Thoughts on the historic week

Filed in Thoughts on January 22, 2009



I do not share the same philosophy as Barak Obama on many issues.  But part of me was excited this week about seeing a black man elected as President of the United States.  I was happy for the African Americans who for the most part, never dreamed that such a thing would ever happen in their lifetimes. 

Of course, MLK day was this week also, and it made me think about my past.  I grew up in a conservative church and school environment where the leaders liked to attempt to discredit Martin Luther King.  They had all kinds of reasons ranging from allegations of infidelity to communists ties.  Or course, that was all a smokescreen.  The real problem they had with Martin Luther King was that he was black.

To this day, racism is rampant in conservative churches.  Fifteen years ago, I travelled with a quartet in college.  It was understood at the time that because we had a black member in the group, we were unwelcome in some churches, especially in the south.  To this day, I hear about such churches exhibiting blantant racism.  They have code words for it of course, but racism is what it really is.

One of the blights on the conservative church movement (of which I am a part) is that we have been slow to recognize and acknowledge our sin.  We were basically the last to integrate our churches and universities and the last to publicly apologize for our checkered history.  We still are not fully integrated, largely because we have not even pretended to embrace African American culture.  Sure we have a few African Americans in our churches, but they are welcome only as long as they accept our culture (including our music).  Sadly, some of us consider their cultural music inferior or unsuitable for worship, and then, we wonder why we still are considered racist!

As a country, our tendency toward racism has musical ties.  I have thought a lot this week about Duke Ellington.  Ellington was indisputably one of the greatest American composers who ever lived.  During the first half of the 20th Century, he made a enormous mark on American music and greatly contributed to the advancement of Western music.  However, he was a black man.  As a result, he was consistently snubbed by the musical elitists of that day and the press.  To add insult to injury, he and his travelling orchestra suffered the indignities that all black people bore.   

I have seen clips of Ellington performing and one thing that stands out is that he was an enormously pleasant and gracious person.  When you watch him, you never get a hint of the fact that his orchestra would not be able to stay in the same hotel they were performing in because they were black.  Or, that they might have had to travel to that engagement on different trains because white and black people could not travel together. 

How did Ellington gracefully accomplish so much when facing such odds?  I can't imagine how he did it, but my hat is off to him.  And as someone else eloquently said this week, there are numerous African American heros who fought for this country, worked in our factories, and contributed to our society even though they did not enjoy the standard of living and respect that white people did.  We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.



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Lenny
1/22/2009 8:23:49 PM

Preach it brother. We need someone to say the truth on these things. It breaks my heart that the few blacks that are in our church are shut out of being able to participate in worship unless they can do it the "white" way.

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Ayesha
1/22/2009 10:54:08 PM

Amen!! As a black, that spent all of my teen years in a white independant fundamental baptist church, I witnessed, first hand, the petty racist views. Though the blessing that came from that church, ( thats were the Lord saved me) far exceeds the silly racist comments, jokes, and beliefs,--it cheers my heart to hear a white person stand up & speak the "truth" .

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