Draw the Line

Just over a year ago the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened, memorializing the more than 4400 African American men, women, and children who were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.

It chronicles a history hard to believe. A history we hoped remained in the past.

The memorial grew from research on racial terror. That research is introduced by this quote:

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again. (Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of the Morning”

And yet here we are, again, wincing and weeping, gasping and grieving at yet more deaths of African Americans–Ahmaud Arbery murdered by white men on a suburban street; George Floyd murdered by white men on a city street.

We are living history that need not to be lived again.

We’re just weeks away from the 57th anniversary of the murder of Medgar Evers, shot in the back by a white man in Jackson, MS. Evers is one of numerous martyrs memorized at the Civil Rights Memorial.

And yet here we are, again, wincing and weeping, gasping and grieving at yet more deaths of African Americans.

We are living history that need not be lived again.

But it will be. Over and over and over.

Until we draw the line.

The line that connects these most recent murders to the racist views and words caught on camera when a white woman promised to call the police and tell them a black man, Christian Cooper, was threatening her life–when in fact all he had done was ask her to put her dog on a leash.

Dr. Ibram X Kendi notes that there is a direct line from one to the other:

One of the many reasons we remain a nation that nurtures and tolerates the murder of black men, women and children is that we remain a nation that nurtures and tolerates the dehumanization of black men, women and children. Many white people consistently adopt perspectives and use words and engage in behaviors and silently approve other behaviors that reveal a deeply rooted dehumanization of people of color. Simply put, many whites view and speak about people of color as less than human.

Nazis called Jews disease-carrying rodents. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Indigenous people are often referred to as savages. Serbs called Bosnians aliens. Slave owners considered slaves apes and monkeys. President Donald Trump has publicly called women of color “dogs” and immigrants “animals.”

American culture is a culture of the dehumanization of people of color.

It’s seen in the armed protests by white people storming legislatures, demanding a reopening of their states, when that very reopening most threatens people of color who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. The personal “rights” of whites are placed before the public good of all.

Until we address the lingering dehumanization of people of color, we will continue to witness the murder of people of color.

David Livingstone Smith writes this:

“Dehumanization … acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming our destructive passions. As such, it empowers us to perform acts that would, under other circumstances, be unthinkable.” (David Livingstone Smith Less Than Human)

Our colleges and universities are filled with research revealing that the more we speak about and envision others in less than human ways, the more we treat them in less than human ways. Students invited to give research groups varying degrees of electrical shocks consistently give greater shocks to subjects who are described as “animals” rather than subjects who are described as nice. Our dehumanization frees us from our God-given inhibitions to protect and value life.

We see this is the Old Testament story of Esther. Two men, Xerxes and Haman, from the majority race (Persians) view the minority race (Jews) as a flu to be eradicated, felons to executed and filth to be eliminated (Est. 3:8). Having dehumanized the “other,” Xerxes and Haman are then freed to authorize their genocide.

But Esther … Esther and her adopted-father Mordecai reveal the way forward. While Xerxes and Haman envision the Jews as flu, felons and filth Esther works to help them see that the Jews are, instead, family (Est. 8:6). Esther and Mordecai work to persuade the majority culture that the minority culture are family–they share the same heavenly Father; they are engrained with the same divine image; they are connected by the same instrinsic worth.

Dr. Esau McCaulley writes:

“We need this country to become something different, something more. Black people need to be seen as fully human beings made in the image of God, not a menace to be managed, controlled and extinguished.”

The great work before us, the needed work before us, is the work of rehumanization. We must ruthlessly and mercilessly eliminate the language and worldviews and behaviors among us that dehumanize others. We must name them and call them out when they appear. And we must replace them with rehumanizing language and worldviews and behaviors. We must see each other fully as human beings made in the image of God. Family. The more we do, the more we become human ourselves.

One step toward this is collective mourning. When Esther and Mordecai learned of the dehumanization of their people and the plans and policies that dehumanization was now making possible, they grieved. They grieved publicly–changing clothes so their grief could be seen; wailing loudly so their grief could be heard. And they grieved corporately–calling entire communities to join in their lament over this loss.

Collective mourning rehumanizes those who have been so carelessly dehumanized. Collective mourning names those who have been treated as nameless. Our churches, synagogues, mosques, governments, villages, cities, towns and states should unite together in a time of collective mourning for those so grievously impacted by the racial terror still reigning our streets. Mourning, public and corporate, is a vital step toward being human and seeing others as human.