Demonstrator atop damaged Baltimore police car (Click to enlarge.)
We don’t get it, though it’s right before our eyes. The years of abuse and violence have created endemic pain, mistrust, anger, frustration, etc. With no sense of hope — in fact, with more and more signs of hopelessness, as we see how widespread this is — all of that negativity was bound to come out sideways. The people have never been given any other way to resolve it. Baltimore was a powder keg waiting to blow, and there are others all over the country.
Yet we have a government that exacerbates the problems by ignoring them, by reinforcing a system that benefits the 1%, and by pouring energy into promoting a puritanical religious agenda rather than addressing fundamental issues of human need and justice. We like to point to our “progress” and claim that we have moved beyond racism, but by trying not to talk about it, by suppressing the conversation, we’ve only forced it underground and added to the building pressures.
Now a privileged system, which has been treating people with violence for so long, calls for nonviolence from a community that has had its fill. Again, it shows that we don’t get it. Under pressure, things start to break apart at the weakest spot. It is easy for me to say that nonviolence is best (and I believe it is). Middle class folks of all ethnicities can perhaps see the preference for a peaceful resolution, because of their perspective from a place of economic and educational privilege. And that would be a lovely way to resolve this: sit-ins, folk music, and conferences with lots of impassioned speeches and break-out sessions to discuss the future.
But the impoverished, young, raging African Americans in Baltimore and elsewhere can’t see that. Their perspective is quite different. All they know is that we have had our boots on their necks for too long, and they have had enough. (And I mean “we” because I am well-enmeshed as a beneficiary of the oppressive system.) Call their lashing out a crime. Call it sin. Call it counterproductive, as President Obama did. It may be all those things, but it is also the predictable response of a people who have been pushed and pushed until they have reached their limit.
Yes, there are those who showed up in the streets of Baltimore to get their share in the looting. And yes, some quite consciously drove in to be part of the fight. But most people don’t go looking for a fight and the fact that so many became engaged in one underscores the fact that this was a community that passed its collective breaking point.
We don’t see all of this because the system also conditions us not to recognize it. We’re told that everyone has the same opportunities, and if people fail it’s their own fault. Our unfettered love of wealth and our commitment to making the rich even richer teaches us to disdain the poor. When my heart is filled with disdain for anyone, I find that it’s hard for me to imagine why helping him is my problem.
Unless we can recognize the reality of what’s going on and become serious about dismantling the American apartheid which is sustained by the status quo and further empowered by our current political leadership in Congress, these episodes of civil unrest will grow into something much, much bigger.
I don’t believe there are simple answers to solving our social ills, but I do believe there are clear directions in which we are called to move, from a Gospel perspective. In first-century Israel, there were a number of political groups who struggled against the Roman occupation and oppression of the Jewish people. (There were also some parties were complicit with Rome, such as the Herodians.) It was a time of revolutionary fervor and there were occasional outbreaks of violence.
We know from the Gospels that Jesus so identified with the oppressed peasants who struggled under Roman rule that he was ultimately executed as an opponent of Caesar. His way was one of nonviolence, which should ultimately be our model, but he was so closely aligned with others who were insurrectionists that he was identified as an enemy of the state. In fact, Mark’s account of his last week before the crucifixion has Jesus publicly speaking out over and over against the dominant cultural powers. The fate of anyone who speaks truth to power is often not a happy one.
As Christians, we must remain personally committed to nonviolent means of healing our nation. But we must also heed our Lord’s example of so closely aligning ourselves with those who are oppressed that we may, in fact, be mistaken for them. The only time Jesus found himself in Herod’s palace was as a prisoner, not as part of a political party. Those who claim the name of Jesus ought to find themselves more at home in the streets of Baltimore and Ferguson than in the halls of Congress, because our calling includes standing right next to people in their pain. As Pope Francis put it, the shepherds should smell like sheep.
Standing with the oppressed in this case means, at the very least, getting close enough and quiet enough that we can hear them. Quit criticizing long enough to listen to their stories. Learn to see life through their eyes. And if, at the end of the conversation, you still see things the same way, go back and sit down with them again until you get it.
If we are going to help bring healing, we must learn to distinguish the disease from its symptoms. The violence will not end until we learn to recognize its underlying cause and our part in it.