Dallas Racial Unity Leadership Summit, May 15-18, 2019

It Would Make a Movie Scene

The story would make for a scene in a movie. The county supervisor shows up. So does the US Marshall and his deputies. All have guns on their hips. There are five 18-wheelers there to carry away the property from the farm, all lined up down the road. In 100 degree weather Mr. Farmer sits under the shade tree waiting for the attorney to arrive. Mr. Farmer's son, also a farmer, shows up at just that moment and demands that the law know his rights, dressed in his marine attire. Family members watch it all from the window. The farmers won this stand-off. It would happen again.

Mr. and Mrs. Farmer have met their maker. They died prematurely in the Cause. The family estimated at one time that they had spent 100,000 hours fighting for their farm. On three separate occasions the federal government had agreements to settle with them, but on three occasions they finagled their way out of them.

Miraculously, this family still owns the farm. Their stories must be told.

The full story of the black farmer documentary is found here. 

Black Farmer Documentary Effort: Raising Funds to Tell the Story of Injustice

Introduction

Between 1995 and 1999 roughly 15 black farmers settled discrimination cases with the United States Department of Agriculture out of court. These cases were settled administratively, out of the public eye and have yet to be told. In our opinions, these are truly stories of “David versus Goliath,” and in these instances the Davids won, and they paid an enormous price for the victory.

One story is that of a farmer and his wife in Texas. He had desired to farm full time, and then the opportunity came, but it turned into a nightmare. Over-valued land that did not produce well, loans denied and stalled, harassed by townspeople and USDA officials alike, and surviving an attempt on his life. The back window of his tractor was shot out on one occasion, his dogs were killed, the lock on his gate was glued shut, and a sign left that said, “Nigger go home!” She suffered two heart attacks. She never knew for sure if he was coming home at the end of the day. They still own their land, but they have paid an enormous price.

These stories need to be told.  If you are concerned about power inequities between people of color and whites, these stories will move you. If you are concerned about how institutions of power and privilege exist at the expense of others, I think they will move you. If you want to know about the perils of farming while black in America, you will be moved.

Telling these stories via the documentary is the dream of Shoun and me. We have been working on the documentary since early 2018. We received a grant from a federal agency that has gotten us started.  It will not be nearly enough we have realized. We received some funding in 2018 and are hopeful of receiving the same amount in 2019.

The financial details 

Frankly, we need much more than that. We are asking you to help us raise an additional $10,000. For 2019, these dollars go for the following:  1) honoraria for the interviewees; 2) travel including airfare and taxis; 3) per diem; 4) lodging; 5) office and other miscellaneous expenses; 6) voice-over expert; 7) sound-track expert; and 8) things we haven’t even calculated yet such as distribution, duplicating, and even entering it into film festivals for wider exposure. Our travels will put us in seven states plus the District of Columbia. We will interview farmers and families as well as persons previously or currently employed by the USDA, the Department of Justice, or the Smithsonian.

Here is the link to the fund raising page: 

https://www.facebook.com/donate/395003334636465/?fundraiser_source=external_url

Shoun Hill and Waymon Hinson

My collaborator is Shoun Hill. He lives in NYC and has been involved with the farmer movement since 2008. You can find his photography here:  http://www.shounhill.com/street-photography. You can also find a documentary on Eddie and Dorothy Wise that Shoun did here:  https://vimeo.com/153671213.

My friends may know of my interests. They span the years 1994 to now, consulting on the first cases settled with the USDA, working with the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association in several areas including fund raising, writing two blogs, speaking at state, regional, national, and international conferences on injustice, and publishing two articles in refereed journals.

Incentives

If a “team” contributes a total of $1,000, the leader will receive a DVD and a photograph from Shoun. If a member of a “team” contributes $1,000, that member of the team earns the DVD and the photograph. The team leader will receive them as well. Those team leaders are now identified. Friends of theirs can be on their "teams." 

For a $500 contribution the contributor and/or the team leader qualifies for a DVD of “We Shall Not Be Moved: The Story of the Tillery Resettlement Community,” Tillery, NC with descendants of both the slave owners and the enslaved. The soundtrack contains spirituals performed by “The Joyful Sound,” directed by Gary Grant. Also, a poster of “A Man Called Matthew” will be provided. Matthew Grant actually started the black farmer movement. This is a great addition to anyone’s library on matters related to justice. This is for the team leader whose team collects $500 and/or the person who donates $500.

Any additional funds raised beyond costs will go directly to the black farmer movement and our funding organization, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. Contributions to BFAA earmarked for this effort are tax deductible as it is a 501.c.3. Also, each contributor will be listed in the credits of the documentary when it is published.

Premier

We plan to premier the documentary at a land loss summit in Atlanta in November.

Competitions

In order to tell the story as far and as wide as we can, we will enter the film in film festivals around the country. Entry fees will be taken from our proceeds here. If we win any competition, those funds will return to the black farmer movement.

Original Sin Wonderings

Monday it is

Monday it’ll be

Till Tuesday is here

And then we’ll see.

Tuesday will roll around

For those hours and minutes

We’ll live and breathe

Knowing that life has its limits.

I like ritual

I like rhyme

Does that make me strange

Most all of the time?

I like predictability

I yearn for sameness

But when I get bored

I feel my inner lameness.

How does God make us

All of us interesting people

We live and we yearn

Both citizens and illegals.

Black folk

Light skinned and dark

White people

Carrying the mark.

The mark of what

Is something to ask

The ownership of all

In our own truth we bask.

Nobody died

To make us king of it all

Just trying to get it right

This side of the fall.

Amen

Let’s begin

Lay aside that sin

Just wondering when.

Redemption is the story

And there we find the glory

Repent of our collective sins

Yes, those that are pretty gory.

American’s original sin

A phrase too riveting to grasp

Stolen lives and stolen land

Wrong enough to make our souls gasp.

Stolen dreams

Stolen schemes

Ripped away family and kin

Yes, our original sin.

I Must Admit

I must admit that February has been a challenging month. Yes, it has been designated Black History Month and as such it has a long and notable history. While it generally is a challenging month, 2019 has been exceptionally difficult.

We live in perilous times. There are so many extremes. We have those who "see no color." We see those who see color in everything, and why not? We have people who want to run from the issue of race. We have amongst us people who are overt racists or covert racists. And we have those who may not be racist but who carry discriminatory attitudes and behaviors. We have those amongst us who will say that we don't have issues like that in our town or in our church or our community.

From the current occupant of the White House with his inflammatory rhetoric and failure to condemn white nationalists to the offensive behavior of the congressman in the Cohen hearing this week who pulled the card of calling in an African American woman as a prop. Yes, he did say inflammatory things about President Obama years ago. We can run but we cannot hide these days.

How shall we do any better if our leaders do not do any better than our people.

The birther issue, Charleston church massacre, and Charlottesville are now deeply embedded parts of our narrative.

On the other hand, I have been stirred and informed and coached up by numerous people, some I know personally and some I know only because of cyberspace, those I've never met. Without giving up any names, you may know who you are. You have posted informative blogs or information on Facebook. Some of your material I have re-posted. Some of you have been able to nail "on this date this happened here," and that drives home the issues.  Some of you have provided information about people, places, events, firsts, and those have been meaningful.

All together, I think I am like many of us in the US.  I am uninformed. I have been uninformed. I will go to my grave uninformed. Certainly, we studied in school the history of the US and we did the same in our college and university classes. However, we missed the Trail of Tears and we missed the Middle Passage, the brutality of enslavement, the utter despicable treatment of people during Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and even today. We are clueless, America, about the devastating effects of poverty and its links to slavery in our cities and rural areas. As we stand now, Black America will not catch up because White America got such a huge head start.

We know the history of white America. White Americans write and tell stories of white America. White America is taught by white American teachers. I am pretty familiar with white American history.

I have been uninformed about the amazing contributions of black citizens in all areas including agriculture, science, chemistry, leadership, literature, economics, art, education, community development, banking, and the number of inventions that we gloss over including something as simple as the golf tee. It takes movies to bring things to the awareness of white America.

My knowledge of Black History has a narrow path. That path is via farming while black under the scrutiny of the United States Department of Agriculture. I have been schooled in this area since 1994 and will likely be schooled in perpetuity. I have heard stories of mistreatment of black farmers and I have heard stories of advantages of white farmers. I have heard stories of families of black farmers and I have heard family stories of white farmers. They are two distinctly different sets of stories.

I feel cheated. I was clueless about the literal presence of Westside High School in Trinity, Texas, just a few blocks from Trinity High School. I was ignorant of the way in which black citizens of my rural town were treated, other than an exception or two.

I was clueless of the role and treatment of black soldiers until my wife interviewed them during her masters work at Abilene Christian University.

I was clueless about so many different things that influence the history and lives of folks I know and those I do not.

That is why on my desk this morning are a wide range of books:  Black Cowboys of Texas, W. E. B. Du Bois, The Collection of Poems by Langston Hughes, Blues from the Delta, God of the Oppressed, Reaping a Greater Harvest, Remembering Tillery's Historical Archives, The Essential Writings of the American Black Church, Show Us How to Do It, White Terror, Free at Last, We Shall Not Be Moved, African American History for Dummies, John Hope Franklin: Mirror to America, The Promised Land, In the Matter of Color, Bullwhip Days, Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule, Divided by Faith, Black Theology and Liberation, Conversations with God, Up From Slavery, Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning, and many, many more.

I am uninformed but I shall not remain so. I have been lax in appreciating black America. I will remain so no longer.

Will you join me?

Justice in the Exam Room

The entire issue of Family Therapy News was interesting. Though it has never been a top of the charts specialty for me, I’ve collaborated on the development of a MedFT focus in graduate education, presented at various conferences on the topic, taught a course at African Christian College on the theory and practice of MedFT, published a thing or two, and helped to develop the emphasis with an AI tribe. All of those things are laid alongside my personal narrative of being in and out of hospitals when I was a kid with a dying father and a mother with numerous ailments and surgeries.

There is one thing that I think was missed in all of those articles, and maybe I just overlooked it.  That “one thing” is the cultural expression and values of the patient. Back in the previous chapter of my professional life, I was hired out of the MFT/ACU program to develop “family-oriented and culturally engaged” programming. That meant more than one person in the room and that also meant respecting, listening for, and engaging with the native culture of the patient/client in the therapy room or the exam room. I have no clue as to where these programs are these days. My sense was that those who followed me were less committed to these notions in principle and practice than we were when I joined up ten years ago.

In essence, a “family-oriented, culturally-engaged” approach to therapy and the Medical Family Therapy is radically different than the traditional approach. Family literally means more than one person in the room and culturally-engaged means connecting with and utilizing the family’s cultural strengths toward positive outcomes.

I believe that the literature speaks to the validity of both. Some conditions are especially amenable to a systemic engagement. Check out the names of Susan McDaniel, Jennifer Hodgsosn, Angela Lamson, Adam Moore, Tai Mendenhall, Russ Crane, and Jacob Christianson for examples. I also have come to believe that the healthiest of persons are those who can walk in two cultures, the one in which one is born, i.e., American Indian, Hispanic, Muslim, etc., and the one in which one lives, i.e., the “dominant culture,” or the white world.  This obviously goes against the grain of much of the rhetoric in public places and spaces these days.

My work in the MedFT world for the AI tribe was that of “consultant” to the physicians in family practice or internal medicine, amongst others. I recall the day in which I was called in to consult with an older AI woman who was not compliant in taking her medications. Though it took a while to figure out what she was thinking and feeling and doing, it became clear that we had missed her worldview. She was “going across the river” and consulting a medicine man from another tribe and getting treatment through those means.

To back up a step or two, I had been observing for about seven years the underlying messages of Indian people. The categories get very complicated, but here are a few. A phenotypically white person with AI status who identifies as AI with a low level of cultural engagement, and a low desire to become more engaged. Or, there was the phenotypically brown skin AI with a high identity, a low level of cultural engagement, and a high desire to be more engaged. Or, there could be a phenotypically white person with a high degree of cultural engagement and a high desire to be more engaged. Imagine those categories, with highs and lows in each and you begin to see complexities. Then, multiple that times the number of AI tribes, and you get even more complexity.

We then designed a 39-item enculturation scale which could be pared down and used in all settings as a “screening inventory.” Why? By doing so, we would then know things related to identity and cultural engagement and respond medically and therapeutically in appropriate ways.

I remember the day when a young clinician was troubled with how to treat a case of an acting out adolescent. We discussed who else lived in the house or was part of the family.  The clinician invited in grandmother who simply had to say something like “straighten up and fly right,” and the kid starting behaving.

So, I think there is a gross injustice when we fail to think family-orientation with problems. I think there is a gross miscarriage of justice when we fail to consider the cultural themes of the person and her or his family coming in to see us.

I think that justice means get the training in both. Engage both. In those ways, we bring about a correction to the injustice that dominates peoples’ lives. The break in shalom is corrected by hearing well and treating well.

Words Matter, Words Remembered

The words in italics below are lifted directly out of interviews with African American farmers. They still ring in my head. I hope they will do the same for you. 

 Words matter.

“We are going to sell you out.”

Words matter.

“Too big for their britches.”

Words matter.

 “Smart ass niggers.”

Words matter.

“Well, we’ve been flying these flags all these many years and we’re not taking them down.”

Words matter.

“I can’t let you have no more money and I’m gonna sell you out.”

Words matter.

“You know I was called to come by here and get this tractor.”

Words matter.

“You may as well go home. I’m not going to lend you any money.”

Words matter.

“Yes, there’s moneys in here, but there’s none in here for you all.”

Words matter.

“Go out to MJ’s house and look at the tractors that he got sittin’ in his yard because we’re gonna sell him out and you can get either one of them.”

Words matter.

“Either you participate with what I’m telling you that I’m gonna do or either I’m gonna put you outta bidness.”

Words matter.

“I’m gonna put your money in my pocket and I’m gonna put you outta bidness.”

Words matter.

“What you gonna do with that kind of money? You don’t need that kinda money. What you gonna do with it?”

Words matter.

“They kept talkin’ about they gonna sell me out, sell me out…..wanted to sell me out.”

Words matter.

“We can’t finance you anymore.”

Words matter.

“It’s instilled in my children right now. It’s in my children. It’s got my children. Yeah, I’m about to go into tears cause this is a sad situation. It’s got my children so that they don’t want to go into a business of their own because they seen the suffering that I have endured to provide for my family. See? They don’t have to go through that, see?”