Love Knows No Boundaries?

 

                Every afternoon, after finishing up my work at Preston Taylor Ministries, I walk Dejoria and Juqua home. Dejoria and Juqua are in kindergarten and attend school at one of the metro schools in west Nashville. Dejoria is covered from head to toe in brightly colored accessories. She wears her neon, polka dotted socks pulled up to her knees, which compete for attention with her bejeweled, light up sneakers, that ignite with light and color each time her foot hits the pavement. As we walk a few blocks down the sidewalk to her home in the government housing neighborhood, we talk about the light that is being reflected on the clouds, the weather and how Juqua walks too slow. Dejoria clasps on to my hand, the moment that we step foot out of the door of the after school program and onto the sidewalk, that is typically decorated with litter; we slowly walk hand in hand sharing stories of the day. Juqua clasping on to my other hand, he is shy and introverted inside the community of his peers but loud and expressive as we venture down the concrete path; he tugs at my arm as soon as we reach a plot of grass on a hill that he can roll down. This moment, that I have briefly described, is most days, the best part of my day. It is in this way of being alive that I embrace the words that Neva spoke in Faces At The Bottom Of The Well by Derrick Bell, “True love knows no boundaries of race and politics.” (76)

Much of the focus of Derrick Bell’s text can be concluded from these words that he shared, “I’m convinced that racism is a permanent part of the American landscape.”(92). Preston Taylor Ministries, where I am employed part-time; I believe was founded on a hope to provide experiences for young people that will support them while they negotiate the difficult environment that they were born into. All of the children that attend the after-school program live in the housing projects in the same neighborhood and are African American children. I cannot help but wonder what kinds of difficulties they are meeting each day of their lives. Most of the children that attend “PTM,” begin the program when they are in kindergarten and finish when they are leaving the fifth grade. So, many of them are immersed in this faith-based ministry for six years of their lives, which is potentially just a brief piece of their childhood. I am a reading tutor/teacher, so I spend a lot of time with the children in a small group or one on one setting. I find my mind wondering off, while I am listening to their sweet voices; will this place mean something to them as they go on to middle and high school, will this experience mean something to them when someone talks down to them and degrades them, will these relationships mean something to them when they go out into the world to battle all the unfathomable circumstances that their beautiful black skin will grant them? When will they come to the same realization as Bell; “Despite our best efforts to control or eliminate it, oppression on the basis of race returns time after time--- in different guises, but it always returns. That all the formal or aspirational structure in the world can’t mask the racial reality of the last three centuries.” (97)

Bell strangely meets Erika, with WCBS, in the middle of nowhere, in the woods. She gives him a dissertation on the theory of racial realism. A vital theme within her theory was that, lastly, African Americans, in order to cope with this realization that racism was permanent are to in “fulfillment,” “despite the lack of linear progress,” find a “satisfaction in the struggle itself.” (98)  Words of wisdom from the white blonde lawyer toting a gun around in the woods, which we hope does not make a habit of accidentally shooting bullets at logs in which African American professors are resting against, when not fighting civil rights issues. How will African American people realistically find peace in accepting struggle from perpetual racism? If this is the place that we are going to come to with this social justice issue, does this mean that we should treat all others in the same way?

As I grip onto the delicate, cold hands of Dejoria and Juqua as we make our way thru the different colored town houses, I can not wrap my mind around the idea of accepting racism. I hope that my time in lecture this week will help me to see a perspective of Bell’s text that I was unable to see through my white lens. I need more hope and better answers to offer the life that feeds the pulse of these hands that I hold onto each day that fill me with immeasurable love and peace that knows no boundaries. I am interested in exploring how the message of the gospel is understood in the new light that accepts and acknowledges oppression of the flesh. What does the faith journey of a people that are perpetually oppressed and offered worldly hopelessness really look and feel like?

 

 

Bibliography

 

Bell, Derrick. Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York. Basic Books. 1992.