The Pain of Racism

What's the old joke?  It's deja vu all over again?  Certainly that's how these past two weeks have felt to many of us who are older as we have watched the protests unfold..  We've seen such unrest before.  In fact, more than once.  Yes, it does appear to be, as many journalists have said, a "generational event"--a once in a generation happening--but that is far from comforting.  We are seeing before our very eyes the truth found in George Santayana's famous line:  "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."

But just today a parishioner sent me an e-mail with a quote from Professor Julius Lester that may shed some light on things.  "History is not just facts and events," said Professor Lester.  "History is also pain in the heart, and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain the heart our own."

Professor Lester taught courses in literature, history and African American studies at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) .  He was an author of books for children and adults, and even an accomplished musician.  And much of his life was devoted to work in civil rights.  He was there in the sixties, and throughout much that followed.  He died in 2018.

I am trained as an historian as well, and I must say Lester's definition of history is as on the mark as any I have seen.  Over and over again, various peoples have lifted up their pain, and instead of acknowledging it, instead of learning from their outcries and protests, we have found ways to deny it, rationalize it, brush it off.  Mostly, I suspect, because we are afraid of the having to deal directly with the pain itself--or as Professor Lester says, making it our own.  But let's be honest, brutally honest, if we are to ever deal with racism--I mean really deal with it--it is going to hurt.  There will be pain.  Psychic pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain, economic pain.  

Do we need to be masochists to address racism?  No, we don't need to relish the pain.  But we do need to recognize it, and be willing to take it into our hearts, and into our lives. 

Physical pain calls our attention to bodily malfunctions, to wounds and brokenness, to disease and infection.  Whether we like it or not, the body politic, our nation itself, is wounded, broken and in need of healing.  Will we acknowledge the pain?  Or will be cover over the wound of racism and leave it untreated?  The choice is ours.