Reflections on Juneteenth from a White Guy

I'm like most white Americans who learned little to nothing about slavery, the real roots of the Civil War, life for the enslaved, tortures at the hands of the enslavers, patrollers, and freedom, or Juneteenth. 

We know a little about the Emancipation Proclamation, yet we do not know the limits of the decree. We do know of the death of President Lincoln, yet we do not know of his complexities in arriving at freeing enslaved people. 

We do not know a whole lot. As I told a friend this morning via FB, our educational system let us down. Let us down badly. 

So, here I sit on June 19, ponder a lot of things. Personally, it is the birthday of a good friend. I honor him this day. It is also the second anniversary of my cancer surgery. I honor God and good physicians for that successful treatment, especially the physician who performed robotic surgery on me at UT Southwestern. 

As a curious aside, I've also spent time this morning attempting to inform a white guy that Black farmers faced insurmountable racial discrimination and that losing their land was not a function of mismanagement. You can follow those sound bites here. Just scroll down and you'll see several of them along with my replies. 

Most of my mental meanderings this morning have been about Juneteenth, now a national holiday. For years I have personally celebrated this day more so than July 4 given my investment in the stories of African American farmers and their battle with the USDA. You can find the trailer of that film here.

For me the question is whether or not the designation of June 19 will become an opportunity to learn about the history of African Americans in America or will we simply take it as another day off, one in which to party and BBQ our favorite foods on the grill. I'm not a super outdoors cook, so I'll pass on that one. 

I will, however, continue to learn and ponder things related to Black America. As you know if you've followed this blog, I've spent the better part of 30 years or so learning about people of color in our country, that there are at least two Americas, the one I live in and the one my African American friends live in, the things I attempted to teach my sons and the things they have to teach their sons. 

There is much to be learned about those horrendous stories: from the shores of Africa, through the horrors of the middle passage, to the auction block, to the plantation and its unspeakable horrors, from ownership to owning land, through freedom to Reconstruction then Jim Crow and now. Yes, there is much to be learned by us white Americans, but, I think we are lazy. There is a summary of sorts in the first few pages of this publication 

Yes, I said it. I think white America is lazy. Either we are lazy or we are disinterested or we are too occupied. I think we are lazy, or we would learn. 

I think we are also steeped in our whiteness, the only skin color that matters. In fact, I'll go ahead and link up a poem that I wrote last year on this day. Maybe you'll find it offensive. Here is the link to that. 

So, today I am filled wonder. Wonder at how far we've come in order to honor the narrative of those who fought so hard for freedom against insurmountable odds. And the narrative of those who learned on this day in 1865 that they were free, two and a half months after the end of the Civil War.  Against those narratives, I cannot help but see the plethora of voting laws in so many states that harm people of color and their rights to vote.

So, today, I'll ponder freedom. I'll learn more about this day. I'll move beyond the myths to the realities. Yes, General Granger did come ashore, and he did announce that all enslaved were free. I'll also learn that the enslaved probably knew that it was coming. The general's decree was to the enslavers who had found their ways from other states into the state of Texas where slavery was held with impunity even after the war was over. Yes, I'll learn that through violence and intimidation, though the war was over and that these people were free, their enslavers kept them in bondage. One narrative is that the powers that be knew it and they knew that they knew it, but they let them have one last planting and harvest season. 

Yes, today, I'll honor many people, names, faces, and places, for whom this day is sacred. 

Yes, today, I'll honor those whose ancestors lived in bondage and eventually set free. I'll honor the stories of farmers who've traced for me their ancestries back to slave days. 

I'll use this day to continue to learn and grow.

I'll use this day to encourage people who look like me to continue to learn and grow. 

A Day of Reckoning or Just an Ordinary Day

The perilous times in which we live are inescapable regardless of which newsfeeds we follow. Whether to the right, the left, or somewhere betwixt and between, we see it, or perhaps we keep our televisions turned off and stick our heads in the proverbial sand.

Perhaps our churches call for unity from the pulpit, and some do so without calling out the issues of the day which would call us to divide. I personally think that is backwards, and that it is simply trying to keep a lid on things.

The people that I hang out with these days are truth-tellers. People like Lawrence Lucas, Lloyd Wright, Marti Oakley, Shoun Hill, Richard Chowing, Kordel Davis, Corey Lea, Lander Bethel, Adam Zipkin, Jillian Hishaw, and many more. The list is too long to enumerate everyone. Truth-tellers write letters of protest. They appear on radio programs and zoom programs. They appear on national forums such as the National Whistleblowers Conference along with people like Stucki and Rosenberg, all truth-tellers who are investigative writers.

Truth-tellers and lie-tellers were all over Washington DC on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Some lied to themselves that they had no part in the insurrection. Their names are Donald J. Trump, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley. Some have been lying to America for a long time. These are folks on the religious right who have co-opted the Christian faith with politics and turned the church upside down.

The mantra “God, guns, and Donald Trump” is a political ideology, but not a Biblical position that has any merit. Those who are Christological in their orientation like me know that the stories of life and justice and faith begin and end with Jesus of Nazareth. They know that Jesus was murdered by the religious right in concert with the powerful government of the day. They know that Jesus came to seek and save the lost and along the way He loved those who had been kicked to the curb by society. Overall, He was one of those folks whose people had been kicked to the curb. And so, he was found hanging out with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, women, those overtaken by demons, those with shriveled hands and leprosy and paralysis.

So, on this sacred day, I am pondering the influence that Dr. Martin Luther King and his teachings have had in my life. I am pondering how we have gone from a country that despised him as an alleged communist and socialist, to one in which a day is set aside in his honor. I am pondering these ideas against the backdrop of a crazed mob looking for Vice President Pence, intending apparently on hanging him from the temporary gallows there on the Capitol grounds. Yes, the platform and the noose.

This mob, in a sense, was “lynching our country.” Or at least they were attempting to lynch someone.

Speaking of lynching, that notion and its inhumanities are well know by Black people in our country and by those of us who work alongside them and who know the history of mob violence in America. Want to know how to control people? Lynch them. Hang their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and cut their genitals off, save a finger for a prize, and yell while they are being burned alive, lifted up and down over the fires of hell as the onlookers cheer.

Want to know another form of “lynching?” Rob Black people of their land, livelihood, and generational wealth. Why? Because you can. That’s the way the system works. A Black family gets too uppity and wealthy? Burn them out. Starve them out. Steal their land.

In 1920, there were 950,000 Black farmers. There were 22,000 Black farmers who owned their farms. In 1910, Black farmers farmed 47,000,000 acres, down to 45,000,000 in 1920. In 1910, Black farmers owned 19,100,000 acres of land, down to 16,700,000 in 1920.

In 2017, there were 35,470 Black-owned farms with a total of 4,673,140 acres. The farm averaged 132 acres. At this same time, Black-owned farms was 1.7% of all farms, the acreage was .05% of all farms, and the average Black-owned farm was .30% of all farms.

Between 2013 and 2015, 86% of microloans by the USDA went to white farmers. Seven percent went to Black farmers. White farmers received 94.97% of all loans while Black farmers received .2% of the $5.7B loans. The amount of program benefits going to Black farmers was 0.80%. These stats come from Stucki and Rosenberg, 2019 and Lloyd Wright, 2020.

Just a few weeks ago, we were informed that 17,000 Black-owned farms were in danger of foreclosure. That is 48% of Black-owned farmers.

Want to know the value of land that Blacks have lost through the years and to various egregious means? Close to $1T. I cannot wrap my head around that much generational wealth that now resides in someone's hands rather than the original rightful landowners. 

Elsewhere I have written at length about Black land acquisition and dispossession. That article was published in 2018 and is easy to find. In my opinion, heir’s property is certainly an issue and has resulted in Black land loss, but, in my opinion, the greater culprit is the USDA, its county committee system, and the commitment to keeping white people in charge. The system is made that way. The system is working the way it was supposed to work.

Now, Senators Booker, Warren, and Gillibrand have proposed a revolutionary bill to address these grievances, The Black Farmer Justice Act of 2020. It levels the playing field in many, many ways.

I wonder what Jesus would think about these times. I wonder what Dr. King would think about these times. What would Jesus think about the “God, guns, and Donald Trump” slogan? What would Dr. King say about it?

What do white Americans think about racial justice? What do white Americans who stormed the Capitol building think about racial justice?

I think we all know what would be felt and said and done.

Swimming in a Sea of Whiteness

Swimming in a sea of whiteness

And all that I can see

Far to the right and over to the left

Above and below me.

It is the air that I breathe

It is the ground beneath my feet

It tells me what to say

To everyone I meet.

It’s been with me

since I drew my first breath

And it’ll follow me

until my eyes close in death

It’s the way of the world

With my pigmentation

And it’s all a part of this world's

Woeful fragmentation

Yes, I was born poor

And had to claw my way out

But the color of my skin

Did not make me weep and shout

I live with my skin

Just as you do yours

Do I hide deep within

And hold on with clenched fists

The God we worship

Surely He must be white

His son we follow

White He must be, that’s right.

Did you ever believe that

The flannel graphs told the story

A savior and disciples with white skin

Just a part of our original sin

Forgive me Lord of my pride

As I stop and consider

What it might be on the other side

Of people from here and there

Who am I to get to decide

How things are defined

And the value of the maligned

Within the Holy we both abide.

He breathed into us

The breath of life

And that decides and stops the fuss

I know that makes you want to cuss.

Do your part

White people

Dispel those myths

And let's gather for a brand new start.

Bring about hope

A brighter tomorrow to see

When all of God’s children

Just got to be free.

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

For those of you who have followed me on these pages, you know of my interest in African American farmers and their families.  No, I am not a farmer, and, no, I am not African American. Why, you might ask, do you work in this area?  The short verse is that I work in this area because their stories of struggle and resilience when fighting against the USDA and the DOJ are painful to watch, difficult to grasp, and inspiring to see.  Once I began to hear their stories in 1994, their words, expressions, challenges, and pain served to transform the way I see things in the world and the way I try to live my life.

You may have seen an article or two that I've written such as the one co-authored by Edward Robinson, “We Didn’t Get Nothing:” The Plight of Black Farmers, or the most recent one, Land Gains, Land Losses: The Odyssey of African Americans Since Reconstruction. In those articles you would find information about how freed people came to own land, and some even before Freedom, and how against all odds, they became prodigious land owners, coming to own land even faster than white people at the time. There were enormous road blocks toward buying land and then there were enormous road blocks with keeping the land. Two major challenges of land ownership historically have been the heir property challenges, and then for farmers who choose to work with the USDA, the "lender of last resorts," there have been other challenges with keeping the land. It is amazing how people in positions of power can make a decision to do nothing, decide to change the farm/home plan, deny, postpone, foreclose of farmers needlessly, fail to offer disaster relief when white farmers are getting it, fail to offer other services when white farmers are offered the services, and other egregious acts of discrimination.

All of that became more apparent upon reading
Dr. Henry Louis Gates' latest volume, Stony the

Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow," released just this year.  The book is a heavy read in places, a painful read in other places, and a smooth, narrative read in still other places. Rather than recount the history of Reconstruction, he goes about exploring the social and intellectual history of a sordid time in American history. White people and white institutions used a plethora of strategies to regain from African Americans all that they had prior to Freedom and Reconstruction. White Supremacy led whites down the road of using "science" to prove that Blacks were less than whites, that they come from different species, and that they could never handle leadership, responsibility, and the obligations of the vote.

Whites used literature and art to characterize and vilify a people who had just a few years prior earned their freedom. Each chapter has its own images that are discussed in each chapter. They are hard to see, images from mocking a people's individual and collective physical appearance via pejorative characterizations, comparison of brain sizes for whites versus Blacks, or images of alligators hunters using Black children for bait, and other egregious types of images.

Once African Americans fully grasped what the white world was attempting to do, a movement toward developing the "New Negro" set in or even the "New New Negro." These were attempts by Black artists, authors, business people, land owners, and others to develop more appropriate images in keeping with how Blacks really looked and lived rather than white supremacy's characterizations.

Of note is the Harlem Renaissance, a short-lived time in Harlem where Black artists, musicians, and writers converged around developing the "New Negro." A curiosity is that some did not consider the blues or jazz to typify this time and intentions.

Under girding it all was the machinations of white supremacy.  Reconstruction for the white world was that of Redemption from the Lost Cause.  State Senates and Houses of Representatives which were led by way too many people of color, those seats and states had to be regained. After all, how could a freed Black person be expected to live and represent an entire state even when that state had a minority of White people? While it is true that a minority of freed people could read since it was against the law to learn how to read and write during slavery, it was an overstatement that freed people had no abilities to lead the county or state in which they resided.

So, as stereotypes fostered fear and incompetence and all manner of other things, all at a societal level for freed persons, the same phenomena played out in the world of farming while Black. The peak of Black land ownership was 1910, and from that time until now, African Americans have lost land at a higher pace that white farmers.  "Maybe they are just bad farmers," I have heard white people say.  No, they were good farmers. They had worked the land during slavery.  They knew how to farm. As some have said, "It is in my DNA." Or, another said, "My blood is on this land." Or as a farmer's wife said in our documentary recently, African Americans were intended to work the land but never to own the land.

In my writings, I assert that African American farmers have lost much of their land to heir property problems, a problem that exists when a distant cousin in another state with no attachment to the land sells his or her portion at an elevated price, forcing the entire land to be sold to the highest bidder. Secondly, I assert that machinations of the USDA with its tentacles into farming at the local level via the FSA work to disenfranchise Black farmers.  The law is color blind but people are not.  The county committee system is the best of democracy and the worst of democracy.

For those who want to feel challenged, read Gates' book and then read my two articles and place them alongside each other. It would be a painful learning journey, but one that America needs to take. White America would do well to learn what our Black sisters and brothers experienced then and now.  Frankly, Black land loss at the hands of discriminating folks did not end with Reconstruction. It is going on now.  That's a post for another day.

Engaging Ann Atwater, "The Best of Enemies," and Racial Habits: Lesson One

What follows is a Bible study series in four parts developed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove who was mentored, for lack of a better word, by Ann Atwater, as seen in the movie, "The Best of Enemies," a true story based in Durham, NC with C. P. Ellis and Ann Atwater becoming good friends. You can find the materials at this link along with other significant materials. Please check them out.  As part of my walk to Easter Sunday, I will be sharing some thoughts and reflections here on the blog for friends to read and walk alongside me. 

I give these exercises of “Reconstructing the Gospel with the Best of Enemies” as a prayer to you, Oh Lord. My heart is moved just with the words, “I give these exercises to you,” and I do not know why the tears well in my eyes. I am a man born into Jim Crow south into a poor family, a family that was known for hard working, much like J. P. in the movie.  I seldom had Black friends like Ann though there was Charlie and there was Cora, who is now just an image, a myth, a part of my story, but not a real person. Charla and I live in Little Creek, a community in the middle of a low SES housing addition. I feel both at home and not at home.

I read Jonathan’s section from his book and underlined the text. White supremacy may or may not be blatant. We see it on the news and we hear its rhetoric from the mouths of politicians of the land, and we hear it from various and sundry radio and television hosts.  Many proclaim it is not so, and by doing so, they let us know that it is so.  I, too, am guilty of thinking and assuming and walking in white spaces, running around as if whiteness was the only show in town, and then getting challenged left and right. Along the way there were smacks upside the head. In high school being called a “nigger lover” because Mr. Washington and I were tight and he gave me a white lab coat. Standing on the outside looking in at a card game at LCC when only Black acquaintances were playing the game. A Black chorus member getting angry at Charla and me. A white friend wanted to date a Black friend and that caused an uproar on campus. Charles traveling with us to Memphis and getting doors slammed in our faces until he started staying in the car. “You’re not getting an apartment because of me.” He knew what we did not know and could not see. There are many, many of these stories.

The movie was intense, hard to watch, and inspiring all at the same time.  KKK members were frightening. Have I known some of them? Did I grow up with some of them? Not that I know in actuality, but have heard a few things or two.

The text of Mark 8:22-25 is a curious text to study. The people brought the blind guy to Him. He took him outside the village and healed him. At first, he could only see things like trees walking and then suddenly he could see clearly, and Jesus told him not to go back into the village.  Blind to sight. Blind to seeing clearly.

I have lived my life in a white world with white assumptions. I am a good man, so why would Black people look at me with suspicion? I am so white, and seen as so white, that I need Black people to open the door for me, to vouch for me, to vet me. It has been done before and it is going on now. “He’s one of us,” I heard the lawyer say. I have never lived in a racially diverse neighborhood until now, since El Paso, and even now, my white enclave is separated from the larger world.  There is a biracial couple around the corner and there is a Hispanic couple on the corner. Strange that that gives me comfort. I had only white teachers until Mr. Washington. I had no Black teachers in any of my formal education. My Black teachers have been colleagues and friends along the way.

A racialized habit has been that of thinking that my view of the world is the one and only view of the world whether about politics or sports or anything. My habits were dominated by whiteness. Charles, Charlie, friends, Black farmers, Gary Grant, Ridgely Muhammud, New Orleans, and now have taught me otherwise. Once I entered a world of Black farmers and began to hear their stories, I could not go back.  Though Black farmers are a very, very small percentage of America, the movement was huge for me. I saw racism in ways I’d never seen it before.  I saw white people behaving in ways I’d suspected but never seen before. I can never return. I have read report after report after report. I have listened in interview after interview after interview. The stories are the same. Only the names of the people change. The advantage goes to the white male. Women and minorities are left on the side of the playing field, metaphorically, as I have seen in the Black farming world of USDA v African Americans. Shame on us for maintaining a racist system that marginalizes people.

The social cost of my racialized behaviors has been my segregated, uninformed self. A poverty of spirit and experience accompanied me until my eyes were opened, not by Jesus and His spit, but by people of color taking the time to “coach me up.” And coach me up they did. My life has been richer ever since.

The willingness to change my racialized habits has been both rewarding and costly. The rewards far outweigh the costs. Living more fully, respectfully, and engaged has provided a deeper walk and appreciation for humanity. It has also cost me personally, not that people overtly treat me differently, though at times they do, but looking at me askance, or fussing with me about things, overtly or covertly, sending me coded messages overtly or covertly of “what would you want to do that,” or “you know we have changed a lot since then,” and “you know, not all people are racist (which means me).”

I have more to learn and experience, and by the grace of God, I will continue to do so until my last breath hearing upon this earth.

Lord, I confess my blindness to you today. Open my eyes that I may see.  Thank you for those who led me to Jesus, those who led me to see my own inability to see. Thank you for your Spirit who guides. Thank you for friends who were patient and still remain patient with me and I break the bonds of slave holders’ religion. Amen

The Parable of the Soils of Justice

And again, the speaker stood up on the podium and behind the microphone, and his words burst forth in a voice unlike any had heard. He spoke with a furrowed brow and with resonance and emotion in his voice and the words rolled off his tongue as if he had said them before.

“Listen carefully to these words. The justice worker went out to spread the word of righteousness across the land, how people should be treating other people regardless of skin color, addressing the depth of the breadth of institutional racism, unfair lending laws, the costs of segregation, inequalities in the health care industry and health disparities, unfair practices at the county level for home and operating loans for black or Indian or women or Hispanic farmers, and a myriad of other ills that have befallen the countryside and the city. 

Some of justice worker’s words fell on hearts that were unprepared or unwilling
to hear and inner voices of ‘not me,’ ‘not my people,’ or the subtler, ‘if he’s right I’m wrong and I’ll have to sacrifice all that I’ve built,’ and the words of the world of whiteness stifled out the words and sentiments of justice. Some of words of the justice worker fell on ears that seemed to want to hear and hearts that seemed open and in those moments of the conference hall there were signs of agreement, but once the person stood back out into the sun of her life and felt the harsh glare of family and friends and society and church saying, ‘not so, too much effort, too much, too much,’ and ‘besides, we’re all good people,’ and ‘I have friends of color, so she’s not talking about me’ and she went on her way untouched and unmoved.

Some of the justice worker’s words fell upon hearts that took it in, at least on the surface, but unbeknownst to all, beliefs and attitudes and practices and family and friends choked the words and sentiments away. Years and years and years off white supremacy, decades and decades of wealth based upon skin color, centuries and centuries of living within systems that profit one set of people and kick to the curb other people groups simply could not be altered, so ideas of change were quickly, very, very quickly starved out, even before the people and their hearts reached home.

However, the justice worker’s words fell upon other hearts who took it in, pondered the truthfulness of things gone very, very wrong for some people and gone very, very right for other people. He realized that slavery and ownership of human beings had permeated the soil and the hearts and soils of all around, and had so for centuries. He said to himself, ‘these things shall not be so in my world and in my family, and I will do all that I can to address them and make for change. I will create space within my own heart and life and church and neighborhood so that all people are treated fairly and justly regardless of skin color because all are God’s children, every color dark or light. I will listen to stories of marginalization and I will encourage others to do the same. I will work to create equality and opportunities and communities that promote change. And I will teach my children to treat people well and they will teach their children. We will march, we will write, we will protest, and we will write songs and sing them in the public square. We will walk the halls of state congressional buildings and we will do the same for national congressional buildings and we will knock on the door of change-makers and rule-breakers for changes in the laws and policies of our country. And one day, we will notice that justice does rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” And it was so.

Idols of the Day, Attachments of Now

Gerald May has shaped my thinking about idols.  His books which include Addiction and Grace and Will & Spirit have been game-changers for me. He asserts that God as God is not willing to become an object of our attachment or one of our idols.  We cannot become addicted to God as an idol the way we do other idols such as drugs, alcohol, sex, or power, or whatever.  We can, however, become attached to an image of God.  An image of God is not God. An image of God is an image of God. God is beyond our images.

Since we are humans, we seek out objects of our attachment. Our humanity is displayed. We are addicted. When we are attached to the object of our addiction, the entirety of ourselves changes, physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, cognitively, because we have found the fix for which we yearn, or at least that for which we think we yearn.

I sit in the midst of all manner of prophets. I read from the prophets of old, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Micah, the major ones and the minor ones.  Those prophets who warned of impending doom when the people decided to follow their own way. Yes, the ones who said that Israel and Judah were about to fall. I also read about the prophets who prophesied that Trump would be the second coming of Cyrus, King of Persia, and that God would use this flawed human being to straighten out America, and maybe the world. Following in sync are the names we recognize: Graham, Dobson, Jeffress, Robertson, Perkins, White, Land, Copeland, Bachmann, and you can probably name others.

Biblical texts demand that we sort them out:  Isaiah and his diatribe about creating idols and then worshipping them; Moses’ demand that the children of Israel in their journey drink the idol that they created, and then Jesus of Nazareth’s admonition to love God with the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

We have created numerous idols or objects of our attachment from whom and from what we would be well served to abandon: American Nationalism, Trump as the Great Rescuer, white supremacy, money as the primary driving principle, Hilary and Barak to be hated, and immigrants as the enemy.  There are more. Any one of these idols is sufficient enough. The amalgamation of these idols is one of deep entrapment. We know we are in an idolatrous relationship with a person, idea, or thing, when in its presence we are safe and secure, and when we defend it against all reason. When information that is reasonable and when people of reason say to us, “Yes, but have you considered…….” and our instinctive dismissive is reminiscent of “I can stop drinking any time I wish, or I am not an alcoholic, or I am not addicted to whatever.”

We are inebriated at the power of our position, theology, politics, and the person and/or persons who symbolize that power. In doing so, we construct our own human-made idols and we marginalize other meaningful possibilities and those for whom Christ also died.

My prayer?  Very simple, “Lord, please release us from the bondage of our attachment to notions of power and to people and institutions that re-enforce those attachments. Free us to love one another as you have loved us.”