O Beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
The American Dream.
A beautiful land of peaceful dwelling places shining like pure, translucent alabaster – living monuments to a more perfect union where liberty and justice for all flow like the powerful life-giving waters of a mighty river.
A land of cities undimmed by human tears.
The American Dream.
__________
Ferguson, Missouri.
A fear-filled city choking on the toxic smoke of long-smoldering injustice now blown into full blaze by the violent winds of August 9, 2014.
A shot-dead boy.
A community’s outrage.
A mother’s tears.
O Beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
__________
There are “rights” and “wrongs” on all sides of the tragedy. You can find them in the actions of Michael Brown, the shot-dead boy – and of Darren Wilson, the police officer who fired the shots – and of Bob McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney – and of the protestors, some of whom turned to violence. We can – and will – debate these things ad nauseam as though the real issue is someone’s bad behavior on August 9th and afterwards.
But Ferguson is so much bigger than what these people did or didn’t do on that fateful day and in the days that followed.
Ferguson is about the Dream.
O Beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
A Dream unrealized for some.
As a white male for whom the American Dream has come true in many ways, I never really understood that there are many for whom the Dream remains an unreachable vision. It was at an Annual Conference of the International Council of Community Churches that my eyes were pried open to more clearly see the Dream-killing experience of racial injustice. A program called “The Agape Project” led a large group of people – blacks and whites – through a series of experiences designed to help us better understand each other. One memorable exercise invited all the men in the room to get up and stand against a wall. We did. Then the leader asked a series of questions that revealed the different experiences of blacks and whites. The most powerful moment for me came when the leader asked those men who had ever been stopped and questioned by a police officer while simply walking down the street to remain standing while those who had never been stopped to sit down.
All the white men sat down.
All the black men remained standing.
ALL of them.
And then it was right there in front of me – in black and white, if you will.
__________
There is something in that Agape Project experience that speaks to me about Ferguson.
The poison of racism still runs through the veins of America. It infects us all.
White people like me cannot ever fully understand or appreciate the ways in which racial injustice is experienced by black people. The best we can do is to come to grips with how we are complicit in it – both directly through our own attitudes and behaviors and, just as importantly, indirectly through the larger systems of society.
And we need to LISTEN to what Ferguson is telling us about the Dream. LISTEN to the outrage. LISTEN to the anger. LISTEN to the pain.
And most of all, LISTEN to the cries of a mother.
O Beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
Today, the Dream goes unrealized for some in places like Ferguson, Missouri.
What the Dream will be like tomorrow is up to ALL of us.
__________
Marty, thank you for the posting. Your experience was a good way to see that their IS a racial bias in this country and it IS real; felt every day by the young black men. It saddens me, as a mother, that mothers must live in fear for the life of their innocent child as she sends them out into a country that expounds FREEDOM as its mantra.
An excellent, and eye-opening representation of how racial profiling does exist in this world. The question that continues to be unanswered for me is “Now what?” My Facebook feed is filled with stories of these three black men and how racial profiling exists. Rev. Al Sharpton is on his soapbox preaching about it. Obama says something needs to be done. But what are we doing? Where do we go from here? How do we move forward and start putting back together the shattered pieces of our communities?