posted August 15, 2008
More than 100 years ago, a noose was hung in Chattanooga. It carried the body of Ed Johnson, a black man lynched for the attack of a white woman in St. Elmo. Ed Johnson was innocent, and before his neck snapped and body bulleted, he told the mob at his feet that he forgave them. He was then hung from the Walnut Street Bridge, second span down.
Last week, another noose was hung at the Blue Cross Blue Shield work site.
Racism is our nation’s original sin. We have ten thousand blessings and fortunes and freedoms in this land, but we continue to leave in the shadows our own failings. Let me be clear: there has never been any complete and clear healing between the white and black folk in this country. There have been movements and marches and legislation, but never any clear, massive reconciliation.
When did the emotional scars of slavery end? When did the spiritual baggage of Jim Crow pass away? When have white and black people – who have been wrapped up in the American Dream and Nightmare since the very beginning – ever clearly, safely and freely ever had a meaningful discussion about the history of skin color in this country?
When did we stop from becoming a racist society?
“If anybody is brother and sister to each other,’’ claims James Cone, “it is black and white people.’’ Cone, a theologian at Union Seminary famous for his work in black liberation theology, believes that the recent noose hangings across the nation provide a doorway into this much needed conversation.
Nearly 250 years of forced slavery followed by 100 years of legal segregation remain like bodies still hanging on trees in the cultural, economic and religious landscapes of this country. It is deep, and it must be confronted. We must begin to take the bodies down together.
“People who have never been lynched by another group usually find it difficult to understand why it is blacks want whites to remember lynching atrocities,’’ Cone said to Bill Moyers. “Why bring that up, they ask? Isn't that best forgotten? And I say, absolutely not! The lynching tree is a metaphor for race in America, a symbol of America's crucifixion of black people. See, whites feel a little uncomfortable because they are part of the history of the people who did the lynching. I would much rather be a part of the history of the lynching victims than a part of the history of the one who did it. And that's the kind of transcendent perspective that empowers people to resist. That's why King knew he was going to win even when he lost by human sense.’’
Cone creates a beautiful connection of the Christian cross as being depicted in the lynching tree. That when you see a lynching tree, or a noose, you are picturing a cross. Christ was lynched, murdered by the oppressive majority just as blacks were lynched by white supremacy. To see the lynched black man is to see Christ, Cone proposes. To see a noose is to see a Cross.
“Nobody who is lynching anybody can understand the cross. That’s why it’s so important to place the cross and lynching tree together,’’ he says. “If American Christians want to identify with that cross, they have to see the cross as a lynching. Anytime your empathy, your solidarity is with the little people, you’re with the cross.’’
If this is true, then the Christian churches in Chattanooga must actively denounce the Blue Cross Blue Shield noose and begin to actively provide space – tables, meals, times – for black and white people to come together to safely, courageously discuss the role of skin color in our land.
“It ought to encourage us to connect. Blacks and whites,’’ Cone says.
The Olympics, in their great majesty, provide connections within nations and among nations. Kristy Coventry, the Zimbabwean swimmer, unified her torn country following her first gold medal. Bob Costas reported that poor black women were even naming their children after this worldly white swimmer. Sports have that power to unify.
How do we unify Chattanooga? Of course, overt racism has been regulated to actions few and far between. It is now time to begin to work on healing the past. Or at least discussing it.
There are no bodies in the nooses anymore. But there are still ghosts.
(David Cook can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)
* * *
No, America has not always been kind to blacks, at least not as subserviently as people like Mr. Cook contend we should; and we've been pretty hard at times on our own people too, especially during the immigration waves from Ireland and Eastern and Southern Europe in the 1930's, which includes my own lineage. So with few exceptions, exceptions many European Americans have enough integrity to acknowledge, African derived people in turn have contributed little to our national progress.
But in spite of the penchant for tolerance mongers on the left and the right to defame one of the only cultures on earth that would tolerate blacks, over the past 40 years our government and dozens of private organizations have tried to atone for grievances real and imagined in a variety of ways, generous scholarship programs, head start, affirmative action, early intervention and the investment of untold trillions of dollars.
Yet, after all of this effort, the living conditions of the average black child are actually worse than they were 40 years ago. Back in 1960, one-fifth of black children were born out of wedlock; whereas today, it is more than half. There can be no more telling example of a policy that not merely fails to achieve its stated objectives, but makes matters materially worse, and at a terrible cost in terms of human misery for all involved.
Think about that a second.
Living under an ostentatiously "apartheid" system that regarded them as less-than-human, where blacks had their communities and their own social structures - blacks had stronger marriages, lower crime and in many cases higher academic achievement than they do today.
We know African-Americans didn't somehow become less intelligent today than they were 80 years ago. IQ scores are not the explanation. European-Americans didn't somehow become more "racist" than we were 80 years ago, if anything, we have become way less racist. The major change that occurred was integrating blacks into European derived culture.
Therefore, the quest for racial equality would be a search for the lowest common denominator as called for in Mr. Cook's article.
Viktor Massolini
Hixson
| Dining Out | Business | Movies | Focus | About Us |
| Church | Living Well | Memories | Outdoors | Real Estate | Student Scene | Travel |
