Raising Cain...

Truth and reconciliation, honor and healing, and another leap into the deep end of the pool

The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism —the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft. -- Roxanne Dubar-Ortiz in An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Revisioning American History) (p. 2, Kindle edition).

I wrestle with questions about black dignity in a world of white supremacy because I believe that the cultural and religious resources in the black experience could help all Americans cope with the legacy of white supremacy and also deal more effectively with what is called “the war on terror.” If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own black population—slavery, segregation, and lynching—then they might be able to understand what is coming at them from others. Black people know something about terror because we have been dealing with legal and extralegal white terror for several centuries. Nothing was more terrifying than the lynching tree. -- James H. Cone in The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Kindle edition).

  Slave trader's business in Atlanta, Georgia, 1864. Photo by George N. Barnard [Wikipedia]

 

Earth has a long and troubling history of oppression and exploitation -- humans against one another, the land, air, water and other species. Fortunately, humanity has many ways to bring love and justice to bear on the consequences. As a justice activist, I’ve engaged in a lot of them, but the focus that has inspired me most and longest is that of healing and transformation, both personal and planetary.

Events that have unfolded or intensified in the past few months -- police brutality and resistance to it emerging with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Native American and First Nations resistance to the KXL Pipeline, corporate land grabs and other challenges to sovereignty and protection of sacred lands -- lead me to believe it’s time for another leap into the deep end of the pool. I’m thinking that this will take the form of a personal truth and reconciliation (honor and healing) process.

Specific ideas about this came in moments of introspection, but they clearly were infused with voices calling from the frontlines of the resistance. I thought about my connections to these struggles, connections beyond those that have come as a result of involvement in social and environmental justice work.

 

Photograph from the mid-1870s of a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer. [Wikipedia]

 

Among my ancestors were settlers who arrived here on the Mayflower. And some who were slave holders. I am a descendant of colonists, people who anchored ideas and values of white supremacy into this land and built a nation upon them. Sometimes it's difficult, in light of ongoing oppression and exploitation in the United States and elsewhere, to integrate the realities of my lineage. But for reasons that I’ll explore in a future post, distancing from ancestors delays transformation and healing -- for everyone.

I’ll also detail in a future post how I determined where to jump in. For now, the short story: on November 27^th last year, while others came together to celebrate Thanksgiving, I curled up alone with An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Just before Christmas of 2014, I found the portal into the past of my slave-holder ancestors through The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James H. Cone.

The ideas in these books don’t support the version of American history or the “American Dream” I grew up with. As I write this post, I have finished both books. The places they took me were intense and, some of them, unexpected.

From Raising Cain to Resurrecting Abel

The quote is from MLK's 1967 speech, Where Do We Go From Here?  Photo credit: Wikipedia

 

Recently I changed the name of this blog (and another one at WordPress) from Raising Cain to Resurrecting Abel.

In my world view, the Biblical story of Cain and Abel is, in part, an allegory related to a specific episode or enactment in the early spiritual history of mankind on Earth. In particular, it encodes some specific information about ancient patterns of relationship that became anchored so tightly into the fabric of planetary life that we, as a human race, continue to struggle with it.  This relational pattern is — for the human collective — as enduring as what we might call a personality trait at the level of psychological development and expression.

And we see it every day. We know the pattern by many names: master-slave, racial caste systems, haves and have-nots, privileged and oppressed, structural racism. How those relationships play out, and the efforts of peace and justice activists to transform them, have been the focus of this blog.

What is it that draws people to justice work? For me there is no one answer, but, certainly, the notion that we are accountable to one another in some fundamental way seems to be at the heart of it. And with that idea has come a question: if we are accountable to each other (and to other species) how are we to be, know, and act in our lives to bring harmony for all life on Earth?

Hexagram 43 of the I Ching has some clues, I think...at least I seem to come back to it almost every time I ask myself this question. A major idea here is that one must "fight without quarter" if good is to prevail over evil. Then follows a pretty significant "however":

 

In a resolute struggle of the good against evil, there are, however, definite rules that must not be disregarded, if it is to succeed. First, resolution must be based on a union of strength and friendliness. Second, a compromise with evil is not possible; evil must under all circumstances be openly discredited. Nor must our own passions and shortcomings be glossed over. Third, the struggle must not be carried on by force. If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get entangled in hatred and passion. Therefore it is important to begin at home, to be on guard in our own persons against the faults we have branded. In this way, finding no opponent, the sharp edges of the weapons of evil become dulled. For the same reasons we should not combat our own faults directly. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue victorious. Finally, the best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good.[1]

I have long been curious how (specifically) ancient Cain consciousness won out ("Cain slew Abel"), setting the pattern for modern structural oppression. It seemed to me that knowing the details might be useful in very practical ways for justice work. When I put the question out to the universe, I got the sense that the original dynamics were in fact being re-enacted in ordinary affairs of humankind. So, for the past few years I've been looking at American politics -- as a ripe example -- to see what details are hidden in plain sight.

 

I'll tell the long story in future posts.

 

But here's the short story, and the reason I renamed my blog: Hexagram 43 is, for me, a blueprint for the core practice of justice work in a new Earth that is emerging -- cultivating awareness, intention and skillful means for making energetic progress in the good. And one thing this means for me is to focus on resurrecting Abel consciousness rather than raising Cain's.

---

[1] Richard Wilhelm (Translator), Cary F. Baynes (Translator), (1950, 1967). The I Ching or Book of Changes, Bollingen Foundation Inc., New York, N.Y.

 

Related Posts from this blog's archives:

Raising Cain: rediscovering ancient roots of structural racism

Cain and Abel in the 21st Century

See also: Shasta-Alaska 11 -- Resurrect Abel Consciousness (9/5/14, Healing Haven Under Hilarion)

Related articles

Anger, Privilege, and Invisible Injustice: What Cain and Abel Have to Do With Ferguson

The Genesis of Justice

Global Oness Day 2013

http://www.globaloneness2013.org/

James Peterson: Institutional Blackface

As I read this article I tried to place myself in history and did the math: my family moved from Chapel Hill, NC -- where my step-dad was working on his masters and PhD at UNC and Duke, respectively -- at about the same time that black students were finally being admitted to Duke. I was 15, just starting high school.

Dr. Peterson wrote this article after the Duke University Athletic Department announced earlier this month that it had removed a photo of a Women's Lacrosse Team player in blackface at a Halloween party from its website:

For those that do not know, I am a proud graduate of Duke University (Class of '93). As a black alumnus of one of the greatest universities in the world with a troublesome history with race and racism, I am often treated to the highs and lows of the Duke experience. Last week was no different as members of the Duke University Black Alumni Committee reached out to me to begin the process of organizing an event featuring myself, Grant Hill, Nia-Malika Henderson and others to commemorate the 50-year celebration of the presence of black students at Duke -- yes, it's only been 50 years. Duke beat Kentucky -- i.e. Duke men's basketball beat the University of Kentucky -- and this is always good. But in addition to these great moments -- moments that make me proud to be a Duke grad, we were once again treated to the insensitive (and now common) practice of white undergraduates who "dress up" as black characters and blacken up their faces in order to do so. Sigh.

In the full article Dr. Peterson includes a brief history of blackface minstrelsy as a demeaning and destructive practice in the United States. This was really interesting to me, but disconcerting as well as I recalled participation of family members in such activity back in the fifties...not to mention Little Rascals and all kinds of other Hollywood portrayals of black people that I grew up watching.

BTW, I'm about ready to launch a series of reflections on my experience of racism, white privilege and exploration of social healing practices in relation to racism in the US. Now that the pressure of the 2012 election is off, I'm feeling new energy around talking about this stuff.

Related articles

Duke Apologizes for Blackface Photo on Athletics Website

Blackface Pic Removed From Duke Website

How should we talk about blackface?

Building Grassroots Power to End Racism: The 2012 Elections and Beyond | Catalyst Project

I found lots of exciting ideas in this artile from Catalyst Project. They have developed a grassroots toolkit to help people take some of these ideas into their communities:

Catalyst Project believes we need to create a new world, where all people are free from all forms of oppression and are able to live in sustainable relationship with the earth. We envision a world based on global justice where everyone has housing, income, water and food, relevant education and healthcare. Creating this type of material change is no small order and will require a fundamental transformation of power on a global scale. It will require vibrant, massive, multiracial social movements that unite the 99% around the world, and build power at the grassroots. Another way to say this is we want global revolution that liberates all people from oppression.

Read more at collectiveliberation.org

More thoughts about Trayvon Martin and what it is that must not be named

Well, I think there might be another word to add to my list of stuff that can't be named: lynching.

In Trayvon Martin and the Deadly Legacy of Vigilantism, Jamilah King interviews Koritha Mitchell about her book, Living with Lynching. Mitchell talks a little bit about Without Sanctuary, James Allen's collection of lynching photographs:

The history of lynching in the U.S is really horrific and painful for a lot of black Americans. Why was it important for you to tell this story, in particular?

As painful as it is, we have not necessarily shied away from it — which I think is a good thing. One of the ways we haven’t shied away from it is through our support of and our facing it through the “Without Sanctuary” exhibition — those gruesome lynching photographs which had a stint at the Martin Luther King, Jr. center in Atlanta. That was one of the bigger moments where people really remarked upon how much black families were coming to it and using it as a way to grieve losses through generations.

What I found is that by using those photographs only as our way of trying to grapple with what lynching meant in our nation’s history, we really did ourselves a disservice. We weren’t able to engage with what black people who survived this violence had left us in terms of understanding what the violence meant.

The “Without Sanctuary” photographs are a big reason of why it was important for me to tell the story through the lynching plays because the lynching plays tells us exactly what the photographs cannot tell us because the photographs are from a white perspective. You needed to be somewhat safe at the lynching to take those photographs. You’ve got this isolated black victim surrounded by a mob of righteous-looking whites and that is all that we knew about lynching. But the construction of those photographs is very specific: it’s to make sure that you think this was an isolated man who didn’t have any connection to community. The plays give us a sense of just how connected to community and family those victims were.

via colorlines.com

I happened to see this exhibit when it was at the King center in Atlanta. A few years later I tried to write about it in the post that launched this blog...but I couldn't do it...I couldn't find the words. So I was very interested in Koritha Mitchell's comments on it, and generally how the interview connects some dots between Trayvon Martin's death, and a broader issue of the collective, historical trauma that vigilante actions imposed on African Americans as a group.

What Mitchell says about the photographs representing a white perspective, and the intention of the photos to make us think that "this was an isolated man who didn’t have any connection to community" added some critical pieces to my reflections on Trayvon Martin's murder. This is exactly the point I was making about the power of worldview in relation to maintaining broken systems. The photographs reflect a belief system sees the world as fragmented, isolated parts without connection to the whole. And such a world is deadly.

The other process that speaks to me through Mitchell's words is that of healing and transformation. In the social healing of oppressor-oppressed relationships, there is work that has to be done by each group within itself, and work that will not be complete without collaborative effort. Both pieces are essential. To collaborate effectively, I as a member of the oppressor group have to come to terms with my ancestral linneage and the ways in which I still am consciously or unconsciously identified with the oppressor's worldview. Through collaboration, all of us share dreams, stories, art, action and community that brings valuable new insight to the worlds of self and other, oppressor and oppressed.

I'm still not sure what to say about my experience viewing the "Without Sanctuary" exhibit, but I'll start with this: There is a certain trauma that comes with the realization of horrors perpetrated on another human being by one's own group. Opening up to that is difficult, and I think one thing "Without Sanctuary" represented for me is a point of no return. I can't go back to ignorance of what happened. I can only keep moving forward as fast as I can stand it.

In my practice of healing (working on my own stuff and helping others do the same), I've learned that perhaps the best thing any of us can do for healing the whole of humanity is to find and embrace our shadow selves, rather than to continue to project them onto someone else. As we have the courage to own who we are and where we came from -- no matter if we are the oppressed or oppressor -- we break the chains that have keep all of us bound together in hate and fear rather than love.

Do something today to eliminate racial discrimination

"Racism has been a banner to justify the enterprises of expansion, conquest, colonization and domination and has walked hand in hand with intolerance, injustice and violence." -- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Guatemalan Indigenous Leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

 

The UN has designated March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The theme for 2012 is "Racism and Conflict," highlighting the fact that racism and discrimination often are at the root of deadly conflict.

I couldn't help but think of Trayvon Martin when I read that the theme was chosen to reflect how racism, prejudice and xenophobia create extreme tension and are used as powerful weapons to create fear or hatred. While the UN's declaration focuses on times of outright conflict in the world, I think we in the United States need to look within our own borders where white privilege (consciously and unconsciously) still maintains business as usual in unjust institutional systems. The racial profiling that led to the death of Trayvon Martin is just one recent example.

On Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell last night, Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida's Third District made a pitch for all of us to use this as a "teachable moment" -- what better day to start than on day dedicated to ending racial discrimination?

To me, the "teachable moment" idea is always a call to stop, take a deep breath, and climb to a higher mountain with a better view of the whole situation. Too often the potential of such powerful moments as Trayvon's death has brought us are destroyed in outrage against an individual perpetrator or the police or any one of a number individuals or agencies that will be targeted for blame. When the guilty party is tried and convicted, we go back to business as usual...until the next tragedy.

This reflects that our society is still in the grips of an outdated worldview that sees us all as separate beings in a world of unconnected parts. In such a belief system, the "bad apple" theory is used to explain racial violence.  Somebody has to be wholly at fault, and too often we're content to blame the victim. A society of living beings is reduced to something more like a car that won't run: all we have to do is find the broken part and take it out and replace it and everything will be fine again.

But nature (and ancient teachings and now science, by the way) tells us something different. Earth is a living system and we humans are all part of it, connected and interdependent, one to another and to all other parts. My human heart-brain tells me that Trayvon was my little brother, and yours, and even Zimmerman's.

What would we have to do to end racial discrimination once and for all? In a larger sense, I think we need a collective shift from the old paradigm of world as machine to world as a whole, dynamic, living system. I think that can begin with new ways of relating to (and engaging with) these teachable moments.

I'm recalling a theme in the Harry Potter series around the aversion most of the wizarding world had to saying "Voledemort" or acknowledging that Voldemort had returned, as if the name itself had some magical power and that saying it would somehow give Voldemort power over the person who said it.

Who or what is it that must not be named in the case of Trayvon Martin? That depends, of course, on who you are, what your life experience has been, and dozens of other factors. Speaking for myself as a member of the dominant group/culture in the United States, I would put white privilege, systemic racism and patriarchy at the top of the list. These are the shadows -- the Voldemorts -- that I have not always been able to see and name.

But see them and name them we must, and then carry on the social healing process that comes when we realize that the natural state of humanity is not "every man for himself" but "we're all in this together".

Some resources for the journey:

Beyond Whiteness -- A Resource for Dismantling White Privilege and Racism (website created by Be Scofield)

Applied Research Center (offers resources including webinars for learning how to get the conversation started)

 

 

"Racism continues to cause suffering for millions of people around the world.... I look to all people to join the United Nations in our drive to eliminate racism. We must, individually and collectively, stamp out racism, stigma and prejudice."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

 

The continuing saga of The 99...

A couple of days ago I posted some info on the new documentary Wham! Bam! Islam! and Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa. I had tried to post an earlier video of Dr. Al-Mutawa talking about his project,  but was not able to embed it. Since then, Dr. Al-Mutawa kindly messaged me via Twitter with a link to a TED Talk, which I've embedded below.

These days, I try as clearly as I can to hear, see and speak everything through the heart. This video brought a smile from deep in human heart space:

Naif Al-Mutawa: The continuing saga of The99, superheroes inspired by Islam from TED Blog on Vimeo.

 

 

Roberto Lovato: Que Viva el Primero de Mayo!

For some years now, Cinco de Mayo has been a day that I usually go out for Mexican food and, while I eat, think about the personal and collective karma I have to come to grips with as a white person (with mostly European ancestors) in relation to people with roots in América Latina.

Today I got a couple of awesome links that have stirred some reflection, and I decided to share them here. One is an article at Colorlines today by Roberto Lavato: Cinco de Mayo, Primero de Mayo and the Birth of the United States of América. Here's an excerpt:

With notable exceptions among the more thoughtful Cinco de Mayo organizers around the country, event organizers no longer tell us that we’re celebrating the victory of the badly-equipped, but inspired Mexican guerrilla army that fought and defeated the far better-equipped forces of Napoleon III’s decaying French Empire. Cinco de Mayo’s loss of electricity has itself become a Latino-“American” sign of imperial malaise.

Instead, our electricidad has migrated to Primero de Mayo (May Day). Born in the U.S., after immigrant and other workers protesting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square were killed by police in the late 19th century, Primero de Mayo was, until very recently, a largely forgotten commie affair. Today, Latino workers, specifically immigrant workers, march against the militarized immigration forces of President Obama, and these workers are powering May Day back to relevance in a decaying empire that tries to border itself off from the rest of the working world by celebrating “Labor Day” in September. The day connects us to people marching throughout the hemisphere and the entire world; it previews and makes palpable the bottom-up borderlessness that is the only salvation for this extremely troubled planet.

via colorlines.com

 

The other link was to a YouTube video of the only known voice recording of Mother Jones, recorded on her 100th birthday, May 1, 1930:

 

 

Que viva el Primero de Mayo!

 

Ira Chernus: Goodbye, (Mythic) Columbus

If transforming racism requires everyone to come to grips with their own ancestry and culture, white folks have their work cut out for them. As Ira Chernus suggests, the stories about the birth of America that many of us learned in school have been exposed for their biased, inaccurate representations, requiring us to reconsider any sense of white privilege as bound to bogus teachings and political agendas:

If the fear of a broken society is, at its deepest level, the fear of a broken foundation myth — a loss of the sense of secure identity that once came from simply living on American soil — then no party is to blame for it and no party can fix it. The parade of candidates on TV promising to make it all better is as hollow as the Columbus Day parade I saw.

The parades continue, though, because saying goodbye to the mythic Columbus and greeting a truly new world, one in which we exercise political responsibility without mythic foundations, is no easy task.

Read the whole article here.