a wild, disorienting, broken but beautiful week in the USA...

What a wild, disorienting, broken but beautiful week it has been. Quite by serendipity I started to read Isabel Wilkerson's searing study Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents two days before the Derek Chauvin verdict in the murder of George Floyd was rendered. It is the most vivid, candid, and heart-breaking study of my nation's founding in slavery, violence, hatred, torture, and soul destruction I have ever read. I am not exaggerating: Wilkerson reminds us that Nazi Germany's studied US race relations prior to Hitler's rise. "The Nazis were impressed by the American custom of lynching its subordinate caste of African-Americans, having become aware of the ritual torture and mutilations that typically accompanied them. Hitler especially marveled at the American “knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death."

With a penetrating clarity, she notes that since 1619 our history has been built upon branding people of color as inhuman beasts of burden with all the laws and resources necessary to maintain this sacrilege. Indeed, America's culture of race-based caste set the standard for all future regime's eager to replicate our viscous, abhorrent, and soul-destroying desecration of one part of the human family crafted in God's image by another. “Slavery was not merely an unfortunate thing that happened to black people. It was an American innovation, an American institution created by and for the benefit of the elites of the dominant caste and enforced by poorer members of the dominant caste who tied their lot to the caste system rather than to their consciences." And while many rightly claim:

“I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.... Dehumanize the group, and you have completed the work of dehumanizing any single person within it. Dehumanize the group, and you have quarantined them from the masses you choose to elevate and have programmed everyone, even some of the targets of dehumanization, to no longer believe what their eyes can see, to no longer trust their own thoughts. Dehumanization distances not only the out-group from the in-group, but those in the in-group from their own humanity. It makes slaves to groupthink of everyone in the hierarchy. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable.”

Perhaps Caste primed me to see the presence of the holy in the jury's commitment to be a part of the solution to both police violence against Black and Brown people as well as a blow against the historic use of the police to keep Jim Crow alive. As others have noted, this was a poignant and important first step in dismantling a system that must be created if public safety, rather than white privilege, is going to come to pass. But let's not minimize the collective sigh of relief we breathed on Tuesday upon hearing that all three counts against the perpetrator came back: guilty. This in and of itself was a victory for accountability. It was also a blessing for people of color and a sign of hope for those who choose to believe that this nation can become healthier and more compassionate. 

And so now we all enter into the start of a new era as the contagion starts to be controlled: one that is beyond mere tolerance, one that has seen a sacramental clue of what can happen with diverse people link arms in solidarity and love, use politics AND media with wisdom, and refuse to back down. The guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd was advanced by the brave smart-phoning of 17 year old Darnella Frazer who used her courage and technology to serve the cause of justice. So, too, the commitment and savvy of BLM and their allies along with public commentators like CNN's Van Jones and Abby Philip, PBS' Judy Woodruff, Yamiche Alcindor, Liza Desjardins and Amna Nawaz. And let's not forget what a difference our national leadership has played as both Joe Biden and Camilla Harris stayed focused, grounded, prayerful, and courageous throughout.

Wilkerson wrote: “In our era, it is not enough to be tolerant. You tolerate mosquitoes in the summer, a rattle in an engine, the gray slush that collects at the crosswalk in winter. You tolerate what you would rather not have to deal with and wish would go away. It is no honor to be tolerated. Every spiritual tradition says love your neighbor as yourself, not tolerate them.” We are NOT called to do it all. Just our part. Just the love we can share. Rabbi Tarfon gets it right:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.