“Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves, for the rights
of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights
of the poor and needy (Proverbs 31:8-9).” "Our lives begin to end the
day we become silent about things that matter (Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.)."
Who are those who cannot speak up for themselves? Are
not we in danger of becoming paternalistic in obeying this command from
God’s Word? Is it not indeed better for people to speak for themselves?
More than a century ago, Mr. Booker T. Washington encouraged the young
graduates of Tuskegee Institute, which included my grandmother, Esther
Louise Driskell:
"I have learned that success is to be measured
not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the
obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Out of the hard
and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a
strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively
smooth by reason of birth and race."
Only when we consider the
social context of the early 1900s, in the midst of a Jim Crow world,
where the right to vote, to protest injustice, to protect the men, women
and children of our families from economic exploitation, false
accusation, lynching, murder and rape became virtually non-existent, can
we truly grasp the words of this great man. Mr. Washington was not
dismissing these circumstances. In fact in that same speech, he spoke
out most forcefully that “to be separate yet equal in the things that
every man requires, the Negro must have the resources guaranteed to all
Americans to achieve that same dream to which we all aspire.”
Those political parasites in the 21st century who feed off of the quotes
of great men and women saints like Dr. King, Mary McCleod Bethune,
Dorothy Height, Malcolm X, Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells Barnett
practice the worst and most brazen form of genocide. They use the words
of “freedom” to justify the continued vicious oppression of those who
are marginalized because of class, race and status. They seek to
separate these great leaders and their words from the political and
social contexts in which they spoke and wrote. They bastardize pure
words of encouragement, faith, hope and love to a hopeless discouraged
people, to justify and legitimize the continued marginalization of the
black-brown poor and “different”.
We should not be surprised.
The sacred Word of God has for centuries been so misused in support for
avarice, conquest, exploitation, genocide, theft, and torture that gave
some their “affluence” and “power” over the many of our world. Booker T.
Washington spoke to those African American students in 1909 reminding
them that notwithstanding their hard and well-earned degrees, they faced
“hard and unusual struggle” that they were “compelled to pass through.”
Washington clearly understood that what Black African
Americans faced in 1909 was both cruel and unusual, but given the
realities for people of color (African Americans, Latino Americans,
Asian Americans. Armenian Americans and at that time all Jews and
Italians) in a white Supremacist country, they had little option but to
work to develop “strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway
is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.”
Parenthetically speaking, the latter part of this quote should dispel
the idea in anyone’s mind that Booker T. Washington was a “white man’s
‘Kneegro’,” for his comment is clearly a swipe at a race of people who
got free land, free resources, free passage and settlement (its army
forcibly removing and murdering the Native American population) and
often arrived in America with many advantages compared to those who
arrived in chains.
Washington was alluding to these perquisites, which enabled that same race to so ably build its white supremacist Republic.
Booker T. Washington did not argue that success was impossible or
possible for those who heard him. He did not have the luxury of such
Socratic inquiry, and neither did they. He spoke words that sunny
morning in May that required the “leap of faith” from its hearers that
those later existentialist theologians like Kierkegaard, Tillich,
Bultmann and Barth would proclaim. Yet these great theological minds
failed to cite a single example from the words of this great architect
of the American Republic or any other person of color. All of the
examples of their “new” religious ideology fell within the framework of
the white Supremacy that Western Europe and the United States of America
has so carefully crafted.
Ironically in 2012 most white and
immigrant Americans continue to remain ignorant of these famous men and
women, because their complete life stories and contexts remain
"un-documented" in American international propaganda, American history
texts, and new neo-racist elementary and high school texts in some of
our largest states, where they are seeking to remove any positive
credible memory of the same. A whole new generation of white Americans
is committed to perpetuating the lie that “the white man built America”
with no credible initiative, planning, innovation or even assistance
from the persistently invisible men and women of color. It is not enough
to make people of color and themselves overpay and be overcharged for
their own houses, and to deny mortgages to even those of us who can
afford to live in their safe lily-white havens. It is not enough to
deny us opportunities for business, for education, for the redress of
centuries of unpaid labor, of reparation which will give us access to
information, credit, education and commerce, but they must take our very
words and use them as weapons against us.
So back to my
initial questions, “Who are those who cannot speak up for themselves?
Are not we in danger of becoming paternalistic in obeying this command
from God’s Word? Is it not indeed better for people to speak for
themselves?
Of course it is better for people to speak for
themselves. So a real challenge that all of us face is “to hear what the
people in the margins have to say, before we presume to speak for
‘them’.” I would argue that we must speak up for those who cannot speak
as a means of reparation for the sins of our ancestors and ourselves.
This includes all of us.
There are children who cannot speak
in our communities because they lack the basic family unit through which
love and culture and meaning and life are transmitted. There are whole
families who cannot speak because our society renders them invisible by
virtue of class, race, education, and neighborhood. There are black and
brown LGBT people who cannot speak because they have a hard time
getting a hearing in communities where “life and death survival” too
often continues to be the pressing agenda and any other agenda seems a
threat to the same. In addition they remain plagued with the white
supremacy of the larger majority LGBT community.
There are the
children who cannot speak for themselves because our society does not
empower children. Rather our legal system preys on their vulnerability,
to initiate them into the criminal justice “cradle to the grave”
pipeline at an early age, so that the children of the majority
class/race group can exploit their misery to pay off their law school
loans.
We must speak for men and women who no matter how
creative and skilled and well-educated have trouble finding gainful
employment or clients or customers because no one will hire them, obtain
them for service or buy from them if the melanin in their skin is too
evident.
Surely I am only skimming the surface of those who
cannot speak for themselves. Who speaks for the victims of gang
violence, of domestic abuse, of the exploitation for entertainment and
sex and violence of poor women, children and men? The media does not
tell their stories. One reason it does not is because there are
prominent well-heeled predators who can afford to buy silence, to
travel, to buy the small fists of young black and brown boys for their
illegal sport and their bodies for gratification, to obtain the best
legal defense necessary if they are not judges and senators and
congressmen/women themselves, to show up on college campuses as
prominent alumni willing to lure young impoverished women (and men)
seeking to better their lives with limited resources.
God
challenges us through the ancient Hebrew folk wisdom recorded in
Proverbs 31:8, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for
the rights of all who are destitute.” But not only must our individual
voices be raised, God requires us to “Speak up and judge fairly; defend
the rights of the poor and needy. Through the courts, through
legislative assemblies, city councils, tax boards, university senates
and boards of regents, injustice is the name of the game for the poor.
No one is there to defend them. No one is there to stop the rabid
incarceration of black and brown children so that the gears and wheels
of the criminal justice system can remain well oiled and operational.
Who will be there to speak for the right to a quality free education
(k-grad school), to the hope of a livelihood? Who will make the demand
for quality comprehensive health care, even for ALL-“all means all? Who
will demand adequate and comfortable housing and nutrition for all of
the citizens of our great Republic? Who will fight to change the system
by joining with others who are so engaged to make out of America a
nation ruled by real justice, love and human fulfillment in 2012?
There are consequences if we choose not to obey this Word of wisdom. To
paraphrase Dr. King from above, we in our silence and inaction will
have decided that our lives have ended.
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