{"id":36198,"date":"2024-02-28T19:07:27","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T03:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36198"},"modified":"2024-02-28T19:08:01","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T03:08:01","slug":"lamenting-our-history-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/lamenting-our-history-of-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Lamenting our history of race"},"content":{"rendered":"

History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.<\/em>1<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>~ James Baldwin<\/p>\n

1\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>How long,\u00a0Lord? Will you forget me\u00a0forever?
\nHow long will you hide your face\u00a0from me?
\n2\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
\nand day after day have sorrow in my heart?
\nHow long will my enemy triumph over me?<\/p>\n

3\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Look on me\u00a0and answer,\u00a0Lord\u00a0my God.
\nGive light to my eyes,\u00a0or I will sleep in death,
\n4\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>and my enemy will say, \u201cI have overcome him,\u201d
\nand my foes will rejoice when I fall.<\/p>\n

5\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>But I trust in your unfailing love;
\nmy heart rejoices in your salvation.
\n6\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>I will sing\u00a0the\u00a0Lord\u2019s praise,
\nfor he has been good to me.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

The American church avoids lament. The power of lament is minimized and the underlying narrative of suffering that requires lament is lost. But absence doesn\u2019t make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forget. As in the psalm above, lament recognizes the struggles of life and cries out for justice against existing injustices. \u201cLament is the language of suffering\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n

In Hurting with God, <\/em>Glenn Pemberton notes that lament constitutes 40 percent of all psalms, but only 13 percent of the hymnal for the Churches of Christ, 19 percent of the Presbyterian hymnal and 13 percent of the Baptist hymnal. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) licenses local churches in the use of contemporary worship songs and tracks the songs that are most frequently sung in local churches. CCLI\u2019s list of the top one hundred worship songs in January 2024 reveals that only four of the songs would qualify as a lament.5<\/sup> Most of the songs reflect themes of praise. When we forget the necessity of lamenting over suffering and pain, we can forget the reality of suffering and pain. Maybe one way to appreciate Kenan Malik\u2019s book, Not So Black and White<\/em>, is to look at it through the lens of lament.<\/p>\n

Malik makes a profound statement early in his book, \u201cRace did not give birth to racism. Racism gave birth to race.\u201d6 <\/sup>Many people believe racism started with white people discriminating against others (Native Indians, Jews, African Americans, etc.) but Malik says historically, the opposite is the case, \u201cIntellectuals and elites began dividing the world into distinct races to explain and justify the differential treatment of certain peoples.\u201d7 <\/sup>In other words, Africans were enslaved because they were deemed racially distinct, as black people, to justify their enslavement.<\/p>\n

Speaking of being racially distinct, Francis Fukuyama writes in his book, Identity,<\/em> \u201cidentity increased dramatically, such that many of the benefits of growth flowed primarily to an elite defined by education.\u201d8 <\/sup>Unfortunately, in the 17th<\/sup> century and beyond most white men and women educated themselves through science and Scripture that other races were inferior. All this highlights the importance of understanding how \u201cracial divisions had, from the days of colonialism, been created and exploited as a means of fracturing the solidarity of people at the bottom of society, and of derailing political and economic opposition.\u201d9<\/sup> That is, racial divisions don\u2019t arise from the objective circumstance of a species divided into different races, but in a society in which the idea of race has been fostered to enable those racial divisions. During these racial divisions, whether against African Americans, Native Americans, or Jews, they needed the Church to lament for them. They needed the Church to feel their pain as they cried, \u201cLord, how long will you forget me, forever.\u201d10 <\/sup><\/p>\n

Malik continues in his book and interlaces with the history of race is the resistance to racism and colonialism and how that resistance expanded the meaning of equality and universality through the Enlightenment period.<\/p>\n

It is important to clarify, also, that Enlightenment philosophers were products of their environment. It may be inaccurate to frame them as \u201cracist\u201d in the sense that the term is used today. However, their ideas helped to reify race and racial categories at a critical time in the modern age. The result was, \u201cslavery had created the conditions for a sense of a common black identity spanning the Atlantic.\u201d11 <\/sup><\/p>\n

Emmanuel C. Eze\u2019s reader, Race and the Enlightenment, <\/em>collected the ideas of these philosophers regarding the question of race. It is hard to ignore Hegel\u2019s statement, \u201cAfrica has no history.\u201d12 <\/sup>Or to dismiss as immaterial and inconsequential Immanuel Kant\u2019s assertions concerning the capabilities and abilities of African Americans, which stated that they were \u201cquite stupid.\u201d13 <\/sup><\/p>\n

Malik and Eze have done a superb job at helping us understand the philosophers of the Enlightenment. In doing this they have helped us see and maybe feel the pain of those who have suffered under white people, the left, and the right. There are most likely a few ways to construct a better world and tackle this wicked problem. I believe a part of the solution is learning to lament.<\/p>\n

Lament is an act of protest as the lamenter is allowed to express indignation and even outrage about the experience of suffering. The one who laments can call out to God for help, and in that outcry, there is the hope and even the manifestation of praise. Here are a few ideas I\u2019ve thought about that might be helpful in the area of lamenting.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Studying a few Psalms of lament (Psalms 12,13,25,31,44,60,74,80,86,88).<\/li>\n
  2. Read a good book, Lamentations and the Tears of the World<\/em> by Kathleen M. O\u2019 Connor or Prophetic Lament<\/em> by Soong-Chan Rah.<\/li>\n
  3. Help organize a \u201cservice\u201d at your church, in your community, or at your business that helps your people to lament over a lossed loved one, injustice, divorce, loss of job, trauma, unresolved wounds, or whatever pain they have not been allowed to feel because we are so celebrative minded.<\/li>\n
  4. Encourage the leadership at your church to include songs of lament and\/or have a service of lament when something happens painful in the community. Or have a service just because lamenting is biblical and has been ignored for a life time.<\/li>\n
  5. Organize a time to just listen to people\u2019s pain. Listen and just sit in it with no \u201cHow to get past your pain lectures.\u201d Just listen with our ears, eyes, and body in order to feel their unseen hurt.<\/li>\n
  6. Study somatic healing with a few leaders to help people in our churches get their pain out of their body. Learn together what lament crying is all about and how you can make it part of your time with God, church, discipleship training, interview process, family time, etc.<\/li>\n
  7. Who are the marginalized people in my community whom I can just listen to in order to learn about and feel their injustice\/pain?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    With all this in mind, how does lamenting relate to your NPO?<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. From the film, I Am Not Your Negro. <\/em>December 2016.<\/li>\n
    2. Psalm 13:1-6, NIV.<\/li>\n
    3. Walter Brueggeman, Peace<\/em>. 3.<\/li>\n
    4. Glenn Pemberton. Hurting With God<\/em>. Kindle 441.<\/li>\n
    5. https:\/\/songselect.ccli.com\/search\/topsongslists<\/a><\/li>\n
    6. Kenan Malik. Not So Black and White<\/em>. 13.<\/li>\n
    7. Ibid. 4.<\/li>\n
    8. Francis Fukuyama. 4.<\/li>\n
    9. Kenan Malik. Not So Black and White<\/em>. 195.<\/li>\n
    10. Psalm 13:1. NIV.<\/li>\n
    11. Kenan Malik. Not So Black and White<\/em>. 156.<\/li>\n
    12. Hegel, G.W.F.Lectures on The Philosophy of History<\/em>. London: George Bell and Sons, 1902.<\/li>\n
    13. Eze, Emmanuel, ed.Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader.<\/em>\u00a0Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.1 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ~ James Baldwin 1\u00a0How long,\u00a0Lord? Will you forget me\u00a0forever? How long will you hide your face\u00a0from me? 2\u00a0How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[3082],"class_list":["post-36198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-malik-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36201,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36198\/revisions\/36201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}