an apology from the Waller County Sheriff's Office

For Sandra Bland.  Pulled over July 10, 2015 for a standard traffic violation (failure to signal). Dead in a cell July 13, 2015 at the Waller County Jail, Texas.

---

we just want to say

You were angry
dangerously black angry
to the point of
not signalling

we dragged you out of the car
face down
you were angry so angry
you killed yourself in jail

Forgive us
for interrupting your dream
of driving yourself
off a bridge

poem by rob g

---

Read more about On #SandraBland And The Life-Threatening ‘Angry Black Woman’ Myth

This is a false apology poem in the style of William Carlos Williams.

an apology from NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo

In memory of Eric Garner, suspected of selling single cigarettes. Put in an illegal chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the process of being arrested on July 17, 2014 and died an hour later.

---

i just want to say

I heard you say "I can't leave"
and thought
of course you can't leave
I have you in a choke hold

and so you died
alone
surrounded by courtesy
professionalism and respect

Forgive me
I'm sure someone out there
somewhere
is crying for you

poem by rob g

---

Read more.

This is a false apology poem in the style of William Carlos Williams.

[black is...]

Black is...

<

Link to YouTube video

[traumatizing]

All these news reports on racial injustice (and the absurd reactions) are not just disheartening, they can be traumatizing. This is a lot.

— Austin Channing (@austinchanning) March 11, 2015

#racialtraumaisreal #racialtraumaisreal #racialtraumaisreal #racialtraumaisreal

— Zakiya Naema Jackson (@ZakiyaNaemaJack) April 30, 2015

I'm just at point where I don't want to further traumatize myself by watching them, so I don't. https://t.co/6lBa72ALAJ

— Question Everything (@SankofaBrown) May 14, 2015

This is a common theme on my Twitter feed these days -- black people mentioning that they are feeling traumatized by the continuous news reports, looping videos, etc. depicting police violence against black people.

This might be difficult for those of us who are white to relate to. We've grown accustomed to watching news of wars in far off places involving people whose skin is a different colour than ours, and this seems like a variation of that. Our senses have become dulled.

But for black Americans watching what is happening to their brothers and sisters in their own neighbourhood or in a city across a few state lines, this is real. Not just because real people are being killed -- in many cases, murdered -- by the police. But because they know it could happen to them just as easily. Just for walking down the street or looking at someone the wrong way.

The result is trauma, perhaps similar to being in a war zone. The world is not safe.

Related article.

white privilege is like...

[god is black]

Daniel José Camacho writes:

Cone’s statement that “God is black” has always been grounded in Jesus’ Jewishness and the biblical narrative which presents God as being in solidarity with the oppressed. As he has clarified on numerous occasions, it is a symbolic statement and not a statement of biology or literal skin color. At the same time Christianity has said “God is white”—in deeds if not in exact words—for the past 500 years. That some hear God’s blackness as a zero-sum statement is a mistake.

In an interview this past January, Cone told HuffPo’s Paul Rauschenbush:
“God is red. God is brown. God is yellow. God is gay…I don’t use blackness as a way to exclude anyone.”

Source:

"Why James H. Cone's Liberation Theology Matters More Than Ever"

by Daniel José Camacho, including a quote by James Cone.

Listen to James Cone say more about this in an interview with Paul Raushenbush.

strip jesus of whiteness

There was a time when I would have been offended by tweets like these by @FaithInFerguson:

This is why we must present a Queer, Female, Christ of color.

— Theology of Ferguson (@FaithInFerguson) May 11, 2015

But when these came through my twitter feed a few weeks ago, I stopped for a moment and then said, "Oh. That makes sense. I get it now."

What made the difference? I'm not sure about all of it, but certainly a lot of the difference was informed by the many black people I've been following on Twitter, and the many tweets over the past year about #BlackLivesMatter and about #MikeBrown, #NatashaMckenna, #FreddieGray, #RekiaBoyd and many more black people who have been murdered by American police.

Without their perspective, I would be more entrenched in the white privilege that I've grown up with and in. Their words, their emotions, their wisdom has been opening my eyes to see the world in new ways and from where they stand, which is really where I should also stand if I follow the way of Jesus.

So it's making sense to me now. White Christians own Jesus. The white western Jesus. He's become one of the establishment, along with his father, the God who loves war and corporations, hates fags and the homeless, is in favour of the death penalty, and is so many more things that are completely opposite to what the Jesus of the Bible looks like.

So just as Jesus when he walked on the earth was the opposite of what the Jewish people expected the Messiah to be (though very much what the people at the edges loved), it's time to "strip Jesus of his whiteness and center Him in his otherness".

And what better way to do that than having to choose whether we would follow a queer, female Christ of colour... or if that's just too high a cost of discipleship.

---

For more on this, see the brief article The Black Christ by Kelly Brown Douglas, particularly the quote from her book of the same name that makes up the second half.

Link to article referred to in tweet.

[there is one catch...]

Reality check: racism is alive and well in Canada:

A black man is looking for a furnished place, and adds the following to the end of his Kijiji ad:

There is one catch I am a black male.

It suggests that he has previously called about apartments and received a positive response, until he showed up in person to look at it. At that point, the landlord saw that he is black and was no longer wanting to rent to him.

So he now gives a heads up in his ad so that his time isn't wasted, and so he can avoid another experience of racism. 

And some people believe that the world is more civilized than it used to be...

See also if this is an issue for anyone.

[stop using the words of MLK as a weapon...]

I need folks to stop using the words of MLK as a weapon to police the behavior of black folks, knowing you've never read one of his books.

— Austin Channing (@austinchanning) April 29, 2015

Austin Channing, responding to people who are using Martin Luther King's words about non-violence, to speak against the rioting in places like Baltimore, and who in the process miss the bigger picture and the reality of the lives of black people:

[an example of the eucharist as the great leveler]

Even when people line up for the Eucharist instead of it taking place around a table, the Eucharist can expand our moral circles.

Here's an example where what was happening up front, impacted one of the parishioners still in the pew:




Read Rachel Held Evans' commentary related to the Eucharist and this video.

[Dear White Christians... ]

Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation:
"Outlines a new paradigm for American race relations and for achieving racial justice

In this provocative book Jennifer Harvey argues for a radical shift in how justice-committed white Christians think about race. She calls for moving away from the reconciliation paradigm that currently dominates interracial relations and embracing instead a reparations paradigm.

Harvey presents an insightful historical analysis of the painful fissures that emerged among activist Christians toward the end of the Civil Rights movement, and she shows the necessity of bringing "white" racial identity into clear view in order to counter today's oppressive social structures.

A deeply constructive, hopeful work, Dear White Christians will help readers envision new racial possibilities, including concrete examples of contemporary reparations initiatives. This book is for any who care about the gospel call to justice but feel stuck trying to get there, given the ongoing prevalence of deep racial divisions in the church and society at large.:

(from the publishers' page)

Catch Jennifer Harvey, the author, talking about the book in this video. Comparison of reconciliation and reparation starts around the 5 minute mark.





Read more about the book, including reviews, at the publisher's page.

god's tired of the same old thing...

God, contrary to what one might expect from observing some of God's followers, is very much into thinking. And having thought more about the upcoming bus ad campaign by the Edmonton Atheists Society, God has issued another statement:

Check out God's previous response 1 and previous response 2.

an apology from the Fairfax County Sheriff's Department

In memory of Natasha McKenna, age 37, who died on February 8, 2015 after a stun gun was used on her at the Fairfax County Jail on February 2, 2015, while she was fully restrained.

---

i just want to say

Fully restrained
handcuffs behind her back, leg shackles, mask
bad girl wouldn't bend her knees for the chair
I tasered her four times with my buddies watching

she had a heart attack
was resuscitated
and died
six days later

Forgive me
even for a black person
a life of mental illness
is just not worth living

poem by rob g

---

Read the story here.

This is a false apology poem.

[you don't say... campaign by duke university]

"You Don’t Say? is a campaign founded by senior Daniel Kort and juniors Anuj Chhabra, Christie Lawrence and Jay Sullivan that aims to raise student awareness about the offensive nature of phrases and slurs used in everyday conversation through photographs shared using an online campaign." (source)

The latest part of this campaign features 41 student-athletes, who were each asked to choose a phrase that mattered to them.

What is it that #YouDontSay? pic.twitter.com/hykbOrfc2r
— You Don't Say (@youdontsayduke) January 15, 2015

Check out a lot more photos.
Additional photos of Cornell University students doing a series of similar ads.

Read more background info.

Follow on twitter.

[america in three words]

I've been reading William Stringfellow's An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land, which I received as an early Christmas gift from my buddy Don. Not an easy read, and certainly challenging in terms of how one sees the world. Take this quote as an example:

The illusion has been that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, America succeeded British Imperialism and French Colonialism in the world, but the truth is that America succeeded Nazi Germany. That is to say, the ethos of Nazism, the mentality of Nazism, the social ethic of Nazism survives, prospers, and more and more prevails in specific American versions—not literally identical to the particulars of Nazism, but nonetheless having the same moral identity as Nazism—which can be symbolized and summarized in three words: war, racism, genocide.

Stringfellow, p. 125
Italics in original
Other formats by me.

War: Ongoing, in the Middle East. Other "skirmishes" in other parts of the world. And the legalized war against people of colour within the U.S. itself.
Racism: Systemic across the U.S.
Genocide: the American holocaust - killing the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America).

God help us.


p.s. Ironically, parts of the book read as if it was written post-Ferguson, though it was actually published in 1973. When Stringfellow talks about the principalities and powers of darkness, he is talking about systematic racism (among other things). Very timely.

jesus faces a difficult decision

Jesus faces a difficult decision. Neither option is a winner, neither promises to end well. Yet because of his love for every one of us, he gave up his privilege, he "emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant," he became one of us.

History moves on. Two thousand years later, the same crap is still happening in this world of ours.

Instead of following his example, we picked up the pieces of privilege and made gods of ourselves....

[repay violence with violence]

Since Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot to death by Darren Wilson, a police officer, in Ferguson Missouri this past summer (Aug 9, 2014),

since that time,

and more since since the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson (Nov 24, 2014),

I have occasionally had the following thought pop into my head:


On a happy sunny day, a sniper (a white sniper, to avoid increasing racial violence) should take out Wilson's teenage son as he's walking down the street on his way home from school.


And today, only today, after reading an article by Suzanne Ross (see below), I'm thinking,

"Did I seriously wish that?

How do I -- the guy with this blog about embracing people instead of excluding them -- wish that someone would kill Wilson's kid? And to take so long to realize what I'm wishing....


For starters, his son is as valuable as Michael Brown and also deserves to live a life free of violence. Of course, in a country with systemic racism, the opposite is the reality: Wilson's son is considered as worthy of having a life free of violence, and Michael Brown just doesn't matter....

so perhaps I'm reacting in an equal and opposite way.

But as a follower of Jesus, I should see all lives as being valued and equally deserving a life free of violence, regardless.

an apology from Cleveland Police Department Officer Michael Brelo

For Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, an unarmed couple shot 137 times by 13 Cleveland Police Department police officers at the end of a high speed chase, November 29, 2012. This apology is from Michael Brelo, one of those officers.

---

i just want to say

you had been speeding
in your nice car
speeding unarmed
with your love

I was afraid
shot 49 bullets into you
while standing on the hood
of your car

Forgive me
if I had spent more time on the firing range
I'd have done the job
with two bullets

poem by rob g

---

Read more.

This is a false apology poem in the style of William Carlos Williams.

Back-posted to November 29, 2014, to match the anniversary of their death.

the ferguson in my own eye

After taking great pride in telling other countries how to be and when to shape up, and actively moving in to help them in this regard, the U.S. is getting some of its own medicine back. It's sounding like a case of having pointed out the speck in someone else's eye and then they turn around and say, 'hey, what about the speck in your eye?!'

Egypt is urging the U.S. to "show restraint against protesters" in Ferguson, MO. Kinda ironic, considering that U.S. President Obama made similar comments to Egypt in 2013 when its government cracked down on protesters.

A government minister from Iran referred to the crisis in Ferguson as a sign of "the phenomenon of racism" in the west.

And China also had something to say. (source)

Here's an imaginary response from my own government:

And in case you thought Canada was a better place... it might be for black people but what if you are aboriginal?

We have our own sordid history to deal with, and our own batch of systemic racism....

[fighting stereotypes about aboriginal people]

KC Adams, a Winnipeg artist, has created a series of photographs to fight against stereotypes about aboriginal people.

The series consists of paired photographs, one with a slur with question marks, the second giving the person's name and some words describing them.

What do you think?

Five more photographs and background information on the series:

Artist's website.