Discussing Charlottesville

Imagine with me, if you will, a woman with rich brown skin and tight black curls, aged and graying, narrating the story of her people to you. We'll lean in to hear her recollections of the time after the war: 

Union soldiers occupied southern towns to keep the peace but didn't do much to protect black people from new groups of mean white, like the Ku Klux Klan, who threatened us all year long. To stop black folks from voting, Klansmen marched in front of their homes wearing white sheets over their heads, shooting out the windows and burning homes to the ground, or worse, dragging black folks out of their homes to lynch them.  The law didn't do a thing to stop it.  Shoot, some of the men wearing the sheets were lawmen. It was their way of "keeping us in our place", wherever that was supposed to be.  They couldn't stand to see us trying to be equal to whites.  They were convinced that they were somehow superior to black people.  My grandmother used to call it "the Sickness."  Whatever it was, it was just plain mean, honey.  Lord knows how those folks could fix it in their minds to do the things they did to us back then.  It's a miracle we made it through.

-from Kadir Nelson's Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans

~

Mark, holding our Adelia for the very first time

Charlottesville. 
White Supremacy.
KKK.
Racism.

These were the topics of our dinnertime conversation last night.  It's a difficult and emotional
thing to look across the table at my brown-skinned children and have these conversations.

We spoke of the evil that is prevalent and active, of "the Sickness"- as Kadir Nelson's book puts it.  We talked about the history of the black people, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and peaceful protests. 
We talked about cycles of poverty. 
Of fear. 
We spoke of how God is the ultimate Victor, not Satan nor evil or darkness, not in the end. 
We spoke of how it might feel for a black person in the wake of this evil and others: One of our kids: "They must think, 'Will this ever change?  Will this ever get any better?  When will this be done?'"  We spoke of skin color and the beauty of it. 
We tried to answer their questions: "Why would a white person kill a white person if their hatred is toward black people?"  "Is it only white people who are racist?" 
We spoke of how much we oppose this.  Vehemently.  That it angers and saddens us.  We shed tears.  We spoke of standing for what is right in the midst of people who won't.
We spoke of the courage and the strength of black men and women who have borne the weight of this for years and are still bearing it.  And of the self-control so many possess in the face of hatred and violence.

And we prayed together.

Lord, help us to know what else we can do.