Sermon: Nevertheless, Persist!

Nevertheless, Persist!

CMR Royce James

February 4, 2018

Unitarian Society of New Haven

 

9am Reflection: “Black Lives Matter: A Personal Perspective”

 

Everyone please rise as you are able.

Only remain standing if you have ever had a child, teenager or younger, be a significant part of your life, that you think about more than once a week.

 

Now only remain standing if you have ever been concerned about this child being killed by police.

 

Rev. Marta Valentin taught me that it is important to witness the truth around us, so please, take a good look around you now.

 

I suspect if I were to go around the way to Bethel AME and ask these questions, there may be a different final result.

 

Jordan Edwards…Jordan Edwards was only 15 years old when he was killed by police last May, one of 12 Black children killed last year by those sworn to protect and serve.

 

This is why we say: Black Lives Matter

 

As I walk out of my home and leave my family to don those CDR stripes and scrambled eggs, symbols that are a bastion of my station and military status. I enter a ritual of reflection on the protection (all be it somewhat limited) my uniform affords me now but not 10 min ago, and certainly not my Black daughters and son. See, because I am a husband, father, physicist, senior military officer, sibling, and activist I am what we call ‘woke’ or awake to the precarious position I walk in while I remember and pay homage to my mother’s little brother.  My Uncle Franklin McCain and his tight band of three visionary friends ignited a movement when they sat at a little lunch counter in Greensborough, NC just 58 years ago and their bravery envelops me to this day.

 

I have independently researched that:

Latinex siblings makeup ~ about 17% of the US population – the largest US minority, Blacks make up ~13%, and whites are about 64% everyone else is ~ 6% combined. According to the Washington Post[1], so far this year there have been 339 documented cases of fatal force used by police; 17% Latinex, 25% Black, and 40% white.

 

Ok, I don’t know about you, but I got to get my head wrapped around what this means. I had to first suspend my wish for the 987 people killed last year by police to actually be zero.  I think that most of our siblings on the Police Force also share this sentiment.  I hold in my heart of hearts, that they too put on a uniform and strap on a weapon hoping to never need to take it out of the holster let alone take someone’s life.

 

So then if we consider some of the other quality of life statistics:

Poverty Rate[2]: Blacks ~ 24% {2nd only to our Native American siblings at ~26%}, Latinex ~ 21%, whites ~ 9%

 

Education[3]: According to the National Council for education Statistics, the 2013 total college enrollment rate for White 18 to 24 year-olds is 42% and Latinex and Black students is 34%.

 

Life Expectancy[4]: Wait so if you are black you are less likely to have the education needed to be above the poverty line which is “fine” because you won’t need the money since you will live 10 years less (if you are a Black cis woman) – 14 years less (if you are a Black cis male) than the more educated white counterpart and to help the statistic along if you happen to still be alive in 2017, so far you are about 4 times more likely to be killed by police irrespective of your relation to any crime. We haven’t even touched the all-encompassing Prison Industrial Complex Pipeline as it perpetuates this latest form legalized slavery…13th….Watch it and then do your own research!

 

This is why we say: Black Lives Matter

 

These are just a few of the effects from the almost 400 years of systemic, institutionalized oppression, anti-blackness, and white supremacy that are on autopilot today. I say autopilot because at this point, there could be a total and unequivocal halt to all conscious discrimination and the oppression of people of color and indigenous people would be maintained. We ALL breathe the smog of white supremacy and anti-blackness. It is all around us.  We all can’t help but get some caught in our lungs.

 

However, from the self/internalized to the violent, externally focused, hate criminal – we all exist on the racist spectrum.

 

Now, it can’t be all doom and gloom – and it isn’t.  Yet, it is the reality that my eldest, Isis, and I found ourselves in as we made our way to the Black Lives Matter Convening in Cleveland Ohio.  This was a magical experience – an activist’s fairyland!  There were gender-neutral bathrooms, out, proud, and loud Black trans & transitioning siblings, plus raucous and joyful chanting circles expressing the pain, joy, and love of Blackness.  Isis and I had arrived in a haven of safety and kinship; enveloped in songs from the soul.

 

The very first session was in the campus’ performing arts hall set up with a podium and chairs filled with family members of slain Black people on the stage.  The family members came up to the microphone and testified about their family members stolen life and what that person meant to them while pictures were projected of the victims, larger than life, in celebration of one thing or another – in the embrace of one person or another – each one full of vibrant and precious LIFE.  There had to be over 2,100 people in the hall and there was not a dry eye in the place.  It was just the first hour and 15 min into the Convening, but I was Born Again – truly Baptized in the movement.  A movement of love.  A movement of justice. A movement for us all.

 

This is why I say: Black Lives Matter  

 

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/

[2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf

[3] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016007.pdf

[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/huge-racial-gap-in-life-expectancy-2014-1

 

10:30am Reflection

 

Perseverance and persistence required to continue our work in the world, to fight for peace and for justice, to dismantle oppression, while we continue to love our neighbor.

(sung)

Cain’t no one know at sunrise
how this day is gonna end.
Cain’t no one know at sunset
if the next day will begin.
In this world of trouble and woe,
a Member had better be ready to go.
We look for things to stay the same,
but in the twinkling of an eye, everything can be changed.
Cain’t no one know at sunrise
how this day is gonna end.
Cain’t no one know at sunset
if the next day will begin.

The social classification construct, ‘Black folks’, has literally become a mantra for persistence, perseverance, and grit that we as a people have incorporated the fight for peace, justice, and the dismantling of oppression into our cultural dysphoria.

Wait, did he say cultural dysphoria?  Don’t we want to fight for peace, justice, and to dismantle oppression?  Yes of course we do – and during Black History Month we take a pause to remember too few of the many examples:

Daisy Bates – Desegregation of schools in Little Rock

Mary McLeod Bethune – National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) & Bethune-Cookman College Founder

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett – Led the fight against lynching

Jo Ann Robinson – removed from the 5th row in 1949 paving the way for Rosa Parks in 55’

Elaine Brown – Assumed leadership of the Black Panther Party while Huey Newton was in Cuba. Initiated the free-breakfast program, free legal and medical clinics, and the Oakland Community Learning Center

“On February 1st, 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, four A&T freshmen students, Ezell Blair, Jr. (Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil & David Richmond walked downtown and “sat – in” at the whites–only lunch counter at Woolworth’s. They refused to leave when denied service and stayed until the store closed.”
– NC A&T’s Bluford Library

From a series of conversations in their dorm room, to the Woolworth’s lunch counter, the 4-classmates sparked a movement:

•        February 2nd, 1960 – twenty–five other students from A&T and other Greensboro colleges and universities joined them.
•        During the next 10 days, students across the state participated in similar sit–ins.
•        By the third week of February 1960, demonstrations had spread to at least 250 major cities and towns in the U.S. in which over 400 demonstrations took place by the end of 1960.
•        Ella Baker, who began working with the NAACP in 1940, left MLK & the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and went to Greensboro to join the sit-in movement.  Ms. Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University that April which birthed the
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — SNCC
•        Woolworth’s was desegregated by the end of July 1960.
•        As a result of this movement, significant events in civil rights history occurred:
•        The passage of the 1960 Civil Rights Bill.
•        The Interstate Commerce Commission ruling in September 1961 against racial segregation on interstate carriers and terminals.
•        The first National Public Accommodations Act in 100 years (Khazan 2004)

This moment in time mirrors events within our own faith tradition from BUUC (Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus) BAC (Black Affairs Council) to BLUU as Baba (Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika) describes it.

We have still not recovered from the mass exodus of Black UU’s during and just after infamous GA’s of 68 and 69.  Yet many still persisted to maintain a hold in the faith that our Black foremothers and forefathers like  Rev. Egbert Etherlred Brown (1875 – 1956), Rev. Lewis Allen McGee (1893 – 1979) and many many other Black UU’s who built our faith.  As many of you may know, Unitarian Universalism was not just built on the backs of slaves, but also by the hands, hearts, and minds of Black professionals.  We have been here since the inception of the faith – I believe we are here to stay.

Why do we continue to toil and love our neighbors (the oppressors) under this construct where hate, marginalization, and white supremacy are built into the SOP (standard operating procedures)? Cultural dysphoria

In my personal life I clearly see the legacy that is programed into my DNA from my roots. Yoruban traditions of the west coast of Africa (where I am quite sure my ancestors were stolen) manifests in the Egyptian and Yourban Orishas my children are named after:

Isis Marianthi
Yemaya Lee
Olorun Gustavo
Sati Oya

To our biweekly family event, Capoiera right here in New Haven.  Where the social justice, exercise, music, tradition, and self-defense come together in another plane of worship.

Icons from my more immediate family traditions, like my mother, continue to inspire me to battle on in my spiritual and professional Physics and Military standing and endeavors. Mom, then Warner May McCain (oldest of 8+) had to wait two years until her younger brother as old enough to “accompany” her to classes. Mom made great use of her time and became the hood’s “head teacher” instructing them in the basics (no pre-k or kindergarten then) especially for my Uncle, Franklin McCain.

Who knew that lessons and love that buoyed Uncle Frank would be the foundation for him to gather with a few friends and head down to the local whites only lunch counter and spark a movement.

Yes, I do believe that the social classification construct, ‘Black folks’, has literally become a mantra for persistence, perseverance, and grit. I also maintain that we as a people have incorporated the fight for peace, justice, and the dismantling of oppression into our cultural dysphoria. From here it is up to us as a people and individuals because the MOST DIRECTLY AFFECTED PEOPLE ARE EXPERTS AT THEIR OWN LIVES and WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS.