Color Me Human

And if prayer doesn't seem to be cutting it, you'll be happy to know that I'm licensed to perform exorcisms as well.



But seriously!



Incidentally, if my sermons occasionally sound like a stand-up comedy routine to you guys, there's a reason for that: I used to have a weekend gig at the Moondust Lounge over here at the Holiday Inn on Mercury Boulevard -- until I saw the error of my ways (not to mention the insufficiency of my paycheck) about two years ago and decided it was time for me to straighten up and fly right. (Yes, I know it may be hard for some of you to believe this, but I was something of a scamp before I saw the light. Aye, don't let this cherubic visage of mine fool you.) Long story short, I signed up at the local Community College Seminary over there on Pipkin Street (that big green building beside that enormous new Wawa with those 2,000-some-odd gas pumps surrounding it)... and before you knew it (but in reality thanks to a truly oppressive course load of 15 credits a semester, including summer and evening classes, which, in fact, ran me so ragged in the long run that I finally broke down and sought out some on-campus psychological counseling during my final semester: oh, the bells, the bells!) I was a certified clergyman: Have pulpit, will preach.




I try to remember where I am, of course, and keep my secular one-liners to a minimum when I'm up here 'getting my praise on' like this, but every now and then my suit of motley begins showing through my holy vestments and for a minute there I actually expect to hear a rim shot, even in church -- at least after some of my wittiest pronouncements from the pulpit.



We're short on time today, my friends, but not to worry: I've instructed the ushers to come around DURING my sermon this morning to collect the offering. Remember, we take most major credit and debit cards. Unfortunately, there's still a glitch in the system that causes the miniature ATM screen to ask you if you want cash back after your transaction. As always, we ask you to answer "no" to that question, since we don't want to appear to be conducting our personal banking business, so to speak, on God's time. There's also a small possibility that the device will ask you if you want to buy stamps. Although our Bishop has determined that it wouldn't necessarily be a sin to press "yes" for that option (stamps being a basic necessity, from a practical point of view), our ushers don't have time to coordinate stamp-related transactions, so again, if you're prompted about buying postage stamps, just press the "no" button.



Now then, I'm sure you've all noticed by now (if only thanks to the church's new -- and in my opinion, ridiculous if not outright blasphemous -- neon sign out front) that I'll be sermonizing on the subject of race relations this morning.





I know, I know: It's a dangerous path to tread, especially for a holy mucker such as myself who doesn't want to offend a fly, much less a real live parishioner such as yourselves, but...



Where to begin, where to begin...



First, let me say this: Look out bigots on both sides of the color line because I'm going to exorcise a few demons here this morning, can I get a witness here?



Whoo-hoo! You think Chris Rock is controversial: Watch out, son!



Ahem. I mean, Praise the Lord, of course.



Unfortunately, this race relations business is complicated though, because this color line itself is problematic.



If you ask me (as well you might, since I am a certified know-it-all on the subject of holiness -- my Community College Seminary degree is in the parsonage for everyone to see, drop by anytime, we're always open) -- If you ask me, there should be no such thing as a color line in a nation whose major cities are increasingly full of flesh tints of every color of the rainbow, especially when this epidermal variety is blatant not just within these cities as a whole, but often within individual families that live in these cities!



Take me, for instance. (Look at my wife over there in the front row: She's like, "Yes, PLEASE, take him: Somebody! Anybody!")



No, seriously, seriously.



Sorry, I'm having another flashback to my days at the Moondust Lounge, I'm afraid.



In fact, I was just about to say: "Let's hear it for Johnny O. and the band!"



Now then, where was I?



Oh, yes: Take me, for instance.



I have a brother-in-law who is dark-skinned, I have a niece who is brown-skinned, and I have a sister who is light-skinned.



Now, according to my way of looking at it, that's a rainbow of shades, my friends, a continuum of skin colors, and we should look at it as such and say, joyfully: "See, we're all part of this wonderful rainbow of colors!"



The problem is, that's not the way that modern society is taught to look at our family. According to modern society (whether you're a white Klan apologist in the south or a black separatist advocate in the north -- or just an everyday American who's unconsciously influenced by the dualism perpetuated by these two radical camps) -- most Americans will look at our family and tell me that I have a black brother-in-law, a black niece, and a white sister.



Work with me here, folks.



Now, there may be some who will go so far as to admit that I have a black brother-in-law, a brown niece, and a white sister -- but unfortunately, that doesn't mean that they're embracing the full rainbow of skin colors any more than the racists described above. Because most folks who allow for such a tripartite distinction are doing so on the premise that there are two meta-races in the world: namely, 'people of color' (i.e., blacks, browns, ecru...) and 'whites.'













And let me repeat: This arch-Manichean dualism approach to evaluating people via skin color (or via groups of skin colors) is championed both on the separatist left and the blatantly bigoted right. That fact alone should tell us that there's something wrong with this way of thinking.



Can I get a witness here?







Oh, dear. Looks like I'd better start updating some of my stand-up comic resumes in case our notoriously censorious church board decides to give me the boot after this morning's sermon. (Chairwoman Sister Hattie is already giving me the evil eye up there in the balcony. I see ya, Sister, you dear old coot!)



Ahem.



Fortunately, the ushers appear to have collected most of your tithe money before I started getting controversial up here, so I'm good to go -- as long as I can win you guys over to my way of thinking by next Sunday, that is.



And now, ladies and germs --



Oops, there I go again with my Moondust schtick --



I will conclude today's sermon by specifically blaming the two camps that are doing all within their power to keep my rainbow vision of race from becoming a reality.



First of all, I will address the 'white' racists in our society.



(Incidentally, I make no bones about speaking in terms of 'blacks' and 'whites' in the past, to the extent that that was how folks referred to themselves in the past of which I speak. What I object to is the notion that we should consciously retain those racist distinctions moving forward, now that we are consciously aware of their divisiveness and their increasing lack of plausible descriptiveness given the ever-increasing variety to be found in the nation-wide palette of human skin color.)



You know what, though? I changed my mind: I'm not going to address the 'white' racists at all, because that kind of attitude is just SO wrong, I wouldn't know where to begin. Trust me, as a certified man of the cloth: God don't play that. He is NOT amused, know what I'm saying?



But I do want to tell Mr. or Mrs. Bigot to "Cut it out!" okay? because guess what? Every time I (as a so-called "white" person) get a suspicious or even nasty look from a complete stranger who happens to be a person of "color," I have you racist morons to thank (at least in large part) for the icy reception that I receive. So knock it off.



Now comes the non-PC part of my sermon, however, where I take the separatists to task on the other side of the color aisle, albeit fully acknowledging from the get-go that their errors are far more understandable given American history than are the wrong-headed opinions of white racists, whose prejudice in fact is actually rendered less defensible (and more despicable) against the backdrop of that same American history.



But... and this is one of those proverbial HUGE buts....



But... How can I put this? Work with me, people, work with me.



How many of you watch, of have at sometime watched, B.E.T., Black Entertainment Television.



Let's see, that looks like 292 of you. Anyway...



Any regular viewer of such B.E.T. programing as "My Two Cents," "Baisden After Dark," or "Parallel Paths" knows (or they can easily infer based on the attitudes espoused therein) that the show producers recognize two meta races:



One meta-race (referred to either as Black People or People of Color) contains (in fact it encompasses, it celebrates, it rhapsodizes about the seemingly inherent positive qualities of) black, mulatto, cafe au lait, quintoons, quadroons, octoroons, you name it.



Yes, folks, it's a wonderful rainbow world for everybody...



Except me.



I'm "white," you see, which is the other meta race in 21st century America ('white' apparently not constituting a color, even though I look at my skin and I don't see anything approaching 'white,' of course -- tan, gold, burnt sienna, maybe -- but no white). I can't join in all the reindeer games being played by the multi-colored children of B.E.T.'s big happy family because I'm tainted with the blood of my supposedly sinning forefathers. Mind you, if I can dig up so much as one 'colored' blood relative in my family's past (just one! even from the distant past), I, too, will be embraced, celebrated, and allowed into the colorblind club constituted by the meta-race just mentioned. Lacking that however, I am simply "white" and therefore ineligible to join the rainbow-colored Family of Man, at least not as a full-fledged member.













Oh, technically, they may let me in the building, but who wants to go where the sidelong glances and sneers are always reminding one that they are a second-class citizen, that they are going to forever be 'put through their paces' as a sort of cosmic payback for the supposed sins of their fathers?



I submit to you, fellow sinners, that this B.E.T. racial zeitgeist (i.e. this tacit ongoing moral division of the world into two meta races, one innocent and one morally suspect) is wrong and, by definition, racist in itself. You can argue that this mind set is completely understandable in light of American history, and I might even agree... but it's still wrong and inimitably non-Christian (except perhaps in the inexplicable Biblical read of the Pastor Wrights of the world, who, often being partially 'white' themselves from a genetic point of view, are really only condemning themselves when they rage at others based solely on their supposed membership in a given racial group). True, there can be advantages for a cynical politician in thus dividing the world into moral day and night, since it can give them at least the appearance of a moral edge in political debate, a sort of perpetual PR boost that comes merely from being the perceived underdog in a nation that loves the underdog, but one can't meaningfully assess the morality of individuals (as this dualist mind set would have us do) based merely on the presence or absence of one drop of genetic blood in a given human being. Moreover, even if it were true that the individual members of one particular skin-color group (read 'whites' in this case) DESERVED to be saddled with the sins of the world, the Christian thing would be to forgive them and not to eternally put these individuals through their paces in consideration of the past wrongs in question, keeping the occasionally rotten branches of their family tree hanging over them like the sword of Damocles. After all, how can we expect mere mortals (of ANY color) to bear the weight of the world's sins on their individual shoulders?



The answer is, we can't. Indeed, we mustn't.



Why? Because the only rational response for someone receiving such enormous existential blame is to avoid the people who tacitly level the charges (and/or to lash out against the accusers with a sort of reactionary racism) -- and this is, in fact, what is happening today. This is the cause of the much ballyhooed uneasiness that the two meta-races claim to feel when together in a room, this subtext of implicit blame. This is the socially divisive racial undercurrent of 21st-century America, imported from the 20th century, of course, but imported in bad conscience since we moderns profess to hold color-blindness as our ideal starting point for social interaction. This is the unspoken but eternally present racial premise that keeps 'blacks' mistrustful and/or disdainful of 'whites', and 'whites,' in their turn, either apologetic and/or defensive toward 'blacks'. This, in short, is the relationship-foiling social presupposition that makes color-blind communication between mere apolitical individuals these days a practical impossibility -- much to the delight (oh, the telltale irony of this concluding fact!) of both white racists and black separatists.



Let us pray.



Um, no, on second thought: Let everybody ELSE pray. I'm going to get the heck out of Dodge before I get an earful from both white racists and black separatists alike. Though come to think of it, there's presumably few white racists in the pews on account of this is church for folks of every color of the rainbow... including that, ahem, color called 'white,' thank you very much, friends.



I'm just digging myself in deeper here, aren't I?



Sister Sarah, take us out of here on your Fender Deluxe Roadhouse Stratocaster!



Hit me with a little "Rock of Ages," Jimi Hendrix style.



What's that, sister? It's actually a Doublebass Road King?



Whatever, sister, whatever. Now, PLAY!



(Doublebass Road King, indeed! Humph!)



Oh, be sure to pick up a copy of my new pamphlet on your way out. It's called "On Ending the Self-Imposed Apartheid in American Churches."

From the Desk of Pastor Patrick J. O'Really To: American Pastors Subject: On ending the self-imposed apartheid in American Churches Come on, American churches! Wake up, already! It's the 21st century, after all, and here you guys are, as racially segregated as ever, in some ways, even more so than you were 200 years ago in Colonial days. For shame! How can we preachers continue to plausibly speak of the Christian value of universal brotherhood in the increasingly hue-rich 21st-century when the very demographic breakdown of the congregations to which we're preaching silently testifies to the hypocrisy of our words? No, this integration I'm calling for isn't going to be a simple thing. In many cases, there are different emphases in worship styles that must be acknowledged, understood and respected on all 'sides' before we can successfully move forward beyond today's self-imposed spiritual apartheid to a new color-blind worship paradigm that makes sense in the color-rich world of 21st-century America. Above all we'll need a sense of humor and a readiness to laugh (together, of course, and even at ourselves, when necessary) at the many well-meaning missteps that we'll doubtless make in attempting to create these universal congregations, but our mere ongoing attempts to accomplish this noble goal will testify to the sincerity of our words when we henceforth invoke such otherwise hollow-sounding concepts from the pulpit as "peace, love, and understanding." How will these rainbow churches of the future operate, on Sunday morning, for instance? That will be up to their respective congregations, of course, as guided by a multiracial leadership with a vision of this desperately needed future. But it's time to experiment and grow, and think 'outside the box.' Time to think outside yesterday's 'one size fits all' (or rather 'two sides fit all') black/white paradigm when discussing Christian communities in the U.S. This is simply the right thing to do. (Besides, you guys know perfectly well that over half of your congregations out there are losing members at record rates, especially among the hypocrisy-sensing young people, so if this strategy of mine sounds risky for your worship community, maybe it's time that you went out on a limb in any case, if only to stop the demographic hemorrhaging evidenced by your ever-dwindling attendance figures.) Comprendo, Pastors? All I'm asking (for now, at least) is that you guys think about this idea of mine and then 'talk amongst yourselves' about it (as Mike Myers used to say in his old Coffee Talk sketch on Saturday Night Live). Perhaps these churches I envision could offer a variety of worship opportunities, each one emphasizing a different style of worship, one more culturally familiar to Community 'A', another more traditionally practiced by Community 'B'. The crucial thing is that each such service (or mini service) of this kind (or of this particular 'emphasis') should be attended by ALL members of the congregation, in a spirit of respect for 'the other,' with an openness to the possibility of actually learning something from a culture from which they have been systematically separated for far too long by the American Christian community's self-imposed apartheid of the past. Father O'

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