How to make room for the truth …
Florida recently shifted their curriculum to change the perception of slavery. Slavery is physical, social, sexual, and financial violence against a person's will. Slavery existed (and still exists in the form of migrant and sexual exploitation of women) for 400 years in this country. The new curriculum indicates that children will be taught that, “slavery benefitted some Black people because they learned skills while being enslaved”. Their goal apparently is not to tinge the White children with the legacy of slavery. It is yet another movement towards a “color-blind” society. If they can soften the historical narrative, they can shift thinking in both the Black and White communities, and we can move on as a country with history, one culture and a defined race hierarchy. As a Black man, I feel erased as a human and threatened as an American.
We should not, however, be surprised by any of this. If we look at how whites view themselves, we see the seeds of this policy. Whites have literally colonized themselves with the nebulous caste of White. White isn’t real. It’s not the color of their skin. It signifies no one place and lacks any ethnic or cultural foundation. To be white is to be nothing but what power tells you to be. It’s a caste, and to belong to this caste, one first must be chosen, then one must devoid oneself of their actual ethnic identity, and finally, one must accept values and cultural practices that, in many cases, are counter to the communal values of their original ethnicity! BUT! In giving up all they are, whites can access the potential for wealth, power, elite education, high incomes and property. It’s committing harm to one's very soul for mere material gain. It is violence against themselves. It is telling God to God’s face that what God made isn’t good enough and that human intervention is needed to make it right. It is a state of perpetual sin.
As a pastor, I teach that God asks for two things from humanity. To love God and love neighbors as ourselves. By negating who one is, you are literally saying to God that who you were created to be isn’t of value, power, prestige, and stuff. It is a form of idolatry in the highest form.
And they would like people of color to join them. I, however, will not be, and I hope, as a person, you will reject this caste as well.
There are two stories in the Book of Genesis I read over and over. One is a lesser-known story; the other is wildly misinterpreted and used for social violence. In the first story, Abraham, a Hebrew Patriarch, is confronted by three angels. He doesn’t realize they are as they look like people. But instead of treating them as others, he rolls out lavish hospitality, meeting them where they are and loving on them. He fed them, gave them drinks, shared the shade of his tent and entertained them with discussion. And when he learned they were going to Sodom, he advocated for the righteous people there.
Now contrast this with Sodom and Gomorrah. In a city of evil people, Lot again invites the angels into his house; he protects them with his daughters (8th BCE values, not ours) by sending them to the crowds. He showed radical hospitality even in the face of evil.
America can learn something from these stories. We have spent so much time creating the false narrative of a uniform, ethnically, and racially neutral culture that we now justify evil by erasing the history and cultures of minorities. It’s a natural response to losing one's soul.
Why should any American accept being stripped of who they are? Why should any American not proudly claim their ethnic identity? I am proudly 80% Igbo and 20% Scotch/Irish/Welsh. That is who I am. I LIVE in the US—a fantastic, if flawed, place. As a citizen, I am loyal to the government and seek to try to serve others through service. I will not give up who I am, my ethnicity, or my people's varied history to make a caste feel better about the violence historically perpetrated against them.
As I have read through various blogs, articles, and Threads (I am not doing the X thing), I have noticed that people of many races feel that something needs to be fixed where we are, when we begin to deny the evil the country has perpetrated. When we actively reject any form of truth and reconciliation. When we attempt even to rebrand that evil as somehow “good”, we have lost moral clarity. We have cheapened freedom and liberty, and we do not love our neighbors as ourselves.
That may be the issue here. Americans no longer love themselves. We deny the beautiful creatures we are to God and instead have told God that our very creation is flawed and have recreated ourselves in humanity’s image and abandoned our true selves. Because how can you possibly love another person if you don’t know or love yourself?