fearing the rise of the abolition movement in the North, slaveholders throughout the South strengthened laws governing slaves and free people of color, known as “black codes.” The black codes governed enslaved people as well as four categories of free people. By putting both into one legal category, whites divided the population along racial lines, not along categories of free and unfree.
This video was produced soon after President Barack Obama was elected. “The legacy of Jim Crow will not be over with the election of a man of color who is the best and the brightest. It will only end when average people of color have the same access, opportunities and privileges as average white person.
“At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses… The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed” Rabbi Heschel. For Moses, like for many of us, the thought of walking the path of racial justice seemed scary. Fear was part of the process.
“Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it’s required your ignorance… while I, and just about any person of color who has spent their lives in a white supremacist society, know enough about white culture to write a book or two on whiteness and option the bestseller movie rights, y’all know almost nothing about us and even less about yourselves…”
No spiritual people with a devotion to the work of justice will want to be seen as in favor of racism. Therefore: We acknowledge these aspects and commit to taking specific actions. Who better? — WE can do better. That of God within connected each of us soul to soul. Unexamined oppression keeps us apart, interrupts our union, our integration with each other and with our Creator. Diversity is the Divine. Nurture the Light within. Love is the song.
There is a lurking problem happening within “spiritual” thought and dialogue. Many people who view themselves as healers, “starseeds,” or spiritual teachers, are doing something dangerous: — spreading violence and aggression under the guise of love and light. … But racism is tricky. Racism is not a simple matter of “being racist” or “not being racist.” It is a complex, endemic, historical issue that lives within our collective psyche.