2017.10.22 "Taking a Knee" Readings

From Angela Denker’s Washington Post article “Colin Kaepernick and the Powerful, Religious Act of Kneeling”:  

“You watch it on TV and you have to wonder what the fuss is all about. The stadium is standing and Kaepernick is kneeling. Silently. Arms folded. Elbow on his knee staring straight ahead.

You’re thinking: Dammit.

I can’t even watch football on Sunday anymore and drink a beer without being reminded that something is wrong in America.

You want Kaepernick to go away, to stand up and salute the flag and shut up because we can tolerate abuse of other human beings but we cannot tolerate being disrupted when we want to pretend that everything is okay.”

From UU ministerial intern Aisha Ansano:

“No matter what tactics and methods racial justice activists use, the general response of society will be a collective head-shaking and tsk-tsk-ing — because what people are actually complaining about are not the specific tactics that are being used in the struggle for racial justice, but that the struggle for racial justice exists at all.

I imagine that for most people, the immediate reaction to that statement is defensiveness. “I really don’t think that the struggle for racial justice shouldn’t exist,” some might respond. “I just think there are better ways to go about it than blocking traffic and making me late for work. I get annoyed and frustrated and it really doesn’t convince me to join your fight.”

What, exactly, is going to convince that person to join the fight? Picket signs on the side of the road? Then they’ll just think, “Look at those troublemakers disturbing the peace over there,” as they drive on their way to work. Then they'll promptly forget about it.

It’s not the specific methods that are making people uncomfortable. It’s the fact that the struggle for racial justice is seeping into their awareness in ways that they can’t ignore.”

From “To Hear and Be Accountable: An Ethic of White Listening”  by Aana Marie Vigen. In Disrupting White Supremacy from Within: White People on What We Need to Do, edited by Jennifer Harvey, et. al. Boston: Pilgrim Press, 2004: 216-248

“What does it mean for white folks…to listen fully to the truths articulated by members of those communities who have suffered so long, and so pervasively, at the hands of white supremacy?  How might white people resist the tendency to co-opt that which peoples of colors tell us?  Finally, how might our ultimate understanding as white people come at less of a cost to these communities than it often does? I encourage you to linger with these questions.  Do not let your mind, especially if you are a white person, rush with an answer or retort.  Allow them to stir around a bit.  For those of us who are white, deliberately restraining the impulse to answer, or presuming to know the answer, is a fundamental part of responsible listening. …Engaging [these questions] is part of the ongoing lifework of all white people.”