The words we tell ourselves to deceive ourselves
And then, the End. (A poem) (from an article by Danté Stewart)
I wish—I really do wish—that there were words to say to my sibling Danté, a man who is Living While Black in this world, man who has been raised to be strong and confident and sure of himself, that he can, as a leader, accomplish great things, whether on the football field, the church, or the very field of life.
And then he sees every day that his own safety and the safety of his family—his sweet, precious kids—is at risk from the random violence of American life, to be a target at school, at church, in the neighborhood. How does someone with any sense about this world of America and American violence talk to his kids about the hard fact that violence is the tool of revenge because love as justice takes too damn long when there are political objectives of furthering American power?
A kid in America is not safe, and doubly, triply so for a Black kid, seen as a creature, not as child until they pass a bar in the eyes of America that now they are a threat. At 8, 9, or 10, that magic moment happens when they are simply demeaned as “that Black kid” to the judgment of “he’s a threat, a thug, a danger, a thief.”
And even in that, even in that, it is not safer elsewhere and it is worse.
A school full of kids like his own—innocent, happy, talking about their friends, listening to teachers dance and sing and draw in hopes of getting their attention to learn—was OBLITERATED by the actions of the Trump Administration in the pursuit of something God could not know unless God descended to this earth in the form of a victim and terrorist and trouble-maker and malcontent who, really, just needed to learn the rules with the obvious statement of “the rules will never apply to you—you will always be ruled.”
This country full of Christians who think beyond all reason that we are a “Christian nation” is allowing—is cheering on—the destruction of schools and hospitals and hope in the name of Jesus because in their demented beliefs, Jesus loves the little children when they’re white.
How does a man, a father, a soul, tell his kids that “All the words of the Constitution don’t apply to us. All the protections of the Geneva Convention don’t apply to us. All the protections of the religion claimed to be one of justice and mercy and love don’t apply to us, the people who are here to eternally be the target of abuse and hate because of how our God shaped us in love and brought us into the world.”
I don’t know if it is a mark of sanity to remain untroubled by the violence. Sure, we are become numb to atrocity after atrocity after atrocity because by God the DOW is over 50,000 quatloons and a man—a “man”—in the White House for white people is using this country’s might and power and history and reputation to destroy people he doesn’t like here or in countries that do not do fair obeisance to him.
I don’t know that it is past time to cry. Maybe. Maybe we cannot cry anymore for what has been done. Maybe we see that it is useless to cry for what is certain to be done, again, today, tomorrow, the full next week, and beyond,
At least our weeks are punctuated by a time of collaboration and gathering to worship a Man of Peace who secretly holds a sword to avenge us against our political enemies. At least we have that. Some words of peace that “all is well, and all will be well,” with the unspoken addendum “for people who look like us.”
Maybe we cannot cry not because the tears are gone but because the soul is dried out and all that is left is this body as a simulacrum of the divine creation, the Imago Dei nearly dead.
Maybe that is why we watch the news contentedly over dinner, chewing on food grown daily more expensive, saying “why don’t those people just stop hurting others,” unaware of how our contentment and our safety and our complacency is driving the violence done in our name.
What is the answer we tell a father like Danté who just wants to send his kids to school and expect to see them return? What do we tell the mother in Tehran who sent her daughter to school, a smart, clever girl who is her hope for the future, and both of them not a clue that at the end of the day there would be no reunion?
I do know this: what we are telling them now, as always, will always never be the truth.
