This past week, a liberal TV personality - HBO’s Bill Maher - used the “n” word on Real Time, casually calling himself a “house nigger”. A friend of mine wrote this blogpost in
response: Bill Maher: House Nigger or Nah?
https://mjcrumpler.wordpress.I offer the following response and invitation to consider our own roles in both becoming woke and moving beyond wokeness to action as we seek to acknowledge our own white privilege and then work towards overcoming whiteness that we might live in the “beyond” to which the Spirit is calling us in this 21st Century.
It cannot simply be whiteness that separates. Consciousness, and the degree to which the seeds of self have been invited to attain that which might give birth to possibility, then a hopeful leap towards accountability, and finally a craving for the uncomfortable are no more out of reach for radical conservatives than for those pregnant with a liberated awakening. Of course, a consciousness housed within a white-walled world of the unimaginative is far more inclined to stumble over its own self-perceived enlightened feet, falling prey to whiteness as our keeper, as our advocate with whom, when we lie too long, we devolve into an oppressive "already", or "not yet", or lapsed "almost". Whiteness is what separates, because we have conceded that being awakened is the means through which transformation will occur. We pretend that by espousing or policing in the public square the perceived enemy, i.e. an empire laced of sleepers, we are other than actors in the realm of those predatory systems empowered to perform, project, or neutralize the static of white noise as it grows and then releases-- at another black person’s expense. Rise, hate, advocate, defend, release; rise, hate, advocate, defend, release…
We cannot continue this charade. It is an unsustainable journey towards wholeness; to act as free-riders casually advocating a dismantling of empire, yet perpetually feasting on its adrenaline-laced path to an almost justice somewhere, is an absolute injustice everywhere.
Spirit, may my whiteness inside and my whiteness outside be accountable to your blackness on all sides.
May the Spirit continue to lead the way,
~Rev. Jenny Shultz-Thomas