Tag: civil-rights

A Disturbing Message (follow-up)

~ Bruce Ray ~ Leave a comment

There has been an unexpected twist in the burning cross incident that occurred 10 days ago in Chicago’s Grant Park. After surveillance photos of “a person of interest” were distributed, Merlin Lu — a 21-year-old college student from Naperville, IL — contacted NBC5 reporter Chuck Goudie and confessed. Lu admitting setting the cross on fire, but said that he had no idea of the history of cross-burning or the connection to racial intimidation. He claimed that he set the cross on fire to protest the Trump administration. As evidence, he pointed out that he had placed a MAGA hat at the top of the cross before setting it ablaze. Lu has since turned himself into the Chicago police. Lu has been charged with a felony hate crime.

If Lu is telling the truth that he didn’t have a clue, I’m still disturbed that he was so ignorant. He graduated in 2022 from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville–a public high school that has been recognized for its academic excellence and is listed among the top 400 high schools in the nation with a graduation rate of 96%! In 2017, the school received the National Blue Ribbon Award from the US Department of Education in recognition of student achievement. So, I checked out the Social Studies curriculum at Neuqua Valley to get a sense of what Lu probably had been exposed to. According to the current course of study, he would have been required to take a course on US history in his Sophomore year. The curriculum lists Civil Rights as a focus in the second semester. Of course, that does not mean that the history of cross-burning by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is included in the instruction. But even if it was, Lu may not have been in class the day it was taught.

However, there was something else I learned while going down the rabbit hole. On the first day of the 2015-2016 academic year, a student came to Neuqua Valley High School wearing a Confederate Flag T-shirt, igniting a firestorm on social media and setting off a debate about freedom of speech.. While this occurred two years before Mr. Lu entered high school, controversies like the display of a Confederate Flag usually don’t die down quickly or without ramifications. One would think (or at least hope) that the Social Studies department would have been instructed to address Civil Rights more thoroughly so that students would understand the triggering nature and power of symbols.

Maybe the department did address hate symbols and racism. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, let’s be honest: we’ve never done a very good job teaching students US History generally or Civil Rights history specifically. And we are losing ground as we prepare to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the United States. Museums have been told to “adjust” their displays to reflect only the greatness of American history. The National Park Service has been ordered to remove plaques that portray the founders in a negative light (most of them were enslavers). Web sites have been scrubbed. DEI initiatives have been rolled back. Critical Race Theory has been vilified. New history curriculum has espoused new interpretations of the past–like slavery was beneficial for African-Americans. (That gem comes out of PraegerU, a curriculum that is being used in a growing number of schools across the nation–including elementary schools.)

Was Mr. Lu ignorant of the symbolism of a burning cross? If he was ignorant, there are probably thousands of 21-year-olds (or older) that are equally uninformed. But, in my opinion, even if he was ignorant of the symbolism, charging him with a felony hate crime does not teach him much. He has admitted his offense and recognized its impact.. It would be so much better to sentence him to community service hours with an organization like NAACP (or a similar group) that would help him to understand our national racist past and give him the opportunity to connect to those he triggered when he lit the match.

And let’s be honest: it’s not likely that you will see (or light) a burning cross , but there is plenty of racism all around us (and in too many of us). I find it very disturbing that many of the same people who condemned a burning cross have been silent after Josh Hoykit (age 28), praised Jesus in one breath and in the next declared, “Michelle Obama is a man,” following his victory at #47’s birthday UFC cage fight. He needs community service hours and a re-education too.

Come to think of it, maybe we all need to be re-educated–especially on this Juneteenth holiday. Community service would benefit us all too.

Push the Rainbow

~ Bruce Ray ~ Leave a comment

I never met Rev. Jesse Jackson, but I was privileged to hear him speak several times at Rainbow Push headquarters over the past 4 decades. When I first moved to Chicago as pastor of Kimball Avenue Church, I was concerned primarily with my congregation and my local Northside neighborhood. Yet, he was always in the background, and. I was always aware of his impact on Chicago, the nation and the world–an impact that cannot be fully measured.. The death of this civil rights giant this week marks the end of an era, but his legacy will gone on…at least I hope it will.

One of his most enduring legacies is the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The moniker, “Rainbow Coalition,” was first coined by Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois Chapter Black Panther Party, who built an alliance between the Black Panthers, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican organization) and the Young Patriots (a southern white organization) in 1968 and 1969. The three groups agreed to work together and support one another in the fight for justice, police accountability, community investment, jobs, better education and an end to racism, poverty and gentrification. Later, other groups advocating for social justice joined the coalition. They provided programs such as breakfasts for children, health clinics, daycare centers, and clothing give-aways in their various communities. Following the assassination of Hampton by Chicago police with the aid of the FBI on December 4, 1969, the coalition began to splinter and dissolved by 1971.

The idea of solidarity across lines of race, ethnicity and class, however, lived on. Rev, Jackson, in particular, organized his own National Rainbow Coalition in 1984 when he campaigned for the presidency. Sara Tenenbaum and  Marissa Perlman of CBS News Chicago, described Jackson’s Coalition as an organization that demanded new “social programs, affirmative action hiring practices and voting rights protections for groups that Jackson saw being left out of President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies.” Just like Fred Hampton, Jackson sought to unite people across the divisions of race, ethnicity and class to fight for economic justice. Forty plus years later, Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition still exists, advocating for civil rights and economic justice in Chicago and major cities throughout the U.S.

New “rainbow coalitions”, inspired by Fred Hampton and Jesse Jackson, continue to spring up in spaces like Rev. William Barber II’s Poor People’s Campaign and Rev. Liz Theoharis’s Kairos Center network. These networks and others like them continue to fight for equal rights, social justice, voter protection and economic parity throughout the country.

The times we live in, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; where the SAVE Act threatens voting rights; where communities of color are terrorized and families are torn apart by ICE; rainbow coalitions are more important than ever.

Rev. Jesse Jackson has died, but all of us–of every skin tone–cannot let his vision of social justice and civil rights die with him. Keep hope alive!

Dream On

~ Bruce Ray ~ Leave a comment

“Let us never grow weary in doing what is right, for if we do not give up, we will reap our harvest in due time.” Galatians 6:9 (New Catholic Bible)

Today, I honor the life and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I am spotlighting this day because there are efforts to diminish and ultimately dismiss King’s work for equality, civil rights and justice. And we thought we had come so far toward fulfilling Dr. King’s dream. We elected Barack Obama, we confronted our racist past following the murder of George Floyd by initiating and promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, and we affirmed civil rights for other marginalized groups. But all of that seems another galaxy so long ago and so far away.

We have been slipping back into the pit of the past, thanks to an administration intent on destroying “improper ideologies” that challenge its MAGA message. Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, points to the continued efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and the removal of content that does not properly reflect the greatness of America from government websites and Smithsonian museums as examples of today’s “troubling climate.” We also see it in the attempts to control the curriculum and staffing of Universities, punish school districts that promote Critical Race Theory, threaten sanctuary cities and states with loss of funds, and manipulate the press (and TV networks) through lawsuits claiming defamation. Recently, the president signed an Executive Order to remove Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth from the list of National Park free days. That might not seem like a big deal, but it is. The executive order replaced those days with a new free day–June 14, Donald Trump’s birthday.

The administration’s war on anything deemed “woke” has been empowered with the aid of sycophants happily lip-synching the “MAGA” song–people like the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA–who said publicly that Martin Luther King was ““awful” and “not a good person,” who was “not worthy of a national holiday.” He also claimed that the passage of the Civil Rights Act–the law that ended segregation and prohibited workplace discrimination on the basis of race –was “a huge mistake” and “created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon.”

In light of the attacks on Martin Luther King and the “beloved community” he dreamt of, we need Martin Luther King Day more than ever. In an interview with the Associated Press, Bernice King said that this year’s observance is “somewhat of a saving grace” for the nation because “it inserts a sense of sanity and morality into our very troubling climate right now,” “Dr. King reminds people of… the ability to challenge injustice and inhumanity,” she concluded.

Dr. King’s dream was aspirational. It awoke us to the possible. It pointed us to the work ahead to shape vision into reality. Like gardening, it is slow, steady, hard work that requires patience and perseverance. It is the work of breaking up the hard soil of individualism, pulling the weeds of mistrust and fear, and planting and tending the seedlings of justice and righteousness so that we will ultimately harvest the fruit of communal love and collective liberation. So, on this day, let’s renew our commitment to the “kin-dom” work. The harvest will come…unless we give up.

“Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:58 (NIV)