{"id":2367,"date":"2010-08-22T17:44:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T00:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/?p=611"},"modified":"2010-08-22T17:44:12","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T00:44:12","slug":"august-22-2010-langston-hughes-love-and-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/2010\/08\/22\/august-22-2010-langston-hughes-love-and-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"August 22, 2010, Langston Hughes: Love and Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Message 31, Summer Reading, Langston Hughes: Love and Humanity, 8-22-10\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Doug Slagle, Pastor, The Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

Service-Program-8-22-10<\/a><\/p>\n\n

If you have noticed the images located on the front of your programs, you may recognize them as particularly meaningful to African-Americans.\u00a0 The Sankofa bird, symbolized in the first image and idealized in the second, is often used to represent black reconciliation with their past.\u00a0 For them, injustices inflicted on their ancestors must never be forgotten and are a part of their history and their culture. \u00a0\u00a0Nevertheless, the Sankofa symbols specifically promote forgiveness, love and healing.\u00a0 African-Americans are urged to never forget their history but, in doing so, forgiveness is offered for past wrongs and love is extended to whites and to all humanity.\u00a0 Old wounds and old resentments are healed, new relationships based on mutual understanding are forged and a brighter future for all humanity is envisioned.\u00a0 The sankofa bird is a mythic one who flies forward while looking backward with an egg \u2013 thus symbolizing hope for the future.\u00a0 The symbolic heart is bent inward and then poured outward as a way to encourage inner peace and open expressions of love towards all others.<\/p>\n

If you recall, Nelson Mandela\u2019s infant South African government initiated courts of truth in the 1990\u2019s, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu, to examine in detail all of the past apartheid atrocities.\u00a0 But these courts were designed not to punish or shame but to bring into the light a dark and sordid history.\u00a0 Reconciliation and forgiveness were extended to the white minority for the pain that had been caused by apartheid \u2013 a policy much like our own Jim Crow laws.\u00a0 South Africa was then better able to bury historic enmity and thereby move forward to the betterment of all.\u00a0 This was a brilliant manifestation of Sankofa peace and these symbols on our programs are a fitting representation of what we will consider today – love and humanity.<\/p>\n

In our journey through the topic of love and poetry, today we will look at another famous American poet and his understanding of love.\u00a0 This broad topic has many dimensions but, for our purposes, we will consider Langston Hughes and his vision for a human race defined by the beauty of its oneness.\u00a0 He speaks as an African-American male yearning for what he and others have for so long been denied \u2013 equal access, equal treatment, and a heaven on earth community of unity.\u00a0 His was a vision not<\/span><\/em><\/strong> for retribution or black power but for a utopia of wonder, peace, beauty, generosity and love between all people.<\/p>\n

Hughes was the famed originator of a black cultural awakening called the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920\u2019s and 1930\u2019s when black poets, artists, and musicians explicitly celebrated a unique and vibrant African-American culture.\u00a0 Proud of his heritage, Hughes does not shy away from black vernacular and speech in his poetry.\u00a0 He openly celebrates its evocative rhythms and cadences.\u00a0 His poetry reminds one of musical lyrics all set to a beat of jazz, the blues and gospel.\u00a0\u00a0 Such expressions highlight African-American culture and its contributions to American arts.\u00a0 He was the unofficial poet laureate of his culture and the leading force behind promoting a relevant African-American identity in artistic expression.<\/p>\n

Poetry for blacks has long been their cultural mainstay.\u00a0 Under slavery and in subsequent years of marginalization, poetic verse was a way for African-Americans to tell stories, share their history, and cry out for justice.\u00a0 Hughes used his poetry to write of love, politics, dreams, music and numerous other subjects.\u00a0 He wrote about ordinary people and ordinary themes but he did so in a way that honored humanity and beauty.\u00a0 This oral tradition which he captured and immortalized in his poetry, pays tribute to the vibrant contribution of black artists to our culture.\u00a0 From jazz to the blues to poetry and to gospel music, we are richer for them.\u00a0 Langston Hughes, as the leader of a black renaissance, may well be the artistic father of many black and white artists today.\u00a0 Indeed, black artistic expression \u2013 such as in jazz \u2013 represent a singularly American contribution to the world-wide universe of art.\u00a0 Like the poetry of Hughes, jazz and other black art forms were born of our own national struggle for freedom and equality for each person.\u00a0 In that regard, Hughes stands alongside other great American poets like Hawthorne, Whitman, Poe, Dickinson, Frost and Angelou in his chronicle of lives where humanity is at peace with each other, with nature and with the Divine One.\u00a0 In his words, we find a spirituality that is uplifting, visionary and starkly beautiful.\u00a0 From the anguished cries of a broken heart in the poetry we read from Emily Dickinson to the hesitant and fearful love of a newly married man described by Robert Frost, we will now read of a Langston Hughes vision of love, perfected in a paradise called Alabama.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s now read together \u201cDaybreak in Alabama\u201d.\u00a0 You can find it on the back of your programs.<\/p>\n

When I get to be a composer<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>I’m gonna write me some music about<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Daybreak in Alabama<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And falling out of heaven like soft dew.<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And the scent of pine needles<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And the smell of red clay after rain<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And long red necks<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And poppy colored faces<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And big brown arms<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And the field daisy eyes<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Of black and white black white black people<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And I’m gonna put white hands<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And black hands and brown and yellow hands<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And red clay earth hands in it<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Touching everybody with kind fingers<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And touching each other natural as dew<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>In that dawn of music when I<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Get to be a composer<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>And write about daybreak<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>In Alabama.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Long before Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech on the Washington mall, Langston Hughes gives voice to the hopes of millions of African-Americans \u2013 that in the red clay corners of the deep South, where Jim Crow still lived and where strange fruit, as Billie Holiday sang, would appear as lynched men and women hanging from trees, even in that place\u2026human reconciliation might one day appear as soft dew sent from heaven.\u00a0 This lyrical poem can almost be sung with its cadence of blues like rhythm.\u00a0 \u00a0As much as it envisions a perfect world in one Alabama daybreak, the poem is also a political protest against a culture of segregation and discrimination that, in keeping with Hughes\u2019 poetic words, might more aptly be called nighttime in Alabama.\u00a0 Hughes implicitly, but beautifully, condemns racism not just in Alabama but across the entire United States.<\/p>\n

In my message two weeks ago discussing love and fear, I quoted from the Bible the verse that says, \u201c<\/strong>There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.\u201d <\/strong>Just as this Biblical verse applied easily to Robert Frost\u2019s evocation of how fear, doubt, jealousy and anger intrude into our relationships and prevent us from fully loving another, so too does it apply easily to the poem today.\u00a0 When that daybreak in Alabama does occur and when all the hues of the human rainbow hold hands in true unity, there will be no more fear.<\/p>\n

Racism, as we all know, is deeply rooted in fear of the other.\u00a0 Such fears rise up subconsciously within us as past traditions and experiences tell us that the other, who appears different from us, is to be feared.\u00a0 This stranger in the night, to borrow from Frost\u2019s poem that we read two weeks ago, may well be the stereotypical black man who, in our racist fears, is determined to rape, and steal and take away jobs.\u00a0 Racism may subtly be manifested in opposition to Cincinnati\u2019s planned street cars as fears that trains from Over-the-Rhine to downtown will bring those of color and those of the underclass deep into the center of our city\u2019s powerful and elite.\u00a0 Racism may play some role in opposition to our President.\u00a0 While many have honest disagreement with his policies, others may harbor visceral but subconscious fears of an intelligent and powerful black man.<\/p>\n

Marianne Williamson, the noted contemporary spiritual writer, has said that while love is of god, fear is definitely of satan.\u00a0 In her mind, fear is the motivating force behind all of history\u2019s atrocities.\u00a0 It has spawned war, holocaust, slavery, murders, suicides, hatred and general violence.\u00a0 As she writes, \u201cFear is imagination predicting the worst possible outcome. When the imagination is engaged in repetition and emotion, it becomes a belief.\u201d<\/strong> And it is an absence of such fears and deep rooted beliefs that Langston Hughes writes in his poem.\u00a0 It is a vision born of centuries of oppression and black survival \u2013 of dreams of god\u2019s eternal heaven where everlasting sunlight, goodwill, natural beauty and perfect love all co-exist.\u00a0 When the possibility for change is not possible in the present, African-Americans have turned to faith, to saviors named Jesus and Moses, and to dreams of a true heaven.\u00a0 As a white man having grown up in a privileged corner of our nation, I cannot possibly know the pain and the yearning of African-Americans who daily experience subtle and sometimes overt forms of racism.<\/p>\n

To speak of the sins of racism in a progressive church is a simple task.\u00a0 Indeed, Langston Hughes may well be a hero to most of us here and I could very easily preach to the choir, so to speak.\u00a0 Yet in our careful reading of his poem, we find this composer of a new heaven on earth speaks to each of us as well.\u00a0 As a white liberal, I can claim pride in the election of an African-American President and I can note that our nation has come a long way toward ending segregation, discrimination and prejudice.\u00a0 Such open forms of racism are not within me nor are they within this congregation.<\/p>\n

But like the dew that Hughes envisions blanketing his perfect Alabama, so do the fine droplets of subtle racism still exist and still pervade even some of us.\u00a0 Indeed, for many African-Americans today, the hideous forms of racism are not of concern to them, for they have largely been addressed.\u00a0 The inner fears, the subtle forms of racial attitudes and covert racism that still exist even among white liberals are what concern many blacks the most.\u00a0 Those are the fears and prejudices that someone like myself may not even know I harbor or am unwilling to admit.<\/p>\n

Experts say such forms of subtle racism exist in the small ways we think about others who are different.\u00a0 This everyday racism can take the form of indifference, cautious body language, avoidance of others and even inappropriate words that we use.\u00a0 In one such example offered by experts in the field of subtle racism, a young black male student living in a Boston apartment building was asked by the manager to stop walking around the complex listening to music on his headphones.\u00a0 He was told this was distracting to other residents even thought he was perfectly quiet.\u00a0 When the student observed other white students doing the same thing and never being reprimanded, he knew the real reason for his warning.\u00a0 It was fear of the stereotypical black man up to no good.<\/p>\n

In another example of subtle racism, a leading fashion magazine described the process Oprah Winfrey goes through each day before she appears on her TV show.\u00a0 The magazine writer offered that Oprah is turned into a glamorous figure as make-up artists work to make the lines of her nose appear thinner and the contours of her lips less thick.\u00a0 And her hair is regularly and laboriously straightened.\u00a0 The message of the article is that black women are not glamorous in their own right but that thin noses, white appearing lips and hair straightening make them so.<\/p>\n

And I must admit to my own covert forms of racism.\u00a0 I commented recently to Ed that, after seeing a wonderful picture of President Obama swimming in the ocean with his daughter Malia, the image struck me for some reason with the full realization that an African-American family truly resides in the White House.\u00a0 As proud and happy as my brain tells me that this is true, something deep inside me noted the texture of Malia\u2019s hair \u2013 and its distinctive African-American look \u2013 as the reason for why the photo had an impact on me. \u00a0Such a trivial observation of her hair brought home my own racist demons for even noting such a difference.\u00a0 What lurks inside of me that is rooted in my own fears of the other?<\/p>\n

Experts indicate that people often refer to Hispanics, for instance, as Mexicans, even though Latinos come from all over Latin America.\u00a0 Or some assume all Asians are good at math and science or that many Jews are involved in financial careers.\u00a0 Even worse, some of us would never tell a racist joke, finding them offensive and troubling.\u00a0 But how many of us will rebuke someone who uses such humor and tell them it is unacceptable?\u00a0 Put another way, how many of us fear Over-the-Rhine, rationalizing that we are justified in our fear of crime?\u00a0 Or, is our supposed fear of crime really a fear of those who are different, who walk the streets in the middle of the day with low slung blue jeans and no apparent job? \u00a0To be blunt, are such fears of Over-the-Rhine racist?<\/p>\n

Well intentioned and kind members of this congregation implored me when I began my work as Pastor to be careful working here alone during the day.\u00a0 In their concern for me, is there not a sense of fear rooted in stereotypes that poor people of color are all criminals or that I am less safe here than in an office in the suburbs?\u00a0 How many workers and students have been killed by enraged co-workers in mostly white and suburban office places or schools?\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t those places, and those mostly white groups not viewed with fear?\u00a0 Why do I myself sometimes harbor fearful thoughts when an African-American male walks towards me on the streets outside?\u00a0 Stereotypes have an evil and pernicious influence within each of us when we hesitate to hug a black person who smells differently, or when I treat an African-American homeless man in a way that might be condescending or some of us look at a gay flamboyant man as outrageously odd.\u00a0 What other inner demons must we<\/span><\/em><\/strong> confront \u2013 those we either won\u2019t admit to or may not even know exist?<\/p>\n

Activist Tom Wise says, \u201c<\/strong>Since hardly anyone will admit to racial prejudice of any type, focusing on bigotry, hatred, and acts of intolerance only solidifies the belief that racism is something ‘out there,’ a problem for others, ‘but not me,’ or anyone I know.\u00a0 Subtle racism becomes even more important to address and change.”<\/strong> Within my honest and true self, I must admit that I am not yet ready to participate in an Alabama daybreak.\u00a0 I too must pray and hope for a perfect dawn in myself \u2013 where perfect love casts out even the smallest of my fears and where these white hands of mine might touch and feel and caress the hands of all persons without any vestige of fear or prejudice.<\/p>\n

James Baldwin, a well-known African-American author and activist was told by Bobby Kennedy in 1961 that perhaps in only 30 years a black man would be elected President.\u00a0 While Kennedy was only off by 17 years, Baldwin\u2019s response to him reflects what we consider today.\u00a0 He said that he did not care so much that an African-American would be elected President.\u00a0 He cared more about what kind of country the first African-American President would lead.<\/p>\n

And it is clear that while we have come a long way since 1961, the dream of Langston Hughes, even with the first African-American President, is not realized.\u00a0 The Shirley Sherrod case, which many of you know about, is a perfect example of racism that is still alive and well in our nation.\u00a0 Sherrod, an African-American Department of Agriculture official, was falsely accused of herself being a racist by using words from a speech of hers completely out of context.\u00a0 Instead of being vilified and used as an indirect attack against President Obama as she was, Sherrod should instead have been elevated as a heroine of a Hughes like Daybreak in Alabama.\u00a0 Her own father was murdered by a white man who was then later acquitted by an all-white jury.\u00a0 In her speech, she spoke of her own struggles to overcome anger and bitterness towards all whites and how redemption came for her as she came to know and assist, as a government official, a small white farmer and his wife.\u00a0 Her perspective is Jesus-like in its ability to overcome hatred and find, instead, love.\u00a0 Far from now having a stereotypical viewpoint that all whites are racist haters of people like her, she now sees others through a Jesus prism of concern for all humanity and particularly the outcast, the poor and the marginalized.\u00a0 It was in that sense that she came to see the plight of the small farmer as linked to the African-American struggle to find justice, equality and fairness in our nation.\u00a0 As despicable as the columnist\u2019s actions were in falsifying Shirley Sherrod\u2019s own words, I am nevertheless grateful for what he did.\u00a0 He made known to the world a Sankofa heroine \u2013 one who has herself replaced hatred for love.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to note that most anthropologists around the world do not even classify separate races within the human species. The American Anthropological Association asserts, \u201c<\/strong>The concept of race is a social and cultural construction formulated in the 18th<\/sup> century. \u00a0Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically. \u00a0It is clear that human populations are not demarcated or biologically distinct by so-called racial subgroups. \u00a0The concept of race has no validity in the human species.\u201d <\/strong>If this is so, then human prejudices against others are based solely on perceived<\/span><\/em> differences based on mere appearance.\u00a0 Beyond certain outwardly distinct characteristics, there is no biological difference in human kind.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Langston Hughes\u2019 poem Daybreak in Alabama<\/strong> is a plea in behalf of all persons and not just African-Americans.\u00a0 It is a vision of an Eden like re-creation where, as the Bible says in the Book of Revelation, the Divine One will wipe away every tear, every lament and every sense of pain.\u00a0 The poem evokes a day when, as the Bible also symbolically says, lions will lie down with lambs.\u00a0 Traditional enemies will find love for one another.\u00a0 Bigotry, for Hughes, attacks the kind of spiritual peace that exists when kind fingers symbolically touch everybody and everything.\u00a0 Indeed, Hughes seeks fulfillment not just of dreams for heaven on earth but also for the American dream yet to be a complete reality.\u00a0 In this regard, Hughes is a champion for all persons marginalized by a predominant power structure.\u00a0 He wrote in one of his poems,<\/p>\n

Let America be America again.
\nLet it be the dream it used to be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am the poor white, – fooled and pushed apart,
\nI am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
\nI am the red man driven from the land,
\nI am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek\u2014
\nAnd finding only the same old stupid plan
\nOf dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.<\/p>\n

O, let America be America again\u2014
\nThe land that never has been yet\u2014
\nAnd yet must be\u2014the land where every man is free.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

For each of us, the poetry of Langston Hughes still resonates today.\u00a0 It is far too simple to claim prejudice exists out there \u2013 and not in here.\u00a0 Human nature causes each one of us to view the world through personal prisms of either fear\u2026\u2026. or understanding and love.\u00a0 Even as we claim to be people who love one another, how often do we act instead with fear of the other \u2013 fear of our own shortcomings, fear based in stereotypes and misperceptions, fear rooted in false assumptions?\u00a0 If I claim I lack fear, I lie to myself.\u00a0 Our goal, as Hughes so evocatively wrote, is to seek perfection \u2013 to invoke the Sankofa bird of reconciliation and forgiveness.\u00a0 For him, that goal is found in a utopia of red clay soil, pine trees, and a dew blessed Alabama where the Divine composer conducts a symphony of humanity in perfect love with itself.\u00a0 May we each seek the same\u2026within ourselves and in our world.<\/p>\n

I wish you all, my dear friends, much love and much peace.<\/p>\n

As always, I open up our time up today for your thoughts and comments.\u00a0 Of particular interest to me is not so much a discussion of how terrible racism is.\u00a0 I am interested, instead, on how subtle forms of racism might insidiously lie within us.\u00a0 How do we conquer our own fears and our own prejudices?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Message 31, Summer Reading, Langston Hughes: Love and Humanity, 8-22-10 \u00a9 Doug Slagle, Pastor, The Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved Service-Program-8-22-10 If you have noticed the images located on the front of your programs, you may recognize them as particularly meaningful to African-Americans.\u00a0 The Sankofa bird, symbolized in the first image and idealized in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}