Reflection by Susan Spillman
Photographs by Gillian Knowles and Holly Heine
“In our ongoing spiritual formation, we will use prayer, worship, advocacy, intentional action, and education to become the Beloved Community.” Directed by this mandate taken from our mission statement, the members of the Racial Reconciliation Commission and a number of guests visited the Whitney Plantation Museum, our first excursion in our ongoing efforts towards intentional action and education. With more guests than Commission members, our group was considerably larger than anticipated, all welcome and all embraced by our commitment to advocacy. As we walked the Holy Ground whose history calls out to us with a reminder of how difficult and complex our task will be, each of us listened for the promptings of the Holy Spirit with whatever message was most necessary to us for our efforts in carrying out our mission. During the period of reflection that followed our tour, many spoke of the experience in short and emotionally charged terms: “sadness”, “guilt”, “anguish”, “anger”. There were tears and expressions of pain. It was apparent to all of us that the lessons of the museum have been most often hidden, or covered by denial, and that the reality must be confronted if healing is to take place.
Healing? What is the shape of healing for each individual member of the group? Many of us who were present are old (er), and white. Will our healing begin with an acknowledgement, as painful as it may be, of our privilege? Have some of us of European descent been convinced, or deluded, by our membership in cultural or economic groups that are not considered “prestigious”, that we are not really privileged? What is the struggle so necessary for those who are from prominent families, who perceive that giving up anything to which they have been entitled will be very difficult? Will our desire for transformation lead us into a frightening re-identification of who we really are? Will we ultimately have to struggle with other prejudices that have implications for our racial reconciliation work? Can we call ourselves transformed, or truly seeking transformation, if we have embraced middle class, educated, (each of us fills in the preferred terms) persons of another race if we still have strong class prejudices directed against those of that same race—or our own?
I have often heard some of the arguments that are sometimes used by apologists to deny having to assume the responsibility for the realities of the slave trade and the “peculiar institution”. From my studies of the transatlantic slave trade in preparation for team-teaching a course on Afro-Latin American Culture and Civilization, I learned that there were Africans who sold their captives from wars or raids to the slavers who in turn sent them to the New World. Prominent among the traders were Tuareg nomads who traveled their well-developed Saharan routes with cargos of spices, gold, and slaves. Slavery has existed as long as there have been organized societies; indeed, the word slave is derived from Slav, since Eastern Europeans were very frequently enslaved by the Vikings and by other cultures. The great King Alphonso the Wise of Spain, whose court was rich in the intellectual brilliance and creativity of three cultures, wrote in his treatise las Siete Partidas exactly who slaves were and how they were to be treated.
To which we need to say…So What? It is part of our mandate in our work towards reconciliation to insist that the institution of slavery as it was practiced in the New World is not diminished in its horror and brutality by the fact that others in other places, times, and cultures also carried it out. In our visit to the Whitney we witnessed what slavery was like in Louisiana, where the death rate from the hardships of life in the cane fields was such that few slaves lived more than ten years, and most fewer than that. We saw the memorial to the slave children, many unnamed, who did not survive past early childhood, their existence no more than a passing thought to the plantation owners. Our visit gave us information and a commitment to countering erroneous ideas so that we are better prepared to respond to any who would try to argue that “slavery was not that bad”, “the masters must have provided adequate care because the slaves were such an expensive investment”, or “No one in my family owned slaves/ my forebears immigrated to the US long after the end of the Civil War/ we have always been working class, so why should I feel guilty?”
As I began preparing my reflection on our recent trip to the Whitney Museum I was reminded of something that happened on the day after our visit. I am a parishioner at St. James in Baton Rouge, where according to a history of the church written for our sesquicentennial celebration, a beloved priest who served for many years preached sermons on the Christian justification for segregation. I have heard St. James referred to as “the old white church downtown”, but to all appearances, that is changing, if slowly. On Sunday, April 10, as usual, there was a visible presence of our African-American parishioners. The lector, the organist, and three of our choir members participated actively in the liturgy, and the congregation welcomed their talents as they enriched our communal celebration. As far as I know, even though there are many aged members of the congregation, there has been little objection to their membership and participation. (Is this MY prejudice showing?) One of our guests, a superb soprano soloist, had taken part with some trepidation in our trip to the Whitney Museum, concerned that the intense emotional reaction she experienced as an African-American might cause her to have difficulties on the following morning as she sang. This was definitely not the case! She performed the Alleluia from the Exultate Jubilate with the artistry and spiritual exuberance that those who know her would have expected. After the liturgy was finished, a woman came up to the choir benches where a few singers had returned from the recessional to congratulate our soloist on her extraordinary interpretation of the piece. The visitor made a point of joining the singers long enough to stand directly in front of our soprano colleague and tell her, in a low voice unheard by the rest of us, “That was beautiful! I didn’t know that you had it in you.”
How do we interpret that remark? Was the member of the congregation surprised that an African-American “had it in her” to perform Mozart with that level of expertise? Was this simply an innocuous statement that solo performance of that caliber is unusual at St. James? I believe that the woman’s comment is yet another indication of how considerable our work that must be accomplished is, that as we try to cut our way through the non-sense of the statements that we live in a post-racial society, we need to be mindful that reconciliation will be a long-term and sometimes overpowering task, and that the challenges we face will be subtle and genteel as well as vicious and threatening.
Learn more about the work of the Racial Reconciliation Commission here
Learn more about the Whitney Plantation here