BLOG 7/13/16. MY INDEBTEDNESS TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY AND BLACK CULTURE

BLOG 7/13/16. MY INDEBTEDNESS TO THE BLACK COMMMUNITY AND BLACK CULTURE.

Indulge me here. I’m a white guy, OK? I can never be black, nor can I imagine all of the subliminal pain that is that community’s heritage from the horrendous dehumanizing and demeaning reality of slavery and racism with which they live. But this past week, what with it’s racial clashes and bloodshed, provoke me to want to take a different turn … and to express my indebtedness to the black culture, since it has blessed me in many ways.

For-instance for starts (the easy one), take food. I am southern, and reared with the cuisine of southern cooking. The essence of southern cooking came out of the rural south and out of the kitchens of southern homes and plantations whose black cooks were those, often slaves, who knew how to make delicious dishes out of what they grew in the garden or on the plantation. In my young adult days here in Atlanta (before the civil rights watershed) the best restaurants in the city bore names such as Mammy’s Shanty, or Aunt Fannie’s Cabin, where that southern food was served in style—but which very names and restaurants were too painful for the black community. Now, however, that southern cooking has metamorphed into a gourmet style aimed at providing a new genre of southern cooking for the emerging generation’s palates, and have put franchises in many cities not southern.

Or music. I lived for one passage of my life in New Orleans where Preservation Hall, and the Olympia Brass (marching) Band were of the essence of the city’s culture. The black community has produced Duke Ellington, Winton Marsalis, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong … and on and on. And, wonder of wonder, today’s off-the-chart Broadway musical: Hamilton, is a page of American history set to rap music. All gifts of black culture. Where would we be without them?

Which brings us to dance. Tap dancing, spontaneous dance, fancy footwork, dancing marching bands. In my neighborhood, when we had a local jazz band play at our annual picnic, all of my black neighbors couldn’t stay in their seats, but would do amazing dance—even the older ones. We white folk just sat and envied their rhythm and freedom.

Story-telling. I get into a bit of controversy here with some of my black friends, but I always grieved, that in their understandable desire to distance themselves from pain of the slave culture, that post-civil rights watershed blacks rejected Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus Tales. Harris learned these stories from former slaves around whom he grew up in rural Georgia. Those tales were the wisdom stories of the black culture, … their proverbs, if you will. When our nation became tragically involved in the Iraq War, my first thought was immediately to the Uncle Remus tale about the tar baby. Look it up.

Ah! But the giants in our national quest for racial justice, our prophetic voices of Justice have been out of the black community. Think of Frederick Douglas, Asa Philip Randolph (who pushed the Roosevelts on the issue), … or more recently of Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, John Perkins, and so many others. Where were the white voices who would lay their lives on the line? There were many, but the visible ones were black. And all of us are in their debt (and that battle goes on, doesn’t it?).

As generations roll by these ethnic cultures become amalgamated into the larger community, but each leaves its legacy (think of the Angles, the Saxons, the Celts, etc. and how they merged, but each leaving its rich cultural legacy.).

So, here is to testify that I am enormously enriched by the rich legacy of the black culture which has always been part of the context in which I am formed. I am in their debt and I am most appreciative. Now I also live in a subdivision with wonderful black neighbors with whom I share daily life. “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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