Bearing the Cost of Doing the Right Thing

by Robert Wilkinson

I read an op-ed piece in the WaPo a while back with that title, and just rediscovered it last week. It reminded me of just how segregated and passively racist America was in 1966-68. Given the state of things today, it seems our world still has a lot to learn about tolerance.

Titled "Bearing the cost of doing the right thing" by James Rupert, it is the story of his father, a preacher who stood up to the overt pandemic passive racism in his little segment of white Amerika. The reason it caught my attention is that it re-awakened some memories of a very similar thing that happened to a Methodist minister in the little church of my teen years during the same time in history.

Around 1966-67, our pastor spoke up a little too strenuously and a little too often about civil and human rights, and so the “good people” in that church had him transferred somewhere else. The next preacher was a windbag who went back to the same boring drone that put people back in their comfort zones (and more than a few to sleep!) It seemed that no one in our very white church wanted to talk about the very real problems being exposed in the US concerning the civil rights of millions of Americans.

It’s not like our little community was overtly racist. This was in a part of Florida that had already been integrated for years due to the presence of several military bases in that part of the world. They cheered the black running back on our high school team, and no one I knew expressed any racist sentiments during the course of their day. We had too many servicemen of various races whose wives and kids shopped in too many stores for that to happen.

But while there wasn’t overt racism where we were, there was certainly passive racism. When I was a teen there were too many adults who were more than willing to turn a blind eye to the very real injustices going on both across the river and across the state. There were no protests, no news stories, no public discussions, no civil rights commissions where we lived. It was only when I left and went to college in another state that I became aware and active in working for a better world.

This article was published in 2013 during the discussion at the time about how much Pope Francis was complicit, if only passively, in the murder of priests and tens of thousands in Argentina by the military junta back in the 70s and 80s. I believe it calls all of us to question what we would do in the face of such massive violent violations of human rights. That can be known only by us in the depth of our hearts in the heat of the moment.

When our conscience speaks, are we listening? Do we have the courage to stand for what’s right in the face of opposition, violence, and hatred? Can we take the high road of civility in the face of barbarism, while still speaking truth to power? That seems to be the task as we walk the Way from darkness to light.

Humanity continues to learn the great truth expressed by the immortal Doctor Benjamin Franklin, that “we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Or as it was expressed by the 18th century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

For those who ask how much one clergyman, whether small town Methodist minister or future Pope, can do to speak out against injustices in the face of widespread kidnappings, torture, murder, and other crimes against humanity, I will leave you with a quote from Martin Niemoller that we ignore at our peril:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Please read the article linked at the top of this one. It seems southern New Jersey was just as hostile and racist as anywhere in the deep South of my youth. The New Age will not resemble this dying one in many ways.

© Copyright 2013, 2016 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Michelle Young]

Bravo, Robert!!! You know we are on the same page here, and the only place where I think I would expand on it is to say that racism--tragically--is rampant in all corners of the world today. Your comments are welcome in KISS, and I will stand by you all the way on this. I think you know that--or I would hope you do.

Many will blame and not see the roles they play in creating the additional hostilities and ill will between groups. For me, as a blend of so many cultures, races, religions, if the world were monocultural, I wouldn't even be here. I should think that would leave the world a lot more bland, a lot less colorful, and a lot more impoverished of spirit. I believe this is true of each of us in the world. We all lend something to the very spirit of humanity and the tapestry each of us have taken part in creating.

I appreciate you, my friend.

[sue]

Thanks Robert,
I truly feel if we were taught to serve our Souls and not polish our egos...
Our mind's eye would recognize the cross as a symbol for divide and control.

[sue]

...Pouring water on our third eye and closing it down is the baptism ritual...

[sw]

Bravo. Excellent post.

[Nic]

Can not be said more clearly. It is the separation the allowing for separation to appear as normal, as a natural state of things when it is truly a perversion of what IS and should be. Standing passively seems as impossible for the passiveness is a stand and as such carries responsibility.
If we could only listen clearly to our soul consciousness and acted upon it we would have a different world.
Blessings be to all.