Context is an Invaluable Thing

The Reverend Wright Scandal was not a big surprise for me, and I was not offended at all by the snippets of what he said. Mostly, this was because I carefully read and listened to what he said, and more than one touted statement was a quote.  The second reason is, I went to a religious school, with a very diverse student population, and there were two churches on one campus within a couple hundred feet of one another. A Black church and a White church. The White church even had the nerve to preach against the Black church. The pastor said the division was sad, because we were all God's children (or something sophisticated, along those lines).  The entire debate was what was really sad, because it revealed the fundamental misinformation, and lack of context, that the White church had on what the Black church represents. 

In college, and now, I spent my days in a world where I was the exception rather than the rule. There weren't a lot of Black english majors, or a lot of Black honors students.  And, no matter what anyone says, people prefer people who look like them. It shows them their own potential. And there is an assumed shared experience. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. It is a socialized aspect of humanity. It is why women and men will gravitate towards one another in a room. It is why groups of friends tend to share physical attributes.  It is why I went to the Black church. 

At the university, the only day of the week where I saw people in positions of responsibility who looked like me was at church. And, the preacher acknowledged this shared experience in his sermons.  I have the human condition of enjoying being around people who look like me. That is why I believe churches are segregated and will remain segregated until this tendency is eradicated for the socialization process. 

Because of this context, at university, the sermons were different in the Black versus the White church. The Black preacher talked about the shared experience, about the hurdles the church member experienced, about the reason that he or she was in that church building and not 200 feet away, at the White church.  The sermons were firey. The rhetoric was intense. The service always ran long, and no one complained. This was at the Black church.  This was, pretty much, the opposite of the White church. 

This is why I understand Reverend Wright. Do I agree with everything he says? No. But the things that he said are whispered quietly in diverse communities by the Black community members, and discussed loudly at family events for Black families. I heard about the "AIDS conspiracy" long before Reverend Wright preached it (about 10 years ago, not yesterday, but whatever).  Furthermore, because many Black people feel like they are strangers and outcasts in this country, I understand why the idea of saying "God damn America" just might be what you want to hear, after a work week of feeling like you were being dumped on by all the accepted "Americans" around you.  America has a very negative history of race relations. This history is reinforced every time the media talks about men murdered by police officers, and missing Black children reported on years after their disappearance.  If you weren't a recipient of this negative history, you probably wouldn't think about this. Maybe not ever. But if you live in a world that looks nothing like you, and you struggle to fit in, and struggle to make your way, because of something about you that you didn't choose and had no part in, this history would be weighing on your mind regularly, a painful reminder of all the things in the world we can't control.