Race Based Politics in America

A few days ago I heard an extensive up-to-date report on conditions in Kenya. Remember the rampages of destruction after the recent elections that threw-out the current government which refused to disclose the vote and so its own defeat?

Charlie Clements* spoke to us of the terror engendered by the attacks of one tribal group upon another in the weeks that followed. Kenyans who had been living together in peace for all the years of their independence, intermarrying, doing business with one another were suddenly forcibly splitting families apart, destroying one another’s homes and businesses. Hidden tribal grievances suddenly broke into the open and the true nature of peaceful, reasonable Kenya , the democratic beacon of African hope, was called into question.

Or was it? Last night a young man connected to the Kenyan girls schools that my church supports reported to us that all is well back home. The girls are in no danger. Peace prevails. All is normal. ...Oh, yes, food is now very expensive. And, yes, the high school senior we were going to send to university is no longer planning to go to a Kenyan school. She will [suddenly] be going to Uganda ... ‘because the schools are better there.’

The discussion of Race in America led by ministers of the United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalists this Sunday morning suddenly seems, to my mind, illumined by the Kenyan experience.

Undiscussed, unaddressed racial issues suddenly erupted in our homeland, too, thanks to 24 hour TV news shows’ blatant abuse of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Right Wing attempt to smear Barack Obama’s quest for the presidency.

Leave aside for the moment the dirty Rovean politics and the unprincipled, incompetent so-called news people blathering on our TV screens. Consider, instead, how race divides us. Still divides us — despite all the earnest effort of the last 40 years.

Like our young Kenyan friend, we long to believe in Peaceful America, the America we love, where ethnic differences do not divide — “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” [No, no, ‘Illegal Immigration’ is not about race.] And in our longing for the America of our dreams we conspire with ourselves to not notice the police profiling and racial fear that fills our mammoth prison system with young black men. [Just to name aloud one small affront to decency.] And, now, along comes disgraceful politics in our homeland, too, and what just cannot be is exposed for all to see.

See all those happy white and black faces cheering the hopeful change Obama embodies! That is our America! That is who we truly are. The hundreds of hours spent by political operatives pouring through Jeremiah Wright’s 30-plus year sermonic history just cannot represent who we are as a nation. It’s just too evil... too anti-American in values. It just cannot represent the America, blessed by G_d, and beloved in song at baseball parks all across the nation. Can it?

*Dr. Charlie Clements, head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, speaking at Andover Newton Theological School, upon his return from a fact-finding mission to Kenya, where he met with local, non-governmental groups in Nairobi and elsewhere.

If I Ever Loved You — Justin Currie

As you can see, Peter and Justin had a great time on their tour across the country and northern Europe, but now its just about over — for awhile anyway. Hopefully they'll play around LA while they rest up. Peter has a film score to get back to, but I'm sure that won't keep him in the house if Justin wants to play. Will he be just 'too busy' when it comes time to jet off to record at London's Abbey Road Studios? [What do you think?]

I hear the title track on Justin's new release, "What is love for?", playing on my supermarket's speakers. It feels really weird trying to take in such heart felt thoughts while shopping for peanut butter and crackers.

My own fave is "If I ever loved you". I guess I could image writing something like this in response to my own sometimes strange apprehensions of life:

I try to figure what has gone
I seem to look the same
Maybe there's a tightness around my eyes

Sometimes the evening comes
I think I miss someone
And then I realise

That, if I ever loved you, shouldn't I be crying?
Shouldn't I be cracking up
And drinking all the time?
Yeah, if I ever loved you, how come I feel alright?
How come the nights are so easy
And the mornings look so bright?

When I hear Justin sing this, I don't hear him questioning his love for 'her'. He believes that he did love her. His question is about his own reactions: "Why am I not crying? Why am I not cracking up? I'm taking this loss in stride — what is going on in me?" The singer is discovering something about himself that he didn't know before the break-up and is confused about who he really is as a result. He accuses himself of not being conventional in his emotions.

No wonder the song is interesting; not just your usual pop fare.

Can the conflict in Israel/Palestine really be transformed?

Today started at 9am with a discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian situation led by our friend, Rachel, who is just back from a two week visit to the area as part of an Interfaith Peace-Builders delegation.

This is not an easy way to begin the day. It’s not just that The Wall is such a reminder of Berlin and of our own Mexican paranoia. It’s that the situation looks so hopeless.

According to our news media and the implications of the Israeli wall, there appear to be two countries at war — Israel and Palestine. But, when you look at a map showing Palestinian and Israeli settlements, you are confronted by a mammoth intermixing of communities that defies boundaries — Israeli enclaves have been constructed seemingly everywhere. The Wall looks more like a resource protector than an actual political boundary — more like a dam preventing Columbia River water from ever being shared with Mexico.

I’m sure there are many explanations for how this disaster came to be. But, just this brief look, that Rachel provided us, into how people are actually living, was enough to break the heart. “What hope can there possibly be for transforming this conflict that is not just a bloodbath?”

I have been reading, rather naively, John Lederach’s The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, hoping to expand my own theories of conflict transformation based on experience dealing with what turnout to be comparatively petty church conflicts. Vicious as church politics can become we ain’t no Somalia or Ireland or South Africa. I am not a little humbled just meditating for a Sunday hour on the quest for peace in Israel/Palestine.

The fact that, even with his international experiences, Lederach can continue to hope and argue for the possibility of transformation — not merely resolution or management — of conflict like this lifts me a little out of the feeling of hopelessness I carried away from Rachel’s descriptions of life on the ground in Palestine.