Photo Courtesy of UMC Lead
Black Lives Matter
Tears
I did not cry when we held hands in a large circle and prayed before the march. I did not cry when she called for us to remember the blood of our black sisters and brothers needlessly spilled.
I did not cry as we walked, like a slow-moving tide creeping up the sand, our voices resurrecting that hymn of this movement’s ancestors, “We Shall Overcome.”
When our bodies lay on the ground for four and a half minutes to remember the four and a half hours that Michael Brown’s body lay on the unforgiving asphalt of Ferguson, Missouri, I still did not cry.
No, the tears came during a moment of spontaneous celebration. A djembe player had joined our amateur drummers, forming an impromptu drum circle as the official MLK march passed by. Those of us on the periphery continued to chant, “Black lives matter,” as the drummers passed new syncopations around the circle. Soon, individuals from the crowd took their turn dancing in the center, letting the beat guide their body’s natural rhythm.
She could not have been more than eight or nine years old, and she danced with the fearlessness that comes as natural as breathing to a child. All around the circle, grins broke across the faces of the people watching. Her youth was an inspiration to people weighed down by years of struggle. The freedom with which she danced foreshadowed a greater freedom.
That’s when the single thought – and the tears it brought on – came:
Her life matters.
The work we do today is so that this little girl can grow up in a world knowing that her life matters. That dream of Dr. King’s has not been realized yet.
Black lives matter.
Her life matters.
Why “Black Lives Matter”?
I am not a very good ally to people of color. I make a lot of mistakes: uninformed and unwittingly hurtful comments, mostly. They taught us at the Nashville Organizer’s Training to call these “oops” and “ouch” moments. I make a lot of “oops,” and I just hope that I don’t cause too much “ouch.”
One of the questions some well-meaning people have asked over the past several months is, “Why do we only say, ‘Black lives matter’? Don’t all lives matter?” Some have even made signs with just such a sentiment. “All lives matter.” I saw a few at the march on Monday.
“Black lives matter” is because those three words are disputed. They are disputed by the systems in our society that continue to function as if black and brown lives do not, in fact, matter.
Of course all lives matter. No one disputes that. The reason this movement has taken the name “Black lives matter” is because those three words are disputed.
They are disputed by the systems in our society that continue to function as if black and brown lives do not, in fact, matter. When police violence is exercised disproportionately against people with darker skin, for instance, black lives do not seem to matter. When news organizations gloss over some colossal number of deaths incurred during a civil conflict in Africa, black lives do not seem to matter. When we send black people to prison at an unbelievably higher rate than white people, for equal or lesser crimes, our justice system says that black lives do not matter. When a lack of access to quality education disproportionately sends black and brown children on a pipeline to prison, our education system says that black lives do not matter.
What Shall We Do?
Blame is a wasted endeavor here. The system is the way the system is, and we are all a part of it, through no fault of our own. But like the alcoholic who is responsible for recovery but cannot be blamed for her disease, we are responsible for helping to heal a system we did not create.
The question before those of us who profess faith – as individuals, as congregations, as the United Methodist Church (or whatever group with which you affiliate), and as the church universal – is the same: What are we going to do about it? John Wesley famously asked three questions at his early conferences: 1) What shall we teach? 2) How shall we teach? 3) What shall we do?
When the transatlantic slave trade began in the 1500s, European powers declared that black lives did not matter. Some of the gathered faithful spoke against it, calling for abolition. John Wesley did. But the Methodist movement in America decided early on that black lives did not matter as much as a unified church, and they abandoned the abolitionist views of their founder. Southern Methodists later decided that even unification was not as important as the slave trade, forming their own denomination so they could live without the guilty conscience of those who suggested that, perhaps, black lives did matter. What shall we do?
The drafters of the U.S. Constitution quantified exactly how much less black lives mattered than white lives. Three-fifths as much. The men who reached this compromise were the same men who declared that God had ordained the equality of all “men.” What shall we do?
When a bomb killed four little girls at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1964, white supremacists were declaring that black lives did not matter. The life of Cynthia Wesley, they said, did not matter. The life of Carole Robertson, they said, did not matter. The life of Denise McNair, they said, did not matter. The life of Addie Mae Collins, they said, did not matter.
At the public funeral for three of the girls, Rev. King gave the eulogy. The absence of any city officials – professing Christians, most of them – bespoke their belief that black lives did not matter. What shall we do?
Not four years earlier, my alma mater, Vanderbilt University, had expelled Rev. James Lawson for his activism in the Civil Rights movement. Lawson was (and is) a Methodist minister, but where were the white Methodists? Some showed enormous courage and marched with Rev. Lawson and Dr. King. Harvie Branscomb, though, the chancellor who expelled Lawson, was a Methodist theologian. What shall we do?
When Rodney King was brutally beaten in 1992, those four police officers declared that black lives did not matter.* When Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed without penalty, our justice system agreed.
What shall we do?
Today, we have an opportunity to do things differently. Today, we have the chance to affirm – as a church – that black lives matter. I do not discount the efforts of individual churchgoers and pastors today and during our history, but as the church universal, we have all too often been on the wrong side.
As the events of the past year continue to unveil the present realities of police violence, an unjust justice system, unequal housing opportunities for people of color, unequal access to education, and so many more problems too subtle to see at first glance, we have the opportunity to answer the question, what shall we do?
I propose that we do something. As the United Methodist Church. As congregations. As Sunday School classes. There are lots of opportunities to join the prophet in asking, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isa 58.6).
We can attend educational events sponsored by local organizers. We can visit those in prison and let their stories speak louder than statistics. We can get involved in the political issues that speak directly to the realities of injustice. We can learn how the gentrification that is renewing our cities also has the unintended effect of forcing people out of their communities.
If you are not on board with all of this, that’s OK, too. Let’s talk about it. Ask your friends at the protests why they are there. For those of us at the protests, let’s remember that we do not have all the answers either. We are all trying to do our best, and humility is the best path forward.
2015 has been declared a “Year of Resistance.” Will we stand on the sidelines and watch as others resist? Or will we help work toward a better future, in whatever small ways we can?
I am learning, and I am new at this. But let’s help each other figure it out in a spirit of humility. Anything is better than nothing. There will be “oops” and “ouch” moments. That can’t be helped.
But let’s do something.
Because I keep seeing that little girl dancing to the heartbeat of a movement. In the glint of her eyes, I see those four little girls in a church in Birmingham. And I wonder if all the brown and black girls and boys growing up today are going to know that – no matter how often our world has tried to tell them otherwise – their lives matter.
Image by Keel Lincoln. Cropped from Original.
*Editor's Note: The beating of Rodney King, and the riots that followed publication of the videotape of that beating, occurred during the 1992 General Conference in Louisville, Ky. To its credit, that General Conference adopted a motion crafted by several leaders and proposed by the Rev. Donald Messer, then president of Iliff School of Theology in Denver, that United Methodist churches declare themselves "shalom zones" of safety and peace in an effort to quell violence, build community and achieve justice. Dr. Messer's motion was a catalyst for what evolved into The United Methodist Church's "Communities of Shalom" initiative, Advance Project #742566, now a program of the General Board of Global Ministries.
Gabe Horton is a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn., and a pastoral intern at Belle Meade United Methodist Church. He blogs at UMC LEAD, from which this article is reprinted with permission.