By Jewels Three weeks ago, I made the decision to travel to Standing Rock, North Dakota to participate in the community that was built in resistance to the Dakota Access […]
black lives matter
Driving While Black in Chicago! by M. L. Hardy
A few days ago, I was stopped by the Chicago police, while black, I mean while driving down the street. Their behavior during a routine traffic stop was so rude […]
Kith or Kin By Gregg Hunter
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24. “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” Mark 3:25 This has been a very trying couple of weeks for every U.S. citizen. Seven deaths, seven lives lost, two regular black citizens and five police offices. Outrage, frustration and hopelessness have cycled through just about everyone’s minds. People have shed tears for their lost loved ones and for the lack of progress on race relations in our country. I attended a memorial service at my seminary, McCormick Theological Seminary, on July 11 to grieve with my fellow students and citizens of our wounded nation. Earlier that day I listened to an expatriate from the Dominican Republic who grew up in Brooklyn and now attends seminary in Cuba accuse the U.S. of being the primary problem with not just Cuba, but the world and especially for violence towards those of African descent. So much anger, so much pain, I have witnessed in the last few days. At the service, we couldn’t even bring ourselves to sing songs of healing because what good are our songs when they paper over feelings of a wound that still has not healed. I could barely bring myself to speak and cried later that night in the solitude of my apartment. I thought I had no more tears to cry and had moved forward, but it turns out I still had a reservoir of emotion that I had left untapped. I am wounded, black people are wounded and our nation is wounded. Yet, black people get wounded by the state and its institutions. We might not be considered ⅗ human, but instead one could say ⅗ American, not fully woven into the fabric of the American Dream and not melted into the pot fully. And therein lies the predicament I find myself in. I am divided and I try to serve two masters and I am not standing. I am black and American; I love my country yet my country has a strained relationship with people that look like me. I suffer from the disease of “doubleconsciousness”, trying to be fully black and fully American. […]