Maybe I shouldn't wait to do these writes until evening. I had something much lighter in mind when I read this prompt this morning...but then, as a special education teacher on the last day of Black History Month, I had a student come to me with a question.
"Mr P - there's this rapper that says "I come from Virginia where they hang [you] from a rope" - and it's buggin' me, in my head. ...does that really happen?
This isn't the first time I've had to explain about racism. It's not even the first time I've had to explain about lynching. But it doesn't get easier. It doesn't get less heartbreaking, searching the eyes of a young Black man who doesn't really understand the world around him, and explain that sometimes, in that world, mobs have decided a person did something wrong, and that they had the right to judge, and that most of the time in the US it's a mob of white people judging a Black man, mostly if they think he's out of line toward a white woman.
So today I found myself, again, with tears in my eyes, trying to figure out how, and how much, to explain to my student. Yes, it's real. Yes, it's happened. It's rare now but sometimes it still happens. And it's horrible and horribly wrong, and a horrible piece of American culture.
The sound track in my musical concordance, of course, was Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.
Forgive us our debts. O merciful God, free us all from this debt...somehow.
(I read the whole lyric to that song he was talking about - it's basically how the harshness and naysaying he experienced makes the singer stronger and defiantly surviving it.)
I leave you with a Chesterton hymn:
1 O God of earth and altar,
bow down and hear our cry,
our earthly rulers falter,
our people drift and die;
the walls of gold entomb us,
the swords of scorn divide,
take not thy thunder from us,
but take away our pride.
2 From all that terror teaches,
from lies of tongue and pen,
from all the easy speeches
that comfort cruel men,
from sale and profanation
of honour and the sword,
from sleep and from damnation,
deliver us, good Lord!
3 Tie in a living tether
the prince and priest and thrall,
bind all our lives together,
smite us and save us all;
in ire and exultation
aflame with faith, and free,
lift up a living nation,
a single sword to thee.
— FriarMir
"Mr P - there's this rapper that says "I come from Virginia where they hang [you] from a rope" - and it's buggin' me, in my head. ...does that really happen?
This isn't the first time I've had to explain about racism. It's not even the first time I've had to explain about lynching. But it doesn't get easier. It doesn't get less heartbreaking, searching the eyes of a young Black man who doesn't really understand the world around him, and explain that sometimes, in that world, mobs have decided a person did something wrong, and that they had the right to judge, and that most of the time in the US it's a mob of white people judging a Black man, mostly if they think he's out of line toward a white woman.
So today I found myself, again, with tears in my eyes, trying to figure out how, and how much, to explain to my student. Yes, it's real. Yes, it's happened. It's rare now but sometimes it still happens. And it's horrible and horribly wrong, and a horrible piece of American culture.
The sound track in my musical concordance, of course, was Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.
Forgive us our debts. O merciful God, free us all from this debt...somehow.
(I read the whole lyric to that song he was talking about - it's basically how the harshness and naysaying he experienced makes the singer stronger and defiantly surviving it.)
I leave you with a Chesterton hymn:
1 O God of earth and altar,
bow down and hear our cry,
our earthly rulers falter,
our people drift and die;
the walls of gold entomb us,
the swords of scorn divide,
take not thy thunder from us,
but take away our pride.
2 From all that terror teaches,
from lies of tongue and pen,
from all the easy speeches
that comfort cruel men,
from sale and profanation
of honour and the sword,
from sleep and from damnation,
deliver us, good Lord!
3 Tie in a living tether
the prince and priest and thrall,
bind all our lives together,
smite us and save us all;
in ire and exultation
aflame with faith, and free,
lift up a living nation,
a single sword to thee.
— FriarMir
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