I am somewhat of what you would call a paradox. A 25 year old white male from Memphis, Tennessee, I grew up in white neighborhoods, attended mostly white schools, am the son of a police officer, and was a member of a mostly white Southern Baptist church until I was in college. But somewhere along the way I started hanging in the “black parts of town”. Listening to old school hip-hop (at one point I was naive enough to think Young Jeezy and Tupac were talking about my experience, but we all go through that phase, right?). Wearing my hat sideways and my pants a little big “like the black kids did”- catch the sarcasm in those quotation marks please. Playing basketball and attending football games with mostly black friends. You could say I was double dipping in the black and white communities from the teenage years on, but I kept my worlds pretty separate. Separate but equal, right? Spending only surface level time in the black community, I was naive to the inequality that now stands out so clearly. Then, at 20 years old I decided to move out of white, suburban America and into a 99% African American community in the heart of the inner city, Orange Mound. Here i’ve been a victim of crime, witnessed police brutality, and seen the effects of gang violence, education inequality, and the overall hardships that have become the status quo for most of black America. And here was where I learned that black and white were separate but anything but equal, and that I had no clue whatsoever of the struggle that comes with being black in America.
America, we’ve got a lot to learn.
5 years later and i’ve been to over 30 countries and interacted with dozens of people groups- majority and minority- and governmental, economic, and societal systems. As i’ve seen the problems that plague other nations, i’ve become even more convinced of the systemic racism that plagues ours, and our need for healing as a nation, but i’ve struggled to hope that healing is possible. Most whites where I come from that haven’t had the same opportunities or experiences as i’ve had are convinced that racism doesn’t exist anymore. We deny the inequalities in the education system. We deny the negative effects that the war on drugs has had on black families and communities. We struggle to understand what it looks like to live under a system that was NOT DESIGNED to work in our favor. And why should be made to feel bad for something that our ancestors did? And in the African American community, frustration understandably abounds. Mistrust of police and the white community is now the norm. The media doesn’t help, and tensions are high. Sometimes protests turn violent, which doesn’t help, but it begs the question- “wouldn’t you hit back to if you had been beat up on all your life?” Despite recent activism, there have been few signs of hope for a more united and EQUAL America, and we haven’t seemed to make a lot of progress in recent years. I constantly find myself asking, “What can be done?”. This thing is too big and the roots go to deep. Where do we start?
In October of last year, I had a revelation of where to start as I visited South Africa and learned how it had taken it’s first steps toward healing.
The Story
I was spending some down time in Cape Town with some friends and was elated to find myself visiting Robbyn Island, the piece of rock 8 miles off the coast of Cape Town that held Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners captive for over 20 years during Apartheid. Mandela has recently become one of my heroes for the role he played as South Africa’s president after the end of apartheid, faithfully guiding the country forward so that all men (including former oppressors) could play an equal role, so it was surreal getting off the boat on the island where he had been imprisoned. I was expecting a history lesson, but I received much more.
As I got off the bus in front of the prison, a man named Sipho (his name means “Gift” in Zulu) informed us that he would be our guide through the prison. He then informed us that he had been a prisoner there for over a decade during the heart of apartheid, and had had many interactions with Mandela. I was elated at this unexpected gift! As we began our tour, tears filled my eyes as we entered the very chamber in which Sipho and dozens of other prisoners had been kept, and he described to us what day to day life in the prison was like. He described the endless beatings, tortures, and injustices suffered at the hands of the guards. He described the hunger strikes, the political schooling, and other activities (most sanctioned by Mandela himself) that the prisoners took to in order to keep up the fight and encourage hope. He told the story of his capture, and how one of his friends had died during interrogations prior to trial. He showed us the cell where Mandela and other leaders of the ANC were kept away from other prisoners so as to minimize their influence in the prison population. All of the hardships endured at the hands of white South Africans, hungry to remain in power at the expense of “the coloreds” or “blacks”. It was a heart-wrenching tour, but it was amazing to see what these men had been able to stand through. I asked myself how a nation could possibly heal after an entire people group had been treated this way, and I had only seen the tip of the iceberg.
I stayed back to talk to Sipho after everyone left and could barely keep myself together as he sat with me and asked about my home, even recommending some books when he saw my interest in learning about the history of black and white relations in South Africa. Here was a man giving a tour of the very prison that had taken his freedom for a long portion of his life. A man with no malice. A man who would not deny the wrongs that were committed against him but who would not hold on to them in hate. Here was a man who had been truly freed. And he looked at me, a white man- a member of the very group that had afflicted him- with graciousness and love and gave me extra time that he shouldn’t have. I was truly humbled to be around such a man. His strength and peace, despite all the hard ships, inspired me so much that for a moment, just a moment, I had hope for America.
I was silent for most of the remainder of the day as I thought about the lessons I had learned from Sipho, and how it applied to the country that we love.
Here’s what stood out, and here’s where I think we start:
During my time with Sipho, I learned that two of the 7 pillars of the new South African constitution are Responsibility and Reconciliation. When the ANC (the all-black political party headed by Mandela) came to power in South Africa, they refused to take revenge, as is so often done in Africa, on the groups that had been party to their oppression. Under Mandela’s leadership, they decided to empower and seek healing and reconciliation rather than retaliate. They sought relationship over winning an argument. We see this and applaud and hope the same will happen here in America. But here’s what is just as important: the ANC and it’s black and colored members refused to brush the wrongs committed against them under the rug. They refused to pretend like nothing ever happened. Instead, the ANC was vigilant about making sure that black South Africans would be able to air their grievances, and that justice would be served where necessary and forgiveness extended where possible. Through programs like the Committee for Truth and Reconciliation headed by Desmond Tutu, all the beatings, killings, imprisonment, discrimination, racial profiling – all of the injustice, both systemic and personal- would be brought to the light. And white South Africans that had taken part in it would have the opportunity to take responsibility for their wrongs and repent of the generations long suffering that had been caused. AND THEN IT WOULD BE FORGIVEN, sometimes with amnesty*. What a beautiful, painful, messy, and uncomfortable process this must have been.
And now South Africans don’t act like their ugly past never happened. They don’t silence people who talk about it because it makes them uncomfortable. They bear their scars as a reminder of what they’ve been through and are attempting to move forward in gladness that they’ve been able to start the healing process.**
And I believe that is where America’s biggest gap is in our struggle for racial equality. As a majority white nation, we’ve never taken the time to sit in the pain that was caused by slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and the police killings of unarmed black men. We’ve never taken the time as white America to hear the grievances of African Americans and say, “we were wrong, and we are sorry.” We brush it under the rug and keep going so as not to be made to feel guilty or uncomfortable. “Let’s not talk about that, that’s in the past”. And thus, African Americans haven’t been given the opportunity to forgive. And thus, we as a nation of more races and creeds than any other nation on earth, haven’t given ourselves the opportunity to heal.
I heard a pastor say once that “in order for forgiveness to happen, something has to die”. America, it’s time that we follow the lead of our South African brethren and die to our pride, our self-righteousness, our denial of wrongs, and our right to revenge.
It’s time we take responsibility for the pain that we’ve caused.
It’s time we forgive.
It’s time we reconcile.
And it’s time for us to heal.
Love,
Andrew
PS- If my words are hard to understand, Propaganda tells a story that might help break it down a little better: Propaganda’s letter to America
*Forgiven where the crimes were shown to be politically motivated and proportionate. Particularly heinous crimes were charged, but a large number of petitions for forgiveness where granted. The actual effectiveness of the TRC is debated, but it’s a small example of how South Africa worked towards taking responsibility and reconciling.
**I say attempting because the ANC now has a new president who sadly doesn’t share the beliefs of Mandela and his party members. The country is again being divided under his leadership, or lack thereof.
