Dear Anonymous,
We’re all the way in Guatemala for our cross cultural, and we were happy to see responses and dialogue about Martin Luther King Jr. day. However, we were deeply saddened and frustrated by the opinions in the piece which critiqued the convocation speaker.
For us, it is not possible to separate politics from the milestones of Martin Luther King Jr., how he “changed the future indefinitely,” and the gospel. King was a political man, and his theology was profoundly political. He fought for civil rights, he was strongly against the Vietnamese war, he was labeled a communist, he critiqued capitalism, and he was against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
All of these political positions came from his theology and commitment to the Gospel. Why would we take Martin Luther King Jr. Day to only talk about what he did and not the racial problems of today? To talk about racism in this country is political. It always has been and always will be.
We, like King, understand the gospel to be about Jesus and the good news he brought. That good news is one of love for all, a command to love God and love others as yourself. This command is political in exercise because our political systems have determined some groups disposable and less valuable. How do we love—working for justice, equality, and equity and standing with the oppressed—without being political?
Reverend Sekou said, “In fact, every time black folk walk in a room, white folks ought to stand up and give a standing ovation that we haven’t burned the whole country down.”
We have to agree. What he said right before this was how mothers and fathers were taken from their children during slavery. Please take note that we live in a world of white privilege. The hardship and oppression faced by many black Americans is monstrous.
We have systems of mass incarceration for black and brown people, the school-to-prison pipeline, the poverty cycle, different standards for education throughout our country depending on how much money you have, redlining, the inherited wealth of your family depending on if you could get or buy land which was withheld from African Americans, and the fact that the Tuskegee syphilis experiment even happened to give context to his quote. These things happened because our government, communities, and churches were complicit in addressing harms done to black and brown people.
The long-term harms continue to impact us today. In regards to the speaker’s comments on white people being racist, we want to once again put the comment in context: First, he talked about how Martin Luther King Jr. was not perfect; in fact, King was sexist.
But the speaker went on to say, “Your contradictions do not disqualify you from struggle. In fact, they mandate you struggle even harder. Part of acknowledging your contradictions is [acknowledging] the ways I am sexist and misogynist and homophobic and patriarchal. There is no question about it … it is one of my suspicions of men who say they’re feminists. It’s like white people who say they ain’t racist. I just don’t trust them.”
We must acknowledge all the ways we have privilege in this world and that this privilege inherently produces a kind of blindness, especially for white people, that clouds our vision of the truth.
All people must acknowledge the stereotypes and prejudices they have because of their various privileges. Reverend Sekou said, “We are all fallen.”
With this knowledge of our humanness and our flaws, white people should attend anti-racist workshops just as straight people should attend anti-homophobic workshops and so on.
At EMU, all should receive an education that will prepare them for the greater world, and if cultural competence is not necessary, then EMU will continue to lose persons of color because we are not treated humanely by persons who have no idea how to interact with persons of color.
It must be acknowledged that at EMU, students of color are being driven away. We see black and brown students slapped on the covers of pamphlets and advertisements, yet students of color are not coming back to EMU partly because of not enough support for people of color.
How does a person of color experience race at EMU? Do you still see that “captured” smile that’s advertised?
The barber shop and having Martin Luther King Jr. Day off for a day of service and education are examples of starting to support the diversity that we advertise.