As For Me and My House

Where to start in a moment like this? In a time like this?

With the country whirring around us, chaos on the left and on the right, and pain and suffering there in our faces, where to start? We are seeing lynchings right in our living rooms. We don't have to depend upon the history books and the black and white still photos of days gone by. 

We will start at home. We will rinse leftovers of racism out of our language, minds, hearts, and lives. I will write more about this later, but for now, we're starting right here where we live. There is room to grow beyond, "I'm not a racist." Or, "I have Black friends."

We will repent and own up to our privilege and how it has benefited us and how it has spurned and maligned others. We will not walk into a protective cocoon that insists that we weren't there. We didn't own slaves. We never marginalized people of color. We will own up to the fact that our system benefits people who look like us. Education, housing, employment, health care, and even walking down the street are benefits we received from our economic and political systems. We will continually address our complicity. 

We will serve as faithful allies to our friends of color. We will show up, and we will listen. We will realize that our friends of color are capable, competent, and resilient, and they do not need for us to rescue them. We will take our places where we can be helpful.

We will call out racism in the world in which we live when people attempt to hyper-explain why someone deserved something bad to happen to them, or if our friends try to explain and blame the protests and the riots and diminish the pain and suffering of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many, many more. Our culture immediately wants to vilify the victim. We will play no part in that. We will avoid the bootstraps conversation because we recognize that some do not have boots.

We will continue to write, protest, speak out, research, and support efforts to bring about justice in the world.

We will use our platform and years of experience in the Black farmer movement to speak into current circumstances. The Black farmer movement and those harmed by racism within the USDA are a particular, a specific area and woundedness, within the larger context of living while Black in America versus living while White in  America.

We will seek to understand, rather that seeking to be understood. So many people of color are speaking these days to the fear, hurt, and anger of living while Black in America. Even our thought leaders on the television are telling stories of their children and the bitter lessons they are learning, or the sports commentator who speaks of being wary and weary.

James Baldwin's famous quote has been burned into my consciousness: "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ” 

In 2005 while on faculty renewal leave from ACU, I traveled through Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Georgia interviewing farmers, gathering qualitative and quantitative data about the lived experiences of farming while Black and dealing with the discriminatory actions of the USDA. Several impressions were made upon me. These farmers and families loved the land and were severely wounded by an institution of the federal government that they loved. They lived in constant consternation that the country they had served even in the military would mistreat them. Their faith allowed them to survive. Even then, their anger, disappointment, and anxieties were internalized such that they bore in their bodies the wounds of the long, drawn out war to save their land. Hypertension, blindness, strokes, just to name a few. 

On one occasion I was on the receiving end of internalized rage turned external. I was sitting in the kitchen of an elderly couple, interviewing them, when their oldest son arrived. He came barreling into the kitchen, interrupting the interview, demanding to know who I was, why I was there, and what was going on, ostensibly to know if I was going to further hurt his parents. His rage was palpable. I have reviewed the transcript just this morning. I have the voice recording. Both speak to the volatility of the moment. 

The younger farmer, who was no longer farming because it was taken away from him, was angry because the USDA's actions had caused him to lose his farm and his house, and it had wounded his children. He was so angry that at one point he began to weep. Yes, he was so angry that he began to weep. There were deeper emotions that he could not articulate except through tears. 

At one point in the interview, as we'd shifted the focus from his parents to him, he asked, "Did you here me tell you it was dangerous for other folks the way they have done us?" "Yes, I heard you," was my reply. He then nuances his anger and his faith, "You want inner peace? He gives us inner peace. They don't give it to us. 'Cause I got anger in there for them, but that inner peace that I get from Him keeps me from doing something dangerous to them. 'Cause like I said, I just came out of a meeting today. That inner peace keep me from goin' off in there. So it's in there. If it wasn't for the faith, it'd be worse than an atomic bomb." 

I was face to face and coached up by a man protecting himself, his family, his identity, his life, and in the face of losses was rage and a whole bunch of other things. 

I left that interview shaken. 

We will listen to the pain of the unheard before we launch into destruction, marches turned peaceful to riots out of control. If someone wants to begin with the protests, marches, and riots, we'll press them to start over with the pain of the unheard, the pain that has accumulated since the shores of Africa through the middle passage. 

We have witnessed story-telling that tells of only being a few generations removed from enslavement. One farmer spoke with delight as to his ancestor who successfully ran away from the plantation. 

For America to watch a ten minute video of a police officer pressing his knee against the neck of the pleading, cuffed Black man who is lying on the asphalt, for 8:30 or so, opens a deep wound of the value of Black lives in America. Black lives mattered when they were the work force, during enslavement, or via the created chain gangs thereafter when trumped up charges led them to being released on work duty to pay off their fines. 

When Black Lives Matter, and begin to matter, we will move into another era in our country. Until then, we will sit on the proverbial powerkeg, and at times we'll find it added to explosively by the current occupant of the White House and the white supremacists and racists who follow him. 

Van Jones says it well, "If you speak up and you're not heard, you might yell. If you yell and you're not heard you might scream. If you scream and you're not heard you might throw something. What you've got now is an escalation of frustration....." 

Here is his entire interview: https://twitter.com/i/status/1266508333197996033

Weep, America, weep for your children lest we all burn up. 

Let Justice Ring: Reflections At Day 33 from Our Home, and What Abou...

Let Justice Ring: Reflections At Day 33 from Our Home, and What Abou...: The coronavirus, or COVID-19, is still running rampant across our country and seems to be making inroads into our community here in North Te...

Masks, Politics, and Health: People are Dying

People are angry these days. Are we any angrier than we have been at any other point, or event, or time in the history of our country? Or, does it seem that we are angrier because social media gets to record and upload events?

In the midst of the anger, and explosiveness of the anger, tied in with protests, sometimes with guns on state-owned property, is the reality that people have lost jobs, businesses have closed, especially those "mom and pop" businesses that do not have a huge amount of capital to pull them through, and, still, people are dying.

On the one hand, we have an economy that is limping at best, the worst since the Great Depression, so we read, and unemployment is at its highest point since the Great Depression. This is not the best of times of times, and it could be the worst of times.

Still, people are dying.

In the White House and many of our states, governors are pushing hard, well past CDC guidelines, for states to re-open. Many of our churches are pushing to re-open, though some of our churches never actually closed. People just voted with their feet. We will continue to vote with our feet.

Still, people are dying.

One headline says that the president cared about people dying until he realized who was dying. I hope that that opinion piece is wrong. The president of All of the United States begins not to care when he realizes who is actually dying? It is obvious that people of color are dying at a higher rate than white people. A Black population could be 30% of an area but has 72% of the deaths. There are other numbers and contexts out there that explain the same thing. Some of us see government conspiracies to take our freedoms away. Or a conspiracy that says that this COVID-19 gig is not any worse than car accidents or the flu. I venture to say that we wouldn't be saying that if our grandmother was intubated for three weeks before dying alone.

Still, people are dying.

Not only are people of color dying, but people with pre-existing conditions are dying. People like me. I could be one of those statistics.  And, the battle is not over. I could become one of those statistics.

Still, people are dying.

People like me are everywhere. We just don't know it because we do not walk around, with our masks on, with signs around our necks that say, "Renal Cell Carcinoma Survivor" or "Small Cell Lymphocytic Lymphoma Survivor." Those are my diagnoses. I don't wear such a sign. Only good friends know the real deal. If I were to stop and think about it, my wife and I have many friends, young and old, with immune system issues or other hidden conditions. I'll actually ponder that later today.

Still, people are dying.

When I do venture out, I wear a mask. My wife wears a mask. We see many, many people wearing masks. We see more and more these days people not wearing masks and venturing into dangerous territory that goes against the recommendations of the CDC. I think we are being lulled into complacency, a complacency that is dangerous.

Still, people are dying.

I wear a mask because I have some sensitivities about those around me. Others wear masks because they have sensitivities about people around them. Others don't wear masks because they do not carry these sensitivities. Some care. Some don't.

Still, people are dying.

Wearing masks of any kind protects against the deadly COVID-19. It may save someone else's life from the virus that resides within you. It may save you from the virus that resides within the body of someone else, family, stranger, or casual friend.

Generosity of spirit governs much of this land. We want people to live, thrive, be successful, to live long and prosper, and for those generations coming after them.

That means, I think, that we surrender "my rights" not to mask-up in favor of loving our neighbor and masking up.

So, if you see me walking down the street and I look like this with my Texas Rangers baseball cap, my large-rimmed glasses, and a zebra design on my mask, you'll know that I care about me and that I care about you.

I hope you are masked up, too.

That way, people don't have to die.

People can live.

Prayers and Anxieties: Who Answers

Prayers and Anxieties: Who Answers
Waymon Hinson
May 12, 2020

When do I pray

I hear you say

Have I given my cares to God today

Upon His shoulders will they weigh.

We make it simple when we say

“Give it up to God”

Until our times have ended

When we lay beneath the sod.

Some of us pray

At all manner of times throughout the day

As we pray without ceasing along the way

We supposedly pray we say.

“Cast” you tell me in a word

And I would if I knew how

They keep flying back like a bird

Not really sure if I could that thing vow.

She the farmer’s wife stood in the door

Stepping into Auntie’s house

A woman and her spouse both with unchecked stress

And he who limps across the floor.

Did they not pray

And look for a brighter day

And long into the night she stood

Waiting for cops to come in all likelihood.

Maybe my whole load of fears

Are lumped into those prayers

By the sweet, sweet Spirit

When I cannot find the words to speak my cares.

But, don’t patronize me with words

And thus deny my humanity

And I’ll walk beside you if you’ll listen

And we’ll build a faith though at times with profanity.

I don’t do well with platitudes

Things easy to say and do

They challenge my internal attitudes

Though they may just work for you.

I’ll lean for sure into some of that

My worries may just form my prayers

I won’t always have the words

When God and I stop and chat.

A Modern Day Lynching: #ahmaudarbrey

It's called a "lynching" by a person I follow on Facebook. He is an author, pastor, and justice advocate. I saw a lynching yesterday. I saw it again and again.

America has a harsh history with people of color. Ask Black Americans about plantations, auction blocks, and lynching trees. Ask American Indians about their trails of tears. It appears that we have created another means of destroying people of color, that is, white people destroying Black people. That history is still true.

The gruesome and brutal video and the death of Ahmaud Arbrey had completed slipped past me, I think due to the oppression of living in the days of COVID-19. I wasn't paying attention. Apparently, neither were a lot of us. America is now paying attention.

In the old days, and not that many years ago, this picture shows what we did. "Lynching as public spectacle" is something I have read and written about. Another form of "social control," another notion I've written about.  Today's lynchings are different. They are less obvious, but to many of us, they are still obvious. Listen to the stories of the families of the lynched and you'll hear.

Yes, that picture there to the right is brutal to see. Look at the bystanders. They could have been you or me if we'd lived uncritiqued at the time. Those folks look like they are at a picnic.

These days, we use other means of harming people. There are many phrases for the contexts of these heinous offenses, driving while Black, farming while Black, and now, this one, jogging while Black. Living while Black may get you killed.

Ahmaud Arbrey was gunned down two months ago as he jogged through the neighborhood. It is caught on video and in a 911 call. The video is deeply distressing. The sounds of those guns remind me of the days when I went deer or turkey hunting, but never human hunting. It is painful to hear and see. I think white America needs to see what a present day lynching looks like.

The story is captured in numerous places, but it is Shaun King who refused to let this man's murder get dropped. Finally, after two months, the DA is pressing for an investigation and for it to go to the grand jury which does not meet again until June. Here is Shaun King's twitter page that contains the brutal video. 

The man was jogging. Unarmed. He looked like someone who'd been looking in houses under construction. The two armed guys went driving after him. Apparently a third guy followed and was filming on a camera. There is some evidence that the film taker was passing it around. Like a trophy?

Did he also have a gun ready to use? The odds were stacked. Three white guys with guns. One Black guy in his running shoes.

For a heavy conversation about this event and its many, many implications, please listen to Loki Mulholland, award winning film maker, and Freedom Rider, Luvaghn Brown, discuss this heinous situation and the root causes of this madness that white people perpetrate on Black people.

If this were reversed, a white guy jogging and murdered by two, or three, Black guys, I think we'd be up in arms. Sadly enough, that's how we roll in our world. And it's sad to have to make that comparison to get some of us to think.

I think it's time for us to be up in arms about senseless killing of Black people doing whatever any normal person would be doing. Living.

Say his name. #ahmaudarbrey. #ahmaudarbrey.

We have much work to do. Living while Black should not be a crime. Yes, we have much work to do.