The Torch Bearer's Friend

When I was in elementary school, my teacher read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I tear up now remembering parts of it though its entirely fuzzy and I havent picked it up since. The sense of injustice, helplessness and just ugly overwhelmed me. I remember feeling genuine despair that a girl like me in a different time, with different skin, lived it.

I grew up mostly in a small Arkansas town, at a biggish public school with lots and lots of white people. Just like me.

The poverty in this area is scattered, but deep. Something I didnt get until I moved to other places (none of which qualify for metropolis status) and returned just months ago. Everyone went to one of a few churches. Its just what you did.

Racism felt far away because, frankly, we were all white.

But, I knew.

Hating people because of the color of their skin, their sexuality or their immigration status is old news. Its like a big festering wound weve kept bandaged quite well (depending on your perspective). But, its been there all along. It had names other than hate. Thats how it hides. And I dont believe one man is responsible for pulling off the bandage and exposing our ugly oozing mess for the world to see.

It happened over hundreds of years with whispered jokes, sideways looks, silence, imagined offenses by an imaginary foe and a healthy dose of isolation that all stuck like a slimy film just as progress was made on the surface. Its emboldened men in chat rooms who couldn't find like-minded individuals at the neighborhood potluck. Its been happening on social media where people have the nerve to say the bad thing with the stroke of a keypad they never could say in person.

Like a perfect storm, along came the person in power who seemed to say without saying a word youre allowed to believe this out loud. Stop hiding.

As we watch torch-bearers, cars plowing into humans, there seemed to be a collective shock.

I was not one of them.

I am here to say quite plainly - this is nothing new.

If you thought racism was dead or even in a coma in this country, you were woefully wrong. Theres a good chance youve done the very thing that has allowed racism to fester even more - refuse in entirety the intolerant.

No one is to blame for these men, but themselves. But, if we want to change it, we must take a different approach.

Its messy business to stay in communication with people with whom you ardently disagree, with people who are wrong, with people who may even hate you.

But, hate doesnt destroy hate.

These people with the torches they are humans. They bleed, have hearts, families, lives. Their sympathizers may live next door to you. Hating them will not make them go away. Shaming them wont change their hearts. Chiding them. Punishing them. Mocking them. It all plays into their false narrative. Pushes them further underground to grow in the dark.

There is this impossible task we are called to do as believers - marry truth and grace in its entirety. If we are solely one or the other, we do not do justice to our fellow humans.

My political leans have swayed over the years. My spiritual beliefs expanded, and yet, narrowed, in others. I do not believe I have arrived. Until Im on the other side of the heaven I wont begin to get it.

But, I do know this - my views, my mind opening came only at the price of others who were willing to have the conversations with me, who were willing to allow a narrow-minded girl into their lives. The people who made connections with me, showed me their humanity. They forever changed my life.

When I was in college I met two gay men. One who was clearly out of the closet from day one. I was the token right-wing columnist in our journalism realm, and so, I imagine, it would be easy for him to have chosen to not connect with me. Things began to shift in my beliefs. And within months, a dear friend I had known for years came out to me. Mind. Blown.

In a matter of months I learned, thanks to human connection, that much of what I believed in theory was entirely untrue when it came to real people. Real life doesnt match the rhetoric.

While its important to speak up, a screaming world leaves us all deaf.

Scrolling through Facebook , I have seen some of the most loving and open-minded people ask that anyone who doesnt find white supremacy vile to defriend them. I couldnt disagree more. Like a church that doesnt welcome atheists, we are foolish to think we can change the next generation and even make a dent in this one via isolation.

There is a vast difference between allowing someone to spew hate unchecked, and isolating them entirely from your life.

Conversion doesnt come by facts. Its a pesky thing about us humans.

If it were so, racism would have died long ago. It doesnt bother itself with those nasty fact things. Its emotional and human and to those on the outside its unfathomable. Because it doesnt make sense to the rest of us.

You can call it vile or blame a lack of education or experience. But, the unfortunate truth is that racism doesnt discriminate. It doesnt live solely in trailer parks or with those who sport poor dental hygiene, camo and confederate flags on their pick ups. Ask a person of color (of which I am not), and I would imagine that while public displays of racism are most grotesque, its the less overt slights that influence their life, their future and their safety. Its those things which are never seen and often never even spoken that haunt them.

Ive heard enough white people claim their personal lack of slave ownership to have a bearing on their role in race relations to fill 600 cotton fields. I once believed something along these lines. Its foolish. Its short-sighted. And if you claim to be a believer, youre missing the point.

Im not imploring anyone to tolerate hate, to become a pacifist or to do anything less than stand up on the front lines when we are called.

But, the truth is that many of us are not called to do so. Otherwise there would have been far more people in Charlottesville. What we are called to do is love our neighbor. There isnt a disclaimer there about what the neighbor believes, the color of their skin, the person to whom they are married or the flag they fly.

But, to isolate bigots, to unfriend them on social media, to refuse to have conversations with them in any manner, allows the lie of racism to fester further.

The balance between self preservation, comfort and changing hearts - its exhausting and the greatest challenge of all when it comes to reaching the lost. And make no mistake, those torch bearers are lost.

It is near impossible to believe the same spirit that raised Jesus (a Jew) from the dead and has the power to transform, to bring light to darkness, to cast out demons, to heal the sick and make the blind to see is dwelling in a person who so vehemently hates His creation.

And so, we find ourselves in a terribly uncomfortable reality - being on mission in our own country, in our own neighborhoods, preaching love to those who dont want it.

Its a rare thing to be called to deliver justice. Some people are. I, as of this moment, am not one of them. Are you?

If not justice, then what are you called to do?

No matter the color of your skin, the questions we must ask: What can I do to bring light to the dark? What can I do to take this little world of mine and shine this little light of mine right where the good Lord placed me?

Im not asking that those of us who hate racism and see it for what it is - wrong entirely - give a bigot a zippo to light his torch. Im asking that those who are called to stand up literally, do so. And those who are not called to confront it in person on a protest, to confront it in a real way in our little world. Engage with everyone. Every. One. Really. Tell the haters to check their torch at the door and have the hard conversations.

Because heres the thing you dont want to know - there is a real spectrum for this disease of hate. For every man bearing a torch, a sweet little PTO mom with an inverted bob in a mini-van is harboring a healthy dose of hate disguised with less hateful words, but no less damaging power.

Its not something we can legislate or hate into extinction. Its not something you can squelch with facts or look away and hope it disappears. It starts in our home teaching our children the truth, ensuring they understand the past and are proactive in the future.

It starts with looking at those who dont look like you and saying come in. And it looks like being willing to reach into the other end of the spectrum by speaking up, showing love and even pouring your precious time into bringing the hate into the light. Do they deserve it? No. But, our children do.

We will never succeed in knocking out racism with our fists and screams. We will do it word by word, heart by heart and life by life.