It's been a while, I know. I've had a lot on my plate of late and it seems like it won't wane for a couple more months.
I'll take a moment now to enter a few thoughts on a subject that is riddling our media discussions.
Living in the South, I'm constantly reminded of moments from the past that haunt our land. On any given day I drive by acres upon acres of cotton fields that were once teeming with emaciated slaves working feverishishly on sweltering days for the blessed King Cotton, as James Henry Hammond and David Christy once proclaimed. Behind my own home is a field that was once used for cotton crops and I can't help but wonder whether I daily stand on a spot where an African slave was beaten for slow productivity or, even worse, for no reason at all.
The decades that followed those horrid nineteenth century years found a struggle that barely proved an ameliorated state for the supposedly freed slaves. Yes, they were freed from the obligation to work as property, but their hell had only just begun.
Segregation, anger at the outcome of the war, the foreign cotton market, the New South's rush to rebuild a broken land, and the eventual onset of the twentieth century's racist modus operandi found African-Americans in such a position of submission that their plight could hardly be called progress.
I won't belabor the point in arriving at the present when such great men as Colin Powell and Barack Obama are on our screens and in positions of great power and prestige. No, I don't think the African-American fight for equality is over, but where they are is only a wonderful foreshadowing of where they will be.
But, what of unused hatred?
This weekend in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the second of the Shoals' two KKK meetings in the last year took place on the courthouse lawn. White cone-shaped masks, black and red maltese cross patches, Hitleresque gestures, and hate speech, all sprawled on the deadening, drought-ridden grass to preach yet another hate sermon to the gathered crowd. But, this time, the focus was much different from what was heard circa 1950 (give or take forty years). The verbiage was the same, but the noun had changed. This time they began their hate parade on immigrants.
To those who are positioning themselves against the influx of world citizens to America, think on this: your stance aligns you with the Ku Klux Klan. It's sad to think of the progress America has accomplished in creating a land of opportunity and then couple it with the modern day, supposedly kosher, form of the KKK: the Minutemen. Entire presidential campaigns are run on the spun term "border security." Tall Irishmen with a few dollars and a syndicated show on terror-fed news channels are bickering like nineteenth century imbeciles on national television over the thought that immigration on driving under the influence are somehow connected. It's sad. All the way to tears.
The most discouraging scenes are those that contain people who find their soul in some form of religion yet are a party to this horrid line of reasoning. Pulpits of evangelical communities are poisoned by preachers who are jeopardizing their congregations' tax status (and rightly so) by delivering hate-filled homilies in an attempt to persuade their weak-minded parishioners. It's almost as if they've performed surgery on their Bibles; the same Bibles that teach that we are children of God well before we are citizens. These preachers forget that socialism is the way of Jesus, and, depending on your view of Jesus, the way of the Christian God.
It's as if the hatred from the nineteenth century is unused. It's as if people have some sort of innate need to hate. I posit that the anti-"illegal" position is merely sanctioned hatred.
Solution:
We are humans. We are all humans. Before we are Christians, before we are citizens, before we are even members of families, we are human. To use a popular maxim from the world of homiletics, "we should make every attempt to view the world through the eyes of the Creator." The Creator sees all of its creation as-is. All concotions of human-kind are merely illusions of divisions, supposed methods of peace. The Creator sees no time, no nationality, no citizenship, no club, no affiliation. The Creator sees only the created. I applaud those ministers who are using their God-given position to further that position; to call those who declare Biblical affiliation to provide safe-haven for humans. It is not illegal to be a human.
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I just re-read this post. It's broken, emotional, and far from cohesive. However, I'm going to post it as-is. I'm not going to correct errors. I'm not even going to continue the thought. If I have more points, I'll write them later in a new post. For now, please evaluate your position to be sure that you're not feeding a position of sanctioned hatred. Learn to view each human through the eyes of the Creator. Try to envision the circumstances of each world citizen you encounter. Their story could be missing link between their place in life and your perception.
