Humor for the day: “An applicant was filling out a job application. When he came to the question, ‘Have you ever been arrested?’ He wrote no. The next question, intended for people who had answered in the affirmative to the previous question, was, ‘Why?’ The applicant answered it anyway, ‘Never got caught.’”
Much has been said about the violence in our communities as it relates to the Black community — the “Black on Black killings.” But there is as much “white on white killing” taking place. Violence and racism are prevalent in our city and throughout our nation. A professor friend of mine from South Africa put it this way: “Violence and racism here in Indy is like a religion.” In our conversation, I added that I have noticed a subconscious behavior of love to fear and fear to love.
In the years I spent working in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the South and had the responsibility of teaching nonviolence in those communities, I learned to recognize the power of love vs. the power of fear. Being in the South for a number of years in the ’60s, it was evident the emotional engine of fear was taking hold on both the white and Black populations of this nation. This is so evident today. Violence in our city and nation is glorified with significant attention given by media and the entertainment economy.
Again, we have my pet-word economics. Production, distribution and consumption are the defining factors. Violence with racism is an economy that produces in America a fear factor. Notice how much attention it gets; people love this fear. They love to fear, because it provides a rush to that adrenal. Our political systems and the politicians play and prey with a vengeance on the fear of citizens. As harsh as this may seem to you, religion in our society is a primary culprit that promotes fear.
We are told we must fear God, and then we are told to love God. How can you do both? Really, you cannot do both, but we try. Fear as a production factor was the strategy for the slave economy. Today, it has its place in the Black community with help from our religious institutions.
Now, do not get me wrong: love has its place in the economy of our society. This love is essentially based on materialistic values. Our idea of love is a love for things that we feel can bring us happiness. And whatever that happiness is does not matter, on the one hand. Yet, it does matter (just like “Black Lives Matter”) for those who love to fear. In the Black community experience, we perpetuate violence on one another too often, because we fear to trust one another. Therefore, we fear to love with the determination to work together and to be unified.
You might ask why this is so. There are various determinations, but I will address the question from this point of view: in the economic system of America, we know it to be capitalism, the enterprise of profits and losses, winners and losers, competition and, of course, the haves vs. the have-nots. Of course, there are other examples of our economic system encouraging the Black community to be competitive with one another rather than united.
In this 21st century, the Black community has a challenge to define itself as the “the beloved community” the late Dr. Martin L. King Jr. referred to in his book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Here in Indiana, there is the challenge for the Black community to unite and to hold its elected officials in all venues — those for whom our tax dollars pay salaries — accountable to being more visible with information that is relevant to the educational and economic growth for Black and poor citizens of our state and city.
