Rhetoric Race and Religion
by. Rev. T. Renee Crutcher
Let me be the first to say that I applaud BLM, The Dream Defenders and any other organization doing Movement work! What I will not do is dismiss the intergenerational necessity of this work. Movement work is messy and at least organizations today have a backdrop to pull from. We all have skin in this game so we all need to fight from the places we find ourselves! I’ll be damn if somebody tells the generation that suffered far more than police brutality that they don’t have the right to speak or lead. I’ll be damned if my mother’s 82 year old voice will be silenced when she paid the hefty price. I’ll be damned if my young cousins or even my 4 year old god child is silenced as if they have no right to chart the course they will have to navigate! When we look back we can see the advantages of many ‘one’ voice. If any of us thinks for one minute that the hard fought freedoms of any age are guaranteed in the next age then we are fooling ourselves! There have been more successes of the past than we think and if you didn’t live it then you can’t say! Ask my 105 year old Uncle Dosh!
Yet there is much more to accomplish and some revisiting of and creating some new common goals. Each generation will have its fight! So what if My mother’s generation is looking for a moral transformational leader?? So what?? It is for them of messianic proportions. So what if there is not one raised up to the likes of that but are two or three or twenty or twenty thousand? So what? We will know if God sends them! We know we are the ones! King was not King alone, King was Abernathy and a whole slew of folks! What matters is that we all do our part! Everybody can’t and shouldn’t be in the streets! BLM’s is not beyond critique! Al Sharpton and NAACP don’t have to be perfect to be effective! What I’m saying is red ain’t got to be blue and blue ain’t got to be red to do what is imperative which is to see our people free! We can be in some tension but please be in the fight!
Another thing if prophetic work has no love then it is not prophetic! Hard truths must be espoused but if the intent is not to make humanity better then it is flawed! Yes,as Dr. King stated, “violence is the language of the unheard.” but wholesale violence is not the answer and thankfully BLM and others have and are dedicated to non-violent social change. Yet, it is not ungodly to protect and defend one’s own household. I was/am King but understood and appreciated The Panthers too. We must appreciate what each other brings to the battlefront and be strategic about how we coalesce. Oh we must coalesce for the enemy is defeated when we are in collective formation. AND, surely we must call out the sellouts and Uncle Ruckuses lest they dismantle our good efforts while accepting that they do have a right to be sellouts! My Grandpapa The late Rev. Frank Wilborn, Sr. had a saying he coined, “The devil is big enough for all of us to take a lick at him and not hit him in the same place!” A wise old bird was he!
Rev. T. Renée Crutcher, MDiv, is Founder, Spiritual and Creative Director of Sankofa Ministries & Tellin’ Our Story Publishing, Inc. 501(c)3 arts based social justice ministries, psalmist, preacher, workshop leader and performing artist.
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