Dear God, I am But a White Man

September 29, 2016
 
Dear God:

I am but a white man, and you made me so.

I am but a white man, and I read stories of black men, and women, and children.
I am but a white man, and I am drawn to stories of today and yesterday and the day before.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and I know the stories of Europe to America.

I am but a white man, and my people revel in stories of victory at Valley Forge and Appomattox.
I am but a white man, and conquering the uncivilized is in my DNA.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and I have black brothers, and sisters, and fathers, and mothers.

I am but a white man, and they have inundated me with stories I never knew.
I am but a white man, and their stories have become mine.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and my black and brown brothers and sisters are in agony.

I am but a white man, and my black nephews and nieces are afraid.
I am but a white man, and my soul is torn by the stories, images, and funerals.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and we live or we die together.

I am but a white man, and I wonder if today will be like yesterday.
I am but a white man, and I wonder if today will be like a tomorrow we have yet to know.
I am but a white man, and a white man I will always be.

Amen.

It Seemed to be a Huge Deal

Washington, DC was beautiful that afternoon, September 23, 1997, so beautiful, in fact, that after landing and settling in to the hotel down Pennsylvania Avenue, I went out for an afternoon run. It was quite surprising that things were much closer than I'd expected.  There was the White House, over there the Washington Monument, and over there office buildings of all sorts.

On the run back to the hotel, off to my right, suddenly there in my path was a face that I recognized. It was the former governor of the State of Texas.  I instinctively darted toward her, held out my hand and said, "Hello, Governor Richards, I'm Waymon Hinson from Abilene and I am glad to meet you."  She registered surprise, but still managed to say in her Texas drawl, "Well, I'm glad to meet you."

I felt a little foolish, but what was done was done. I had shaken hands with Anne Richards.

My reason for being in DC was much more important. The first of the mediation hearings was scheduled for the next day. I recall sleeping sluggishly that night, but all preparations had been made.

The next morning, after a snafu in terms of what building we were to go to, we all assembled in the correct building and the correct conference room.

Walking in, I knew something was up.  This felt huge, much more significant than I'd imagined. So, I pulled out pen and paper and drew the schematic of the room, who sat where, what the energy was like, and other details. I knew this was a significant event and wanted to memorialized it. There were the two mediators at the opposite end of the table. There were the two attorneys for the farmers on the left, along with one farmer couple. I sat on that side, just to the right of the one attorney who was a graduate of both USC and Harvard. Across the table were two people whose names I did not get along with Michael Sitcoff, Secretary Reno's appointee to the process, and Pearlie Reed and Lloyd Wright, Secretary Glickman's appointees to the process. Reno was the DOJ secretary and Glickman was the USDA secretary. Along the back wall sat a woman and a man, both general counsel.

One of the first orders of business was whether or not I should be there and whether or not I could speak and if so, for how long.  The conversation felt like it took forever, but eventually the mediators decided I should speak, but for a very brief period of time.  My prepared white paper was boiled down to seven minutes. I talked fast. One of the most striking memories was how Sitcoff fought for me to leave and how he drummed his sharp pencil on the glass table top the entire time.

It was a hostile environment.  The USDA and DOJ wanted to low ball the farmers. The farmers' attorneys were obligated to fight for justice economically and in other ways for them.  The mediation was on and it was intense and it lasted all day long. The negotiations took place in the conference room as well as in another conference room. The mediators went back and forth, back and forth.

All manner of numbers were put on the table as well as all sorts of administrative recommendations. For the first time I came to understand how policies at the federal level were implemented at the state and county levels.  I also came to understand how prejudices could easily be a part of the equation. The farmer at one point said, "It's easy to talk in Washington, but hard to live out" where I'm from. Or something to that effect. Ultimately his farming details were taken care of by an FSA office in another county, not the one where he lived. That was wrong. Should never have been put on the table. The attorney at one point said, "This is not a good offer." The hearing went on and on. I was pleased that no one had a heart attack or a stroke. It was that intense. The most hostility was evident between the lead attorney and Sitcoff.

At some point in the hearing, the magical numbers, $50K and $70K were put on the table.  Later on that year when the Pigford Class was certified as a class, those numbers came back to me.  This article discusses the significance of those numbers.

Yes, the federal government was lowballing the farmers, in my opinion, because they knew that an extremely larger number of black farmers were filing complaints and it was going to be costly.

What is an eye worth? What is the cost for a kidney? How much should the US reimburse a farmer for a heart attack or a stroke?

Living while black is costly in the US.   Farming while black is very, very costly in our country.  Those are the words I used when being interviewed just this morning.

Yes, I remember the mediation hearing.  I have the notes. I recall the debate. I remember that we left the meeting that day with no decision in place. I had seen things that left me disturbed.

I am still disturbed.

Need for a Resurrection Rant

This morning before the sun came up, I was reading and pondering a variety of things. The biblical text spoke to resurrection, the book of African American prayers pleaded with God to save them from White Christians (the prayer was written in 1829), and Thomas Merton spoke of love. So here are my meandering thoughts with no punctuations, so with apologies for those who are inclined to edit.  Yes, myself included.

And, if resurrection is a theme, my black people are in need of a resurrection from the deaths and traumas and brutality of lost years and anxious nights lived out of fear and anxiety and worry that my white people would come bearing guns and machine guns with big cars and big lights to take their house and their land and all that they had fought for away from them and give it to someone else or perhaps sell it on the auction block like the powerful men with whips and guns and chains had done with their ancestors years ago because the years had passed but the realities of it had not passed, and now we wonder why Kolin K protested. He is calling out this country and its powerful citizens to unite to eradicate injustices and police brutality. I know people who have experienced brutality. It is ugly and it is more animalistic than it is human because those who do so do so out of imagined good intentions or malevolent intentions and out of intentions of putting the land in the hands of those who can do the best with it, and those people that they deem could do the best with it look curiously enough like them. Smell like them. Dress like them. They may even go to the same church. They are friends. They know what’s going to happen because of the off-the-record conversations and decisions. That is brutality. Saw it too often in Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and the list of states goes on and on.

We all need a resurrection. First, though, we need to die to our old, racist ways of considering ourselves and our places in the world. Can’t rise without being dead and can’t be dead and resurrected without being buried. Can’t be dead and buried without no life in this human psyche carcass. Only the Holy One of Israel can resurrect us as individuals and a society from the deadness that creeps into our pores when we treat other children of God in ways that are sure to make Him unhappy. 

So, this morning I am also thinking about Romans 6, and death burial and resurrection of Jesus and how the believer metaphorically and physically does the same thing and how even those of us whose theology is different can arise from the swamps of our own self-imposed and societally-imposed disregard for people and from the stench of that emotional and relational exile from people also loved by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you and me.   

Chapel Speech Revisted: I Wasn't Prepared for What I Saw, Heard, and Felt

What follows is a speech I gave a long time ago in chapel at Abilene Christian University. Speaking in Moody Coliseum is typically a challenging thing because the students set the bar high as to what was important and to what they would listen and to how long they would tune in. It was with conviction that I spoke the words of this text. 

The most curious thing I recall? Actually there are two:  1) I could hear a pin drop, it was so quiet, and 2) a student who challenged me afterwards.

Here are those words (with a few modifications).

It was Friday morning, early August, and I was in a southern state.  I’d used one of those internet maps to find my way to the farmer’s house.  I’d been hired to consult with various members of a black farmers' association, assessing damages due to discriminatory actions on the part of FmHA.  I simply followed the “X” on the printed out map.  In the middle of downtown, I found the railroad, “MMMM.....this must the right way,” as I crossed over into the poor section of town., noting the change in economics, names of churches.  After going in circles, I asked three men, three African American men, where I could find these folks.  They looked at each other, then at me, and then gave me directions.  I was seven miles off base.  The computer and my assumptions had led me astray. 

Following the directions as carefully as I could, I retraced my steps south of town, made the right turns, and then stopped, just to be certain, at a house where the elderly, toothless gentleman sat on the couch on the front porch.  More than willing to help, he told me I was just a mile or two away, just to turn right at the second road up ahead, and the house would be on the right.  He was right, and I was thankful.

 

The farmer and his wife were both in the nursing home, their son was in the military up in another state and so I visited that day with Auntie, the farmer’s sister and care taker.  She was delightful, introduced me to dirty rice, and we laughed about all the people watching us, young and old, mostly black, in that quaint but favorite restaurant of hers.  “They’re wondering what a young white man like you is doing with an old black woman like me.  Probably up to no good, they’re thinking.”  She chuckled and we talked more about the farmer and his situation.

On Saturday morning, the farmer’s son and grandson went to get the elderly couple.  I wasn’t prepared for their entry into the house nor into my head and heart.  He walked with a limp and carried a handkerchief for his constant drool, the results of a cerebral hemorrhage.  She walked spryly into the house, a child’s mentality in an elderly woman’s body, the result of a psychotic break several years earlier.  The doctor’s evaluations?  All the result of the intense stress of attempting to farm under adverse and racially motivated conditions that no white farmer had to face.

 

While Auntie was putting their favorite meal on the table, the farmer and I sat over in the corner, discussing matters.  Through tear-filled eyes, he looked at me and asked, “How do you think this is going to turn out?” I told him I did not know.

 

The reason I was there in the first place: consultant.  He had no reason to trust me.

 

I was touched by what I saw, heard, and experienced; their stories were earth-shaking and heart-moving for me. The farmers from three southern states.

 

Broken bodies and relationships, lost farms and equipment, torn between hope and despair.

 

I’m a child of the South, grandfathers fought for the South, one in the revolutionary war

That means holding on to some values. That means releasing others.

These struggles of broken humanity, though, don’t exist just in the South, but around the country and around the world.

 

As God’s children, we’re made to self reflect on these things: “Lord, what needs to be rooted out, thrown away, repented of?

These farmers and their families could all be described: rooted in the soil, deeply influenced by slavery, held up by their church and their faith, nurtured by their families, and buoyed by a confidence in their country and its people.

 

The color of their skin held them back: weren’t treated like white farmers, didn’t get the same economic and advisory support.  Details are in the reports, on C-Span, and in the newspapers and magazines.

Is theirs the story of our country?  In many ways, yes.  Are the same things happening around us, just in different contexts?  Rather than farming, in our churches, in our cities, on this campus?

 

Are there other stories forming?  Stories of healing, repentance, forgiveness, working side by side for important causes?  Yes, without a doubt.  Those stories are also in the books, magazines, and are even found in our churches and our communities.

If prejudice is a human condition, making decisions or forming opinions before we have all the information, and it is, let’s ask God to remove it from us.

 

If racism is a human condition, seeing others only through the color of skin and making judgments accordingly, let’s ask God to remove it from us.

 

If racial discrimination is a human condition, treating people unfairly because of the color of their skin, let’s ask God to remove it from us.

 If racism is societal, institutional, and personal, let’s be about the business of change.

If there are steps, and there are, to repair relationships between groups and people, let’s ask God to give us wisdom and then courage to proceed.

 

I can still hear the sounds of their silence as they listened. I can still feel the passion to tell those stories in places and spaces that need to hear what they deserve to be told.

 

I Was Not Prepared

As some of you may know, one of my assignments is that of keeping the gofundme page that chronicles the stories and challenges of Eddie and Dorothy Wise up and running. You can find that link here for more information about this worthy cause:  https://www.gofundme.com/39m8623g. It is called "The USDA Did It Again" purposefully.

The curious thing for me is that I have known their stories for a long time.  In my files I can find their documents.  In the article that Edward Robinson and I wrote in 2008 in the Journal of African Studies, "We Didn't Get Nothing:" The Plight of Black Farmers, their story is documented on page 293. The paragraph is compelling. Their current circumstances are compelling and burden my soul.

Here is that paragraph:

Three stories illustrate the common struggles of the black farmer. First, the litany

of acts of discrimination perpetrated against Eddie Wise and Dorothy Monroe-Wise,

residents of North Carolina, included the failure to provide loan applications when

requested, technical support and assistance in the application process, submission of

applications in a timely fashion, information and assistance relative to guaranteed

loan opportunities, and timely processing of loan applications. The USDA denied

loan applications purposefully, and retaliatory actions were taken by the county

supervisor. Options for socially disadvantaged farmers in keeping with USDA policy

were not offered. The USDA failed to investigate the county supervisor. The couple

experienced loss of land, credit, mental and physical health, and public humiliation

(Wise v Glickman 2000).

 

Some are often curious about my involvement with African American farmers and my affiliation with BFAA. The stories of farmers like Eddie and Dorothy provide the why.

It is a long and convoluted story, but I'd like to share it though in brief segments.

It was a Friday afternoon in Abilene, Texas, somewhere back in 1994 or so.  The phone rang. I answered it.  My good friend and colleague, Dr. Tom Milholland, had given the attorney my name and number. He asked what I did and how I did it.  I explained the nature of clinical interviews, psychological examinations, report-writing, and fee structures and all, at least as I was doing them in my private practice.

At some point in the conversation, this attorney, whom I had not yet ascertained as to whether he was black or white or exactly what his affiliation was said to me in a rather aristocratic voice, as I recall, "Dr. Hinson, I think I have failed to communicate to you the seriousness of our concerns."

"Well, ok, then, share with me the seriousness of your concerns." And he did.  He began to open my eyes up to the plight of the black farmer and what the struggles were all about.

Some farmers came to see me and others I went to see in their homes and communities.

I was not prepared.  I simply was NOT PREPARED for what I saw, heard, felt, and experienced.  Of course not.  I was a white professor, marriage and family therapist, psychologist, living in white America, working at a predominantly white university, in a predominantly white town.

I was not prepared.