Rhetoric Race and Religion
Below are some reflections from friends of R3 on both the Confederate Flag and Bill Cosby. If you have a small reflection on an issue or topic of the day, please share it with R3 at rhetoricraceandreligion@gmail.com
Doctah Lele
I didn’t think I would be so emotional watching the #Confederate flag’s removal. But then, I should think it not strange. The ancestral blood of my Lowcountry peeps ripped from the shores of the West Indies and West Africa still runs warm in my veins. The symbol that reminded them “ya’ll ain’t neva gon be free” reminded me of the same. While some onlookers were chanting secular spirit songs, I saw some people worship. Not worshipping the moment, but a God who does all things well. We couldn’t understand it two weeks ago, but God knew there would be glory in this story. Days of grieving are still ahead for #Charleston and family members of the#Emanuel9. But this I do know, evil did not have the final say! And what the enemy meant for evil…
Issues like the confederate flag will show you a person’s real heart. If my Facebook friends cannot understand why African Americans are rejoicing that a symbol of slavery, oppression, and violence is being removed from a government building, keep quiet–don’t criticize or belittle our feelings. If you feel so moved that you cannot help but share your insensitive thoughts (especially to me directly), I welcome you to unfriend me.
Women and girls all around you who carry the scars and wounds of past and current sexual assault deserve our amends for re-traumatizing them with all this public disbelief and faux equanimity that let them know that the collective “we” of the church are not on their side. That given a choice we will believe the powerful male who can write big checks and make or break careers. That is a big slice of ministry. As a survivor, all this above the fray carping for Cosby cut me to the quick and changed my assessment of the reliability of black male ally (Ta-Nehisi Coates has done some soul searching regarding his own role in hiding betraying Cosby’s crimes.) Amends need to be made to black women and children whose whose traumas were needlessly exacerbated. The Cosbys, complicit in serial lying as well as rape will probably find some clergy to provide public absolution (like Jesse Jackson did for the Clintons) and receive a massive donation in exchange for keeping ears closed to women’s cries. Hopefully civil suits will clean out his fortune so he will no longer be able to manipulate institutionalist coons.
40 women cannot be wrong. I was watching FoxNews (pray I don’t go to hell..lol) in which they had Jimmy JJ Walker and his words…he believed that Cosby was perhaps a Jekel and Hyde type because he never saw this character in Cosby. It is so sad that we tend to always believe the male. I never told any one when it happened to me who was going to believe a little kid against an almost grown man? But I must say he got his because later in his life he was killed by his wife. But my spirit had to be freed and I learned to journal. I promised myself I would always believe her or him in the event if sexual misconduct against her or him esp.if they are minors and her just because she is.
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