“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
March 16, 2008 at 12:14 am
Jay Burns
Helen, thanks for responding. I think my question still stands. What exactly, a list would be great, needs to be done in order to create this equality. Both on a personal level then on a national level.
Have a great day.
March 16, 2008 at 10:45 am
helenl
Hi Jay, Thanks for visiting my blog. I feel much more comfortable discussing racism on my blog than on someone else’s. Here, if another person enters the discussion and resorts to profanity, I can and will delete his/her comment.
Also, there’s a lot about racism on this blog already. That’s one of the main reasons I blog – that and to promote my poetry, some, but not most, of which is about race.
As far as a list, that’s a tall order. One that won’t be filled today. But to start off, if you want to fight racism, you might want to begin by
1. Reading a good African American history book. I recommend “Before the Mayflower” by Lerone Bennett Jr. or ” From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African American” by John Hope Franklin. Learn American history from another point of view. And I am warning you, in the beginning, you will think you are reading fiction: You are not.
2. Locating and befriending one African American. Get to be good enough friends that you can talk about race without loosing his/her friendship. If blacks go to your church, this is fine. But this warning, the reason black and white Pentecostals can worship together so well is they never talk about race. I don’t know that you are Pentecostal or that you even have a church, so this is just a warning.
3. Learning the difference between individual and institutional (systemic) racism. Determine for yourself whether you are a racist or whether you just live in a racist country (city, whatever). In this age of political correctness, few people use ethnic slurs that were common prior to the Civil Rights Movement. We mask racism quite well. Determine for yourself whether you are a racist or a recovering racist. Racism is the “sin in high places” or at least one of its expressions.
Okay. So i didn’t answer your question the way you want me to. If you give a man rice, he eats and is not hungry, but when he gets hungry again,he has no more rice. If you teach a man to sow rice and give him seed, he learns to farm and eats again and again. Likewise, if you give a man a list, he accomplishes what’s on it and says, “the problem is back.” If you give a man the tools to educate himself, each time a new problem rises, he finds new ways to work toward the goal, which is equality.
“Study to show thyself a workman who need not be afraid. . . ” (II Timothy 2:15 Why do people think that means read and study nothing but the Bible?
And let me say this, you do not have to be for Barack Obama to be a recovering racist. And you don’t have to give up your job and house, unless God asks that of you.