” folk must work in order to begin to find our true identity as children of God (recognition, repentance, resistance, resilience, reparations, reconciliation, recovery).  In theological terms, I would call it our captivity.  Our hearts and minds and perceptual apparatus have been taken over by the power of race, and until we can acknowledge that and seek to find liberation, we will simply be fooling ourselves if we seek to call ourselves Christians.

            So, thanks to God for James Cone, and thanks to James Cone for his ministry and fierce commitment to justice.  If you are not familiar with him, check out one of his many books.  If you have not read any of them, start with “Martin and Malcolm and America,” a brilliant study of the relationship between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  Or, you can check out his powerful “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.”  In light of the subject of this last book, there is no small irony that Cone passed on to the next realm in the same week that the National Memorial on lynching opened in Montgomery.