Do all lives matter equally in your world? (What do you know about white privilege?)
The summer between sophomore and junior year in college found me and my classmates involved in a six week Priestly Formation Program. The third week was called Communications week – an entire week designed to make us just barely “emotionally-verbal” guys able to talk about and deal with our inner and mostly invisible emotional world. One of the activities had a much bigger impact than that. About mid week, we broke into groups and were given the scenario – each group was in its own life boat. And someone had to go or EVERYONE dies. No one can volunteer to go. You had to justify why you got to stay on the raft (and by process of elimination, someone else didn’t.) We protested about the rules. “Nope. They are unchangeable!” We tried to volunteer. “Not allowed!” The question was persistent and brutal. “WHY do you get to stay? WHY do YOU get to stay alive and safe in the boat when someone else doesn’t?”
I could not answer that question. There was nothing innately different about me than any of the other guys in our little life boat. I was probably a little smarter than most. Not as athletic as some. Quieter than others. I wasn’t a doctor – had no skills that would make me more or less valuable than any of my peers in the life raft. My birth to a set of lower middle class parents didn’t reserve me a spot on that boat. My prayer life did not earn me the right to stay there. Nor did my GPA or my Varsity Soccer Letter allow me to remain. There was not a single thing I could think of that justified me as having more worth than anyone else on that boat so as to earn me the right to stay. Not a single thing I could have said to make me more worthy of being allowed to stay in that boat. (and conversely, LESS worthy, either)
As I reflected, later that evening, for the rest of that summer, and really, for the rest of my life since then, I came to know this truth of the Spirit that I believe applies to all of us. Stripped down to the bare, essential, self, I am here by the will and pleasure of God, and nothing more. And nothing less. And that gives me infinite value. As it does every other human being on this planet. I matter, not because of the color of my skin, nor because of my skills or talents or education or the opportunities that I was afforded – but simply and ONLY because I am God’s own. I was the recipient of a covenant with God and his love for me – the covenant called LIFE. I did not control the fact that I was born to two white parents in the middle of South St. Louis county suburbia. I had nothing to say about my race, gender, hair color, build – everything that I have ever known about myself. At the start, it was given to me as grace and gift.
THAT is where the church starts her teaching, not just about the sanctity of life, but in every discussion we are called to have about race and privilege and equality. My life matters no more, OR no less than any other life on this planet. Period.
So, as you may know, the Archbishop has asked every priest in the archdiocese to address the issue of race this first Sunday of Lent. What I want to propose as a starting point for our conversations about race and privilege and prejudice, is exactly this truth of the Spirit I learned that summer – that all lives matter EQUALLY. We are all in the lifeboat called planet earth. None of us earned that right to be here or to stay here. It was just given to us.
And yet, here is where I really came to know and experience that emotionally charged and uncomfortable term called white privilege. My past 16 years taught me that, though we are all created equal, some of us are treated as more equal than others by the opportunities that are afforded us. So, when I was transferred from St. Ann parish to St. Justin Martyr parish, I moved about 15 miles as the crow flies. And I moved, literally, from the worst performing school district in the state of Missouri – Normandy – to the best, (or at least one of the top three) in the state – Lindbergh.
So, if instead of having been one of six kids birthed to Fred and Mary Kempf here in south St. Louis County, I had been one of the five kids born to Francis and Jane Opiyo, a hard working couple from St. Ann parish, my educational opportunities would NOT have been equal. My life would matter in that I at least have the opportunity of a public education, but it would not matter as much in terms of the product I would receive living in the Normandy school district. None of that is because of anything I would have done or not done, but simply because I was born at a spot 15 miles away from here.
And whether you like the terms or bristle at them, this is what is known in our Catholic heritage as institutional racism and in the common parlance as white privilege. Not all lives matter equally, because not all lives are given the same opportunity just because an accident of birth.
Here is the most uncomfortable truth about my time at St. Ann in Normandy: the fact that, even while being pastor in that parish, doing my darndest to keep St. Ann school afloat as an education opportunity for Francis and Jane’s kids, I did little but write a few letters to my local congressmen and women about this disparity for all the other kids in that neighborhood. To that extent, I was and am guilty of the soul sickness that Pope Francis calls racism. Until the day when EVERY man, woman and child on this lifeboat called St. Louis/the earth has the same opportunity to flourish, regardless of where they live, then institutional racism is alive and well and flourishing.
That is the racism I believe we need to confront. Not the “person “X” treats person “Y” in a way that demeans and belittles them because they have a different pigment in their skin” (though that too, is its own serious issue) – but the structures that keep people trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequality. That is deeper soul sickness I/we need to see and deal with.
SOOO, what do we do? Obviously, ONE homily addressed on the topic of racism throughout the Archdiocese, does not end this soul sickness. That being said, let me suggest three things.
1) Start with your own “life boat moment.” When did you become (or have you yet to become) convinced of the radical equality of every human being in the sight of God? If you don’t at least know that in your head, (and hopefully in your heart) then get on your knees before the cross and pray before Jesus until you are converted. REPENT and hear the good News, is what Jesus tells us today.
2) Join us in our “Lenten Conversations: Hearing God’s call for Racial Reconciliation” – these next five Sundays of Lent. In the Gathering space here starting right after Lenten vespers or at 4:45, whichever comes first.
3) Read the Ferguson Report – (google: The Ferguson Report) there are 40 ACTION AREAS with about 200 possible actions steps – I suspect you will be able to find something very concrete to do…. (or read Cardinal George’s pastoral letter on Racism, or the book – Waking up White and Finding myself in the Discussion on Race)
I’ll never forget that moment when I realized I was in a lifeboat, not because I earned it or deserved it or was more worthy or less worthy than everyone else in that boat – but because I had been gifted and graced by a generous God. Though I have not been the best at living that truth in my life, (heck, I am not even sure I would have had the courage to talk about race in this homily, had the Archbishop not asked me to) today, I begin anew. Join me, if you would, in that lifeboat – and let us not stop until every life matters, both in theory and in fact…