The Only Thing That Matters?

Other false idols be for attention, but this one . . .?

“It’s the only thing that matters,” Rep. Jim Clyburn almost bit those words as they filled the room where he had talked for over an hour, telling stories of racism that had touched his life and the lives of his family members. Could racism be “the only thing that matters?”

On so many levels, it is.

His interviewer asked, “How often do reporters in Washington ask you about racism?”

Again a biting slow burning anger that had laced his first statement about the only thing that matters.

“Never,” he said.

Okay, sexism, the objectification of women, the tyranny of roles, you know the list.

And classism, the demonization of immigrants, war. There are false gods propped up by fear that dehumanize so many of our neighbors, friends and family members.

As a privileged, middle class, small town white boy I pull my cartload of guilt for not working harder against the idolatry of worshipping race, gender, class at the exclusion of full humanity. It stings. It squeezes my heart.

The reminders are gut wrenching. Lynchings. The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery says as many as 20,000 were lynched between the end of the war and the 1950’s. EJI has documented 4,000. Why dwell on it? Why write about it? Because Jim Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, says it is the only thing that matters. But wait, hasn’t lynching ended? Aren’t we living in a post lynching age? The year George Floyd was murdered by a white cop in Minneapolis, The Guardian reported 400 unarmed black men were killed by white police officers. The snakes of fear and hatred still hide in the grass. And that’s being a little too hard on snakes.

When one of the local Sons of the Confederacy read those numbers of lynchings, he groaned, “Oh, surely not that many.” You’d have to wonder what number would be small enough to assuage his guilt?

But so what? Why is it simmering on my stove this morning? Global warming feels like a lot bigger deal as a heat wave is just ending and another is likely right around the corner. Racism simmers because Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, Mike Johnson, a whole gaggle of Republican power brokers have decided race doesn’t matter. The firing of a Black chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen. C.Q. Brown, for no other reason than the color of his skin in just one wart on a wart covered body of the current Republican Party. A local Black preacher called them out by saying, “They are racist and they aren’t even trying to hide it.” Gerrymandering, wholesale attacks on DEI, autocratic firings and numbskull arguments that they are fighting fraud and corruption, the list is too long, the evidence is too brutal.

Thank goodness for Lisa Murkowski and her tiny minority of moderate Republican senators. She told NPR in a recent interview that she has never protested anything by standing or marching with protesters, but she encourages the likes of “No Kings” to carry on. Another is planned for July 17. I will be there. Senator Murkowski also noted that the protesters have gathered in “even the tiniest villages in Alaska.”

She stood before a group of nonprofit leaders in Alaska a few weeks back and said, “We’re all afraid,” paused dramatically and went on to talk about the chaos among her own staffers as calls to The White House are not returned and nobody knows what’s going on. She is sounding an alarm that hopefully some other Republicans will listen to and respond.

You still may be wondering about Clyburn’s claim that racism is the only thing that matters. Think about it this way. No matter how rich or influential, every Black person in America knows what he’s talking about. None of them would dare say they have escaped the burn, the look, the push, the slight inspired by racial discrimination. All have stories. All have memories. Every single one of them, even as they might disagree with Clyburn, every single one of them knows what Clyburn was talking about.

And to my shame, some of them, not many, but some of them, will have a story about my insensitivity, my participation in the lies of White Supremacy. Have mercy.