Greetings!
Insights come through an awakening to experience. I have shared with you my insights through experience that meaningful, rewarding work is therapy with the awesome power to heal as well as empower. And that paying a living wage is the key to remedying many of society’s ills. I think in this moment, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, that America is awakening to the experiences of people of color. And I pray that we gain insight to the dilemmas of the downtrodden and recommit ourselves to a more just society going forward.
Amid COVID-19 and the protests of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier this year, our country’s deep racial disparities have come to the forefront of political discussion. There is something deeply important happening in our time; reform is in the air and on the agenda. I pray we as humanity are awakening and will not remain asleep, figuratively speaking.
My epiphany regarding COVID-19 and racial disparity is this: COVID-19 had to come before the tilting of racial disparity to be impactful and life-changing. The pandemic put a pause on all human activity not just locally, but globally. So much so that industries collapsed, businesses had to rethink how they would survive, and schools have been exhausted adjusting their annual calendars to much more virtual engagement and online learning. Isolation, quarantine, and fear of the virus have sent shockwaves through our society, cancelling a lot of arrogance and pride to which all of us are susceptible, and to which all societies have been economically, socially, and educationally challenged.
COVID-19 readied hearts of stone to be made over into hearts of flesh through our shared experience of vulnerability and mortality. This moment in time has opened eyes and cultivated a unity of cultures in so many pragmatic ways that has never been seen or experienced on this level. Yes, divisions remain; but finally, can we walk in each other’s shoes? I think so.
I at least see people walking together. When George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis white police officer, racial injustice would be responded to by blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians – all as one people standing in unity giving the clarion calls, “I can’t breathe!” and “Black lives matter!” Our country as we’ve known it has changed. The larger, white cultural narrative for 400 years in America is being re-written with all cultures now having a say in how history will be viewed and remembered.
I believe as an African-American today that I have more of a presence, more of a voice, more of a part now to play to bring greater true equality – economically, socially, educationally – across the spectrum of American life. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from August 28, 1963 on the Mall in Washington D.C. “I Have a Dream” speech:
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children – black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual “Free at last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
The irony of this pandemic is that it took the tragedy of a color-blind enemy attacking us all to unite us. This experience has awakened us to our faults and to what Abraham Lincoln termed “the better angels or our nature.” May we never sleep again.
In service,
Charles Neal
Pastor, Brookside Community Church
Board Member, RecycleForce