Zebras in the Urban Jungle

Started reading an interesting book called "Black Priest, White Church," written by a black priest in the New York archdiocese in 1970. And interesting time with an explosive history, for sure. But I appreciate the author's perspective, Fr. Lawrence Lucas: he is not aiming to tear down the Church he loves and serves. He wants us to repent of our sin. However you can't repent of a sin you refuse to acknowledge, and Fr. Lucas is just one voice of millions of black people who preach to the U.S. and its religions: repent, and turn back to God so you can be healed!

In 35 years, we haven't.

A deeper look at racism, in Fr. Lucas' own words: "When I say the Chruch made me white, or want to be, I do not mean that it encouraged me to think and act and behave like white people. America's racist society and all her institutions have never allowed black people in any numbers to act and behave like white people except in superficial ways. And certainly any racist institution would be upset if black people began to think like white people. The Church encouraged me to think about myself and black people the way white people think about black people; to view events and experiences as white people prefer to view them; to see the causes of my life experiences as white people imagine them or say they are.

"The Church fostered and encouraged this racism. I do not mean she explicitly taught it in her doctrines. Rather it was a question of how and when she applied doctrines or did not, when she chose to be silent. The way it taught doctrines, the racist culture it handed down, was part and parcel of the religion. It's the way people of the Church behave and the attitudes they express....Nothing brings this out more clearly than the Church's schools."

It reminds me of a Southern folk singer who spoke about her experiences at the time of desegregation and the sudden creation of tons of "Christian schools" where white families could safely exclude their black neighbors under the guise of "private education." As of 1990, a phone poll of Cleveland area residents reported that over 30% of white respondents would move out of their neighborhood if a family of color moved in. Sometimes I wonder how much mindless hatred the world can hold before it explodes at the seems. Then again, in France and Australa recently, that injustice has overflowed into violent riots. And yet the Australian Prime Minister is still willing to state that the society is not racist. By whose definition?