What's at Stake
In these times, the future of black America is at stake. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean that literally! President Bush will name at least two if not three Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
An awful lot is at stake in the naming of those Justices. George Herbert Walker Bush named Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. That set in motion a radical drift in the court's thinking. The drift, of course, was to the right. The drift was toward conservatism. The drift was anti-black and the drift was anti-women!
In a country where the majority of people who go to the polls are "single issue" Christian, and they outnumber people of integrity, we are in trouble. What is at risk politically? The future of America in general is at risk. What the country, in which our children and grandchildren grow up, will look like is at risk.
The Supreme Court is split right now five-to-four when it comes to crucial issues that affect the lives of black people. If the wrong judge gets confirmed, that conservative majority will be increased by two if not three Justices! The future of African Americans in this country depends on who is confirmed!
Under the current administration, African Americans have suffered more than any other segment of the American public. Three million jobs were lost in the first three years of this administration's tenure. Proportionately, the people affected most by the downturn of the economy in the loss of employment were African Americans.
Forty-four million American citizens do not have health care insurance. The majority of uninsured Americans are African Americans! The vast majority of uninsured Americans are children.
That means that the vast majority of uninsured Americans are African American children! The President is the one who decides whether we "stay the course" of uninsured Americans or whether we begin to make a difference in the lives of those whom Jesus calls "the least of these, my little ones."
An awful lot is at stake when it comes to the future of African Americans in this country.
In the area of education, in general and public school education in particular, an awful lot is at stake for African Americans. The vast majority of African Americans rely on the public school systems of this nation. The vast majority of Hispanic Americans rely on these public schools.
The administration rolled out its flagship plan called "Leave No Child Behind" to address the crisis in public school education. The flagship, however, proved to be the Titanic when it came to African Americans. African American children went straight to the bottom of a deep ocean. African American children are being left behind at a record pace!
Add to that tragedy the fact that the administration wants to destroy public education and you have the ripple or domino effect of the loss of the Titanic in the Northern Atlantic Seas and hurricanes Charlie and Frances in the Caribbean and Southern Atlantic Oceans! African American children are getting ready to get wiped out in the educational system by this administration.
If you ask any school principal in my congregation he or she can tell you that "Leave No Child Behind" was a farce from the outset. The program was under-funded even as Americans applauded its arrival!
Being under-funded meant that there was no way possible for the program to succeed. It was programmed for failure from the outset! The education of African American children is not a priority with the current administration!
To add insult to injury, the former Czar of education, an African American named Paige, publicly called schoolteachers, who work in the area of public school education, "terrorists!" An awful lot is at stake when it comes to African Americans.
In a country where the majority of people who go to the polls are "single issue" Christian, and they outnumber people of integrity, we are in trouble. What is at risk politically? The future of America in general is at risk. What the country, in which our children and grandchildren grow up, will look like is at risk. Will they grow up in a country that values all life or will they grow up in a country that caters to the rich?
Will they grow up in a country that cares about Africa and does not look the other way as genocide is committed in Darfur? Or will they grow up in a country that makes pious-sounding noises about Africa and HIV/AIDS, but sends no money to back up its pious sounding pronouncements?
What the future will look like is at risk. You have a say-so in reducing the risk by making sure you take your elected representatives to task.
Dr. Homer Ashby in his book, Our Home Is Over Jordan, points out that the cultural identity of African Americans is at risk! The problem is that African Americans are not taught who they are as sons and daughters of African decent!
African Americans already start off in the "race" for equality and identity at a deficit. The educational system does not teach them their history. The educational system does not teach them their heritage. What they know of their own story is either handed down to them by their parents, their grandparents or one or two African American scholars and a handful of African American churches!
As Clayton Jones said many years ago, Japanese children go to school to learn about the Japanese. Chinese children go to school to learn about the Chinese. Philippine children go to school to learn about the Filipinos. White children in America go to school to learn about European and white American heroes; and African American children go to school to learn about Europeans and white American heroes!
The average African American labors under that heavy yoke of educational systems that omit their history! Add to that the false understanding of the word "integration" and the results become tragic. Integration was the word that was used back in the 1960s.
Assimilation and acculturation, however, are what some meant. In the words of Dr. Ashby, "integration's implied agenda that blacks forego their black identity in order to appropriate a white identity and a racist society's refusal to acknowledge its racism have led to" confusion among African Americans as to what it means to be an African American and what it means to be a descendant of Africa.
Our cultural identity is at risk when this kind of loose talk is setting the agenda in the media and in the educational systems of our country. What is at risk in the days which lie ahead in this 21st century is the cultural identity of African Americans! In addition to our political future being at risk and our cultural identity being at risk, there is something else that is even more crucial that is at risk. Our spiritual identity is at risk!
We have a history and a faith that was forged in the flames of slavery. The faith that we share produced the African American spirituals (what W.E.B. DuBois called "The Sorrow Songs"). The faith that we share produced Rev. Gabriel Prosser, Rev. Nathaniel Turner, Rev. Denmark Vesey, Rev. Harriet Tubman, Rev. Desmond Tutu, Rev. Allan Boesak and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The faith that we share as African Americans who have struggled against racism is not the faith of Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell!
Our spiritual identity was formed in the brush arbors of Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. Our faith is a faith that has brought us through "the dark past" of Jim Crow (legal segregation, American style!), the Dred Scott Decision, the lynchings, castrations and rapes of African Americans in this country and the "invisible institution" of a people who refused to stop worshipping God in the African tradition - even when white Americans passed laws making it a crime for two or more blacks to assemble without a white person being present!
That spiritual identity is being threatened by a cadre of colored con artists who call themselves "media ministers," who hold "mega-fests" and who have not been to seminary! The so-called faith and "spirituality" of modernity (which has nothing to do with the struggle of Africans in this world) is not our faith! Our spiritual identity is at risk!
Any faith calling itself "African American" while ignoring Africa is a threat to our spiritual identity. Of course, the media mess passing itself off as religion does not see the necessity of addressing the multitude of problems facing Africans on the continent or Africans in the Diaspora! Our spiritual identity is at risk!
Every believer who is serious about following the teachings of Jesus Christ and not following the concocted fables of American ideology needs to be aware of what is at risk for us in the days that lie ahead - politically, culturally and spiritually! Every believer needs to become a "doer" of the word and not just a "hearer."
I ask you as you read this article: Are you a "hearer" or are you a "doer?" There is too much at risk for you to just be a "hearer!"
Dr. Wright is the Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, IL
Reprinted by the AAMIA with permission from Trinity United Church of Christ.