digesting the zimmerman verdict.

my sign at the bmore protest. it made the news :)

it's been two weeks since the zimmerman trial verdict, and while i'm not sure that i have the words, i finally feel like i can begin to write about it. questlove said that the day after the verdict felt like the day after september 11th. that about sums up how i felt for a good week after the verdict. shell shocked. deeply sad. disillusioned by the world i thought had order.

i was so glad when i saw that there would be a protest here in baltimore, the day after the verdict. i felt like i needed, somehow, to shout "this isn't ok!! this is not a way for people to live!!" and while that's what my twitter TL looked like, there was something satisfying about standing on a busy street corner in the inner harbor, letting strangers know.

i have a lot of feelings, but not a lot of coherent thoughts. or at least, not strung together enough for me to convey in a blog post. so bear with me as i use this catharsis to get my amorphous emotions into something resembling prose.

when the dust settled, and the shock wore off, and i could reflect a little, i think that the strongest or most salient feelings i have had is disappointment. it's a disappointment in my fellow white christians. i'm disappointed that in church, 12 hours after the verdict, my pastor said nothing about it. nothing. can you imagine that happening on sept 12, 2001? no, me either.

i'm disappointed that the white church--my church--has such a lack of empathy for the black church, that they literally say nothing in the face of their brothers' and sisters' pain and struggle. and i have to be careful here, because i know that had this verdict come down 4 or more years ago, i likely would have been the same way ... i wouldn't have known how real this verdict is for black folks ... how close it hits to home. how personal it feels for them. i'm trying to remember what it was like to be wrapped in that cozy blanket of privilege that kept me from feeling others' hurt, because i hadn't witnessed it for myself, and it didn't even come close to affecting my life or my existence.

and i'm trying to trace back my steps, to think about what learnings i had over the past few years that made me shift from where i was before--when i was mainly isolated from the struggle that so many endure; that place where believing a black president meant a post-racial america where colorblindness was the key to equality.

because i'm not satisfied with this group to which i belong (the white church) not realizing our collective privilege to stay silent in the face of injustice and tragedy. i'm not satisfied with the white church--my church--being the levite and the priest in the parable of the good samaritan--those who see the poor, beaten, robbed, downcast man on the side of the road, and cross to the other side and ignore his plight ... because they can.

honestly, this situation is a crisis of faith for me. i'm not saying that to be overly dramatic, i'm saying it because it's true. i have always noted the segregation of christianity in the US and thought that it was problematic, but more than likely just a symptom of the lack of unity in christianity in general ... or perhaps a symptom of differences of cultural preference in worship. i no longer think that. i see the segregation in american christianity as a direct result of our (white peoples') active decision to ignore, pass over, and be silent on the issues that affect black people in the united states.

all i could think, all last week, was what if the morning after the verdict, a black person in the neighborhood had needed God that sunday morning, needed--as we all do--to know that he cares for us, that our struggle and pain do not go unnoticed. what if that black person had walked into my church? he would have thought that God, and the white christians, cared nothing for his suffering.

shame on us. this is directly in opposition to the call of scripture to bear one another's burdens, and to weep with those who weep.

i'm embarrassed to be a white christian. and it isn't because of christ.