The Rev. John Dorhauer, UCC minister and former St. Louis resident, now based in the Southwest, on white privilege and its continuing destructive impact: They have healed the wound of my people lightly, crying Peace!, Peace! when there is no peace. Jer. 8:11. Long ago, white America calculated just how much of our privilege we would let go of to satiate an oppressed black people. When our collective guilt was managed, we stopped well short of equality - satisfied that we had done enough, pretending not to understand why blacks were not satisfied with our generosity of spirit and beneficence. We ingored the lingering, deep, abiding pain and the growing inequities. For years I have been arguing that justice doesnt calculate what the privileged can tolerate, but asks what the oppressed deserve in both recompense and true equity. White America never wanted that, and never delivered on their promises. I have been saying that the image of the lion and the lamb lying together is a fantasy as long as the lion insists on keeping its claws and its muscle. Till then, the lamb always lies uneasy waiting for the beast to emerge. White power and privilege was never abdicated, only the illusion of justice was created. I have long been saying that if we whites dont commit fully to justice and reparations we would once again see the lion and the lamb lying together, this time in a pool of blood. I am watching my hometown erupt in violence, and I am heartbroken. Another young black man is shot by another white police officer. I dont know the exact circumstances, and will never know them. What I do know is the ease with which white privileged men and women dismiss the pain, the anger, the horror that these shootings generate, the comfort with which they come to the defense of the police at the utter disregard of the tragedy of another life taken - these are also causes of what we see unfolding in the streets of Ferguson right now. To all my white family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, please do not give in to old feelings of racial superiority and fail to name the justifiable rage that emerges when the young life of an unarmed black man is taken. Please find it in your heart to examine what you have been taught to see and hear and believe, and feel the pain of mothers whose sons are shot dead - and the justifiable anger of a race of people whose equality we have struggled to acknowledge.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 03:39:50 +0000
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