July 29, 2009
A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Gil Caldwell

Here we go again, an incident, this time in Cambridge, Mass., reminds us that "we need to talk about race."

We need to decide that no longer will it be necessary for there to be an "incident" for us to talk about a subject, race, that is always there regardless of the "incident."

We must find ways to help understand that all of us, whether we like it or not, have some "skin in the race-talk game." If it is about them, regardless of who "them" is, and not about all of us, we waste our time.

Let us not run away from the fact that we have our first president of African descent. Any suggestion that this is a "post-racial/racist time" is a myth. If we have wanted to believe it, those at a less-than-positive place on race in their "race talk" certainly don't believe it. Why should the rest of us?

Those who use animal imagery to describe the U.S.'s first family, who declare that any mention of race by a person of color is playing the "race game," and who find it necessary to remind us of the white power that was dominant from the very beginning of the nation until now are providing helpful material for the "race talk" that we should have been about consistently. Out of necessity, we must engage in the talk now.

The responses to President Obama in places beyond the United States are shaped by his unique gifts, the history his election represents and an awareness of the role race has played in our nation. People in other nations know more about our racial history and current reality than we acknowledge. Imagine how the "arrest" of Professor Gates, handcuffs and all, is "playing" and being played around the world. We have thought that we could hide our race issues under a basket, but the world reminds us, we cannot!

We who are people of color – I am black – are challenged to realize that merely expressing our anger about the racial past and present, rather than liberating others, too often frightens them into the ominous "sound of silence." That is one of the major reasons they and we do not have conversations about race.

The economic downturn that affects so many of every race, gender, culture and class can provide a "teaching moment" for those who have paid little attention to racial/cultural barriers because they have not been affected. But, now we all see that a "free market" has a way of catering to some, but not the many, regardless of the degree of pigmentation of their skin, or the boats their ancestors traveled on to get here, or the rivers they crossed.

Most of the United States is "them" in the eyes of the "rulers." Honest and candid discussion on race will lead to solutions, national and worldwide, that "lift all boats."

"Where's not the beef, but the Church?" My United Methodist Church could contribute so much to race talk and race solutions if it understood its racial uniqueness. I have wondered: President Obama in his speech to the NAACP and Bill Cosby in his call to responsibility have spoken powerfully, critically and hopefully to the black community. Who will speak to White America?

Race talk cannot avoid talking about the economic and institutional power imbalance that exists between the black community and others. I have wondered aloud, "What might have happened if Major League Baseball had integrated with the Negro Baseball Leagues, thus preserving institutional presence and power in black hands?

The "athletic drain" as well as the "brain drain" of black persons from black institutions has done wonders for institutions that are historically white, but black individual presence, whether in the White House or at the head of a Fortune 500 company, does not make for equal presence at the tables of power. Institutional power does.

Garrison Keillor on July 4 said, "America was not made great by angry people." Race talk, to be successful, will be passionate but not angry, emotionally and physically draining, but not to the degree that emotional or blood transfusions will be necessary. It will uncover the race history that some would deny, revise or minimize. It will celebrate the significant movement forward that we have made on a variety of racial fronts.

And, if it begins in earnest now, my 4-year-old granddaughter will not have to write epistles like this when she is 75, as I am now.

United Methodist News Service
Rev. Gil Caldwell of Asbury Park, N.J., is a retired clergy member of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference. He participated in the "Mississippi Freedom Summer" of 1964 and the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. He is a founding member of Black Methodists for Church Renewal and United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church. The commentary first appeared in the July 27 issue of Faith in Action, the online publication of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society.