Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America(7)

I don’t want to die tonight. I don’t want my son to see me shot.

That brings tears to my eyes even as I chant this prayer. Even as I ask you, Oh God, to give me the strength to soldier on. What a chilling recognition of the high cost for such a simple offense, all because an enraged white male cop was feeling his oats and seeking to humiliate my son. All because he could get away with it. Even if my son had been guilty, his crime wouldn’t have merited the implied threat of lethal force.

Mwata continued the dance of complete compliance. He nodded his head in agreement with the cop, doing anything he could not to be cut down in front of Mosi, my grandson, who, earlier that day, had been chosen to go to the principal’s office to recite the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker for the entire school. The bitter paradox wasn’t lost on Mwata or me when I heard the story.

The officer gave Mwata a ticket and a stern warning that if he ever saw him again he would take him straight to jail. He also insisted that Mwata park the car and not drive again that night. Literally five seconds after he let Mwata go the cop pulled over another black motorist. So many whites say they hate the quotas they associate with affirmative action, but quotas don’t seem to bother the white folk in blue who can’t get enough of them as they harass one black citizen after another.

To this day my grandson is worried every time he sees a cop. He fears the cops will try to arrest him and his father. He can’t understand why the color of his skin is a reason to be targeted by the police. Mosi is only seven years old.

Lord, what are we to do?

When I look at Mosi and my other grandchildren, Layla and Maxem, all beautiful, all bright, all full of life, I swear to you, Oh Lord, it fills me with fear, and then anger, and grief, to think that some son of a bitch with a badge and a gun could just take their lives, take our lives, as if it means nothing. I am beyond rage, Oh Lord, at the utter complicity of even good white folk who claim that they care, and yet their voices don’t ring out loudly and consistently against an injustice so grave that it sends us to our graves with frightening frequency. They wring their hands in frustration to prove that they empathize with our plight—that is, those who care enough to do so—and then throw them up in surrender.

What we mostly hear is deafening silence. What we mostly see is crushing indifference. Lord, what are we to do in a nation of people who claim to love you and hold fast to your word and way and yet they let their brothers and sisters murder us like we are animals?

Lord, Dear Lord, I don’t want to feel this way, but I swear to you I want to kill dead any Godforsaken soul who thinks that killing black people is an acceptable price to pay for keeping this nation safe. But then, am I any better than that soul?

I am reminded, Oh Lord, of the modern parable of the chicken and pig having a conversation about each making a contribution to breakfast. They are stopped short when they realize that their contributions aren’t equally demanding, won’t have the same consequence. All the chicken has to do to make a good breakfast is lay an egg. But the pig has to give his behind to make bacon. He has to die.

Lord, Oh Lord, I am so tired—we are so tired—of being the pigs. We are tired of having to sacrifice our hides to feed America. That may help explain why some black folk take special delight in referring to the cops as pigs. We want them to share our grief, to feel our pain, if just a little of it, in a term they find offensive. But if they think that insult is abominable, if the reference is disrespectful, can they not imagine, Oh Lord, what it means to be the pig, to surrender life to fill the bellies of a nation that eats our souls and culture while excreting us as so much waste?

Lord, convict this nation as never before. Let our lives testify to your majesty, your love, your grace—and may this land know your displeasure, taste your holy wrath, for killing us like pigs without conscience. Let this nation repent of its murderous ways. Only then will we even believe that white folk know the God who plants a foot on earth and regulates the wheel of time and circumstance. Until then, Oh Lord, give us the courage to tell the truth to white folk who need it more than air itself—who, we pray, will come to hunger for it more than they hunger for our death.





IV.

Scripture Reading

Do you know that a lot of the race problem grows out of the . . . need that some people have to feel superior. A need that some people have to feel . . . that their white skin ordained them to be first.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.


Book of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968: 3–8

Martin Luther King, Jr., is the most quoted black man on the planet. His words are like scripture to you and, yes, to us too. His name is evoked, his speech referenced, during every racial crisis we confront. He has become the language of race itself. He is, too, the history of black America in a dark suit. But he is more than that. He is the struggle and suffering of our people distilled to a bullet in Memphis. King’s martyrdom made him less a man, more a symbol, arguably a civic deity. But there are perils to hero-worship. His words get plucked from their original contexts, his ideas twisted beyond recognition. America has washed the grit from his rhetoric.

Beloved, you say you love King, or at least admire him, but you don’t really know him, not the King who was too black and too radical for most of America. King drank from roots deep in black culture. He bathed in black language. He sprang from a black moral womb. Black teachers and preachers shaped King. They gave him fuel for his journey and the inspiration to change the world. King told the truth about you in black America, to black America, in ways he couldn’t tell you. He said the toughest things about you in sacred black spaces. He did it because he felt safe with us. He did that to let us know that he knew what we were up against. He did it to let us know we weren’t crazy. If the most celebrated black man on the globe could feel the way he did, then we had every right to feel the same way. That didn’t make King a Janus-faced liar. He was, instead, a man of noble forbearance. He understood what white folk could hear; he knew what you dared not listen to. He knew what you could bear to know. He understood the white psyche and when and how to pressure you to do the right thing.