America on the Brink

Chapter Six We Can’t Stay Here Anymore: The New Era of Racial Estrangement and Separation Moving can be exciting. The promise of something new. New opportunity. New place to put down roots and call home. New places to see and new friends. And then there are the boxes, moving vans, and travel as you set off to somewhere new. However, moving is not always exciting because it is not always going to a new place. Sometimes it is bittersweet because it is a return home. There are times in life when a move does not work out the way you expected. The new place does not turn out to be what you hoped for and needed. When this happens, some people return home. The words “We are moving back home” or “we can’t stay here anymore” can be bittersweet as it is a return to the familiar but at the expense of something hoped for but not realized. One of the difficult aspects of a move like this is that there is little to no time to grieve. From a societal standpoint, attention and pressure are given to what lies ahead and not what was left behind. We are a full speed ahead kind of nation. Even churches admonish people to forget the past and embrace the future using verses like Philippians 3:13. While there is a tremendous amount of value in this, there is a hidden danger when we do not value the grieving process. In our attempt to live into all things “new,” we neglect to give attention and space for the grief involved in letting go of or losing something cherished. This must change because people need time to grieve loss. An Era of Racism and Retreat I believe moving back home can teach us a few things about the racial climate in which we find ourselves today, and particularly, what it means to be pastoral and supportive to family and friends experiencing loss. Many of us – black and white - but particularly blacks, moved away from mono-racial spaces with hopes of integrated and inclusive churches, relationships, businesses, neighborhoods, and lives with people of different races and ethnicities. The move was difficult because mono-racial spaces are so important and buoyed our communities for years. But moving away was a choice to write a new chapter in our national history and the actualization of Dr. King’s dream of a beloved community for all peoples. This aspect of moving away was characterized by excitement and promise, but the excitement is waning as racism re-asserts itself in our public life and people retreat to mono-racial and segregated spaces.

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