Planting Seeds or Not

So, yesterday was a difficult day for me personally. I received word that a deacon had offered an "excellent homily on racism." To provide a setting for you, I am speaking about my hometown parish where I was the only Black child and the only child of color among those making their First Holy Communion in the spring of 1966 in a racially segregated society. The only parish in town may have also been the only integrated church in the predominantly Christian town. After being away for many years, I returned home to care for my mother and, consequently, to the parish.  

How could I not rush to access the recording of the livestreamed liturgy to receive a balm for my weary soul in this time when we are confronting two pandemics: Covid-19, and the legacy of 400 years of white supremacy?Unfortunately, it did not take long for me to realize that my thirst was not going to be quenched nor my soul soothed by the deacon's words. Early in the homily, he stated: "I feel that most of us in our Church, do not espouse racism, yet it is a very apparent wrong within our country ~ and no race, color, or creed is innocent.

In preparation for this homily, I spent last week talking to many of my friends and coworkers regarding their life experiences, and most had experienced some form of racism - some more than others.

This was true whether they be White, African-American, Asian, Native American, or Central or South American. 

Most had been the target of some type of nasty racist verbal or physical attack."

After sharing the experiences of a variety of people from different racial and/or ethnic backgrounds, he continued: "[R]acism is exhibited in all races in some way, shape, or form. It is not the prejudice or injustice of any single race."

By that point my stomach was well knotted. I chose the wise path and stopped listening to the recording. A Catholic for more than 50 years, for the first time, I wrote an email expressing my concerns. I explained that while I can be prejudiced against someone, as an African-American I have not the capacity to be racist because of the structuring of our society. It was not received well. While my efforts appear to have been futile, I did what was mine to do by attempting to plant seeds.

To clarify, telling African-Americans that racism is the same as prejudice is like telling Jewish people that the holocaust did not happen, telling Armenians that they did not experience a genocide, telling Indigenous Americans that Christopher Columbus discovered America, or telling naturalized citizens that they are not real Americans.