Non-Racist Is Not Enough by Connie McNeill

I just lost some of you using a quote from Angela Davis. I don’t want to lose you, so if you can, stay with me.

Angela Yvonne Davis is a figure from the 1960s in this country. I only knew about her as an angry radical black woman. The posting of her photo and citing her name may have made some of you already quit reading this blog. She is a controversial figure with a controversial history. She is an academician, a lecturer, a published author. Her politics are considered controversial, having belonged to the Communist Party at one time. She was a face of someone angry about something I didn’t understand in a world that frankly was very frightening to me as a child. As an adult, I choose to listen to people with whom I find much in common and agreement, AND I choose to listen to people with whom I have little in common and much disagreement. I can choose a quote from Dr. Davis because I can hear it now. I must move into a posture of actively being anti-racist.

I feel wholly unqualified to address this topic. This is rather my confession. Though I have educated myself, deliberately placed myself in relationships that were sometimes challenging, being an active listener to voices that said things I didn’t know how to say and remain committed to being non-racist. But it’s not enough.

Education can be a tool that cuts through the chains of limitations that bind all of us. Education became that tool for me. College was the first time I met fellow students who were black and Latinx and Asian. I learned that some of them were very angry, and “spittle” was one way they expressed it. Some of them were very angry, but trying to help people like me glimpse the world through their eyes, and they patiently answered my questions and graciously found ways to include me in “their” conversations and things they found funny. But it wasn’t enough.

Years later, I would minister with international students who, coming to the United States to study, found the racism present here very confusing. Interestingly, since racism occurs around the world, including the countries from which they came. Coming to the United States, they expected to find “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” How could I explain it to them? We are the government by the people and for the people. My only explanation was that it was selective liberty. It was selective justice. But it wasn’t enough.

If we are really honest, racism has existed since European ancestors came to this country even before it was our beloved United States. From the beginning, there was a need to dominate what one group of people held in order to take control of what others wanted. The motivations were many, but the seeds of racism were taking root. Hostage-taking of Africans brought to this country to be enslaved didn’t create racism. It was already here, or the Africans would never have been forced to be here. Besides all the individual evils that slavery had, its real, lasting effect was to institutionalize racism in a way that would continue to exist from then until the present. This has ensured that individual civil rights would not always prevail for all people of color in this country.

Our friend Kate Campbell’s song, Crazy in Alabama, is a favorite one among her followers. If you don’t know it, you can listen to it here. Her new song, Change Should Have Come By Now, is her twenty-year reflection of the lack of progress we have made in civil rights. She sings it here. Kate’s music and her friendship have been a part of my growing commitment that whatever I’ve done or said in the past wasn’t always enough.

Here I am, again, at a crossroads. I can stay on the road of keeping my commitment to being non-racist. It is not a wrong place to be, but for me, it’s no longer enough. I am choosing a new road of being anti-racist. If the roadmap were clear and easy, I would have chosen this long ago. It’s not. What must I do that I haven’t done? What must I say that I haven’t said? Where should I stand that I haven’t stood? When do I do something I’ve never done before? If I had all the answers, it would be so much easier. I would feel so much clearer about being anti-racist. Though I may not know all that being anti-racist involves, I know it includes being, doing, and saying more about individual and institutionalized racism in this country founded on equality for all.

I believe I will know when I need to, and then it will be enough for me to be in the right place, doing the right thing, in the right way. Can I change this country? Probably not the way I would like to, but I can change myself. And a changed me, will bring a little bit of change in my parts of this country. I promise that I will never again be blind and deaf to racist comments and actions around me from family, friends, or total strangers. Then, O Lord, may I never again have to say to myself and You that “I know it wasn’t enough.”