Our reading is from the book, Becoming, by Michelle Obama.
I thought back to my own childhood and my own neighborhood and how the word, “ghetto” got thrown around like a threat. The mere suggestion of it, I understand now, caused stable, middle-class families to bail preemptively for the suburbs, worried their property values would drop. “Ghetto” signaled that a place was both black and hopeless. It was a label that foretold failure and then hastened its arrival. It closed grocery stores and gas stations and undermined schools and educators trying to instill self-worth in neighborhood kids. It was a word everyone tried to run from, but it could rear up on a community quickly.
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Sermon
Our documentary for this week is Becoming, on Netflix, which follows
former first lady Michelle Obama on her 40-city tour of her book, Becoming, alternating between her on-stage
interviews and stories and more intimate gatherings. One of its themes is the
power of getting together with others and sharing our stories. At one point, She
and her brother and her mother get out the family photo albums and go through
them, sharing memories. She strikes up conversations with everyone in line to
get their books autographed. She asks
people in the small group settings to think about who they are, what they care
about, and what brings them joy. And she shares her answers to those questions
with them, saying ,“This is how I relate to people. It helps me stay connected.”
She especially likes talking and
listening to young people, whom she mentored during her entire time at the
White House and continues to do so. Her final speech as First Lady was at a
White House celebration of school counselors, where she said to young people everywhere, “Don’t let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter. Because you do. Empower
yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education
to build a country worthy of your
boundless promise.” In almost every city on her book tour, she visited high
schools and met with small groups of girls of every color and background, sharing
her stories about growing up on Chicago’s South side in a neighborhood of working class
families. About her dad, who had MS, but still worked every day at the city
water plant so that she and her brother could get a college education. And
about the sense of self-worth that her parents instilled in her, which gave her
the confidence to ignore her high school guidance counselor’s judgment that she wasn’t “Princeton material.” And she advises them to ignore anyone who
says, “These things are not for you,” because of
their race or gender or background.
What I found most moving, in the book
and the documentary, were her stories about being black in America. She talks
about white flight, which we heard in the reading, showing her kindergarten class
picture, with an equal number of black and white children and then her 8th
grade class picture, where all the children were black, because all the white people had
moved away. She speaks about her trepidation over entering the presidential campaign, and
how her worse nightmares came true. Every gesture was analyzed. A fist bump
between her and Barack became “a terrorist fist jab” in the media. White
Americans called her “an angry black woman who hated America, Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress.” They
said, “She doesn’t look like a First lady,” “She’s not classy enough,” “She weighs too much to care about health,” “She
is an ape in heels.” She talks candidly about racism in America, saying, “People
have been taught to believe in the ultimate inferiority of people because of
the color of their skin. When folks are so afraid of kid in a
hoodie that they ended his life, how were these people dealing with the fact
that a black family was in what they perceived as their White House?” Jane’s
sermon response for today is “You’ve got to be carefully taught” from the
musical, South Pacific. It echoes
that message with the lyrics, “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, to be
afraid of people whose skin is a different shade. You’ve got to be taught to hate all
the people your relatives hate.”
Too many of us were taught that. Some
of us came to our senses at we grew and
experienced the world outside our
small, segregated towns. But others became more entrenched in and defensive of
their racist views, and they are teaching them to their children. This is the
America that we live in, an America that not only discriminates against black Americans in housing,
jobs, education, and healthcare, but also values black lives less than it does
white lives. So Aumaud Aubery was murdered while jogging. And Breonna Taylor was murdered while
she slept during an illegal drug raid at the wrong house. That’s the America
that we live in. Two years ago, our church opened a conversation on race in our
community. I looked back at the minutes and noted some of the comments: -In
Fernandina, there is a lot of separation of the races in our schools and at
sporting events. -Black people are harassed when they go downtown. -My son gets
stopped by the police for everything. I am worried that he will be killed just
for speaking up for himself. -White people need to listen more and talk less. And
Jennet closed with, -It is up to us to make the change. That’s why we are here. Ask yourself, “What difference can I make?” There
is always more that we can do. What we can’t do is pretend that this isn’t
happening. Please reach out with suggestions you have for expanding our conversation
and our mission to do everything we can to fight racism in our community and
beyond, as we strive to make our country and our world a just place for all
people. Amen.
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