Across the Pastor’s Desk by Kenneth Jensen

This week finds us between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Jan.15) and Black History Month (February). April 4 will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King in 1968. We have and have not come a long way since then.

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., I hoped we finally had nailed shut the coffin on racism. A person of color had achieved the highest office in the land.

I was wrong. Since then there have been subtle and not-so-subtle signals that an anti-black attitude remains baked into the fabric of our society.

When we lived in Milwaukee during the 80s, I had to face up to my own anti-blackness. Having had black friends in college and in my work relationships, I thought I was immune to such prejudice. But it all changed one day while filling up at our local gas station.

It was in the days before pay at the pump. As I was about to pay inside, a beat-up van pulled up next to me. Two young black men got out of the van. I found myself pulling the key out of the ignition and locking the car door. I then had to ask myself, “Would I be taking such precautions if it were two young white males?”

And then it hit me. As the one went into the convenience store to get two cans of Coca Cola, the other warned, “Now you don’t go and get yourself lynched.” They were as nervous being in an all-white neighborhood as I was nervous leaving my car unattended in their presence.

During the 1992 race riots in south central L.A., Rodney King famously asked, “Why can’t we all get along?”

Why can’t we get along? Is it because we feel insecure, vulnerable or perhaps superior? Is it because we are threatened by individuals who are not like us, whose culture differs from ours, whose worldview may not be our worldview? Is it because they are not of our tribe?

As children in Sunday school we would sing, “Red or yellow, black or white, all are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Jesus said, “…unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3 NIV). He was speaking of our need to trust in God as a toddler places absolute faith in a loving parent.

But maybe that’s where we need to begin … to return to the faith we had as small children when we were “color blind.” We are, after all, brothers and sisters sharing a common humanity which stretches all the way back to our original parents, Adam and Eve.