July 27, 2016

Aggressors can maintain security because they do not allow any other perspectives into the images that define the self except those that are securely controlled:  the idea that some portion of moral substance is invested in the uncontrolled histories and discourses of others is something to be ignored or resisted..
Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement, Rowan Williams

This is a particularly dense book that I'm currently reading.  Nevertheless, there are a few things here and there that catch my attention, and this is one of them.  Maybe it was because of the push-back that #blacklivesmatter is getting from #alllivesmatter.  Maybe it was because of the recent tenor of the RNC convention in Cleveland.  Maybe it was because of the people screaming, “We want our country back!”

Whatever it was, this quote from a book written sixteen years ago struck home.  When I read it, I first thought of the current state of affairs with police shootings, retaliatory shootings, and the political rhetoric from all sides.  But the more I sat with sentence, the deeper it got.  This quote not only reflects our current state of affairs, but it reflects oppression throughout all of history:  Men controlling women by limiting equal pay, denying the vote, denying positions of leadership, forcing women to take sick-time after childbirth (among others things); white realtors funneling minorities into “appropriate” neighborhoods; former slave owners getting Jim Crow laws passed; conservative Christians boycotting Target for that company's decision to remove Boy and Girl labels from toys; Nazis carefully crafting anti-Jewish propaganda and laws that led to the Holocaust; the list goes on.  It wasn't that long ago that magazine advertisements were populated solely by white models, while interracial couples were never seen on TV.

It would appear that Rowan got it exactly right.  When faced with the idea of equality, those in power, the aggressors, fight tooth and nail to keep those asking for equality oppressed.  When the Black Lives Matter popped up, I noticed it was a white reactionary counter movement that created All Lives Matter.  If all lives matter, then why aren't we working for equal pay, livable wages, universal health care, an end to sexual abuse and harassment, or free education for those in poverty?

The stories of the helpless, the outcast, the powerless, minorities, and victims must be allowed to be told through their voices – not through the voices of the dominant class who want to gloss over their own complicity in how those others have been, and continue to be, treated by society.  Unfortunately the people in power don't want to hear those stories.  What they want to hear, I think, are their own narratives that silence the Other so that they can continue not thinking about the issues.

Those stories of the Other are then continually ignored and/or resisted, because when the others start talking about equality, those in power don't see and hear calls for equality – they see and hear a loss of power for themselves and a loss of “what's rightfully mine.”

Our Baptismal Covenant asks us to “respect the dignity of every human being.”  For us to do that we need to begin listening to the perspectives and stories of others.  For us to do that, we need to stop trying to control those who are not like us.

Amen.