Hilton Head Island, SC – July 28, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 55:5-13; Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians 3:23-29
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. – Galatians 3:26 (RSV)
I should have preached this sermon last Sunday. But frankly, I did not fully appreciate last Sunday how upset millions of black Americans were because of the George Zimmerman verdict. Only in reading some of the extended newspaper and magazine accounts of the trial and its aftermath and listening to some of the blacks interviewed on television did I begin to see and feel how alarmed and frightened many in the American black community are because of the jury’s decision. This was not just another instance of injustice towards blacks, of which there have been countless numbers down through our history, although perhaps it was another injustice. This is more, and it provides all of us a chastened opportunity to consider where we are personally, and nationally, in what has just transpired.
Sermon titles that require two lines are at least one line too long. However, were that not a visual reality, the complete title for this sermon would be Race, Rights, Six White Women, Four White Men, and an Ever-Predictable, Ever-Incomprehensible Black Man. In other words, I shall also very briefly be addressing the US Supreme Court in their 5-4 decision to strike down some of the laws from the 60s and 70s which guaranteed the rights of black Americans to vote without repression or intimidation. For generations, one of the states where blacks were prevented from voting after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th through 15th Amendments to the Constitution was South Carolina. Now that the Fearsome Five have made their dreadful decision, we will see how quickly Jim Crow returns to protect voting booths in the Palmetto State from too many menacing black South Carolinians casting ballots. But of that, more later.
If you, or your son, or your grandson, were arrested for committing a crime, especially if you hadn’t committed a crime, would you feel you would likely be acquitted in court, if it came to a trial? If you’re white, would you likely feel differently about that than if you were black? The George Zimmerman trial convinced many black Americans who may not have thought much about that before the trial that they are far less likely to get true justice in court than white Americans. And if you personally feel you may be deprived of justice, your life feels precarious. Most whites don’t feel like that, but many blacks do.
Thirteen percent of Americans are black. Thirty-seven percent of the people in our prisons are black. It may be that blacks, particularly young, unemployed male blacks, are more likely to commit crimes than the population at large, but they also are far more likely to be convicted of those crimes than are young male whites or any other category of people who commit the same crimes. Our prisons are teeming with angry young black men, many of whom are convinced they did not get fair trials in the own native country. Blacks are 13% of the drug users, but they are 38% of those arrested for using drugs. A July Gallup poll reported that a quarter of black males age 18 to 34 said they had been unfairly treated by the police in the previous thirty days. One-fourth! In only thirty days! Would white men that age say the same?
Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black, said that when he was a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., he was stopped by a policeman when he was going through a white neighborhood on his way to see a movie. He was not a youth wearing a hoodie; he was a federal prosecutor. Have you ever been stopped doing such a very suspicious thing as going to a movie?
Let us review what happened in Sanford, Florida on that ill-fated night last year. Trayvon Martin had gone to a store to buy some snacks after dark. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer with a pistol, saw him walking through his neighborhood, which also was Trayvon’s neighborhood. Mr. Zimmerman called 9-1-1 to report that he saw a suspicious-looking young man. The police dispatcher told Mr. Zimmerman NOT to do anything to stop the young man, and that he should remain in his car. They would send a patrol car immediately. Shortly afterward, people heard screams outside their homes, and then a gunshot. Trayvon Martin was dead, and George Zimmerman admitted killing him, but, he said, it was in self-defense. And Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was crucial in the verdict of Not Guilty. Obviously there is much more to the case than that, but that, it seems, is its essence. Some of you will want to argue the law behind this case, but this sermon is not about law. It is about perceptions among American blacks and whites.
Polls which have been taken since the Zimmerman verdict indicate how wide the gap remain between whites and blacks on certain issues, the Zimmerman case being a prime example. The Pew Research Center discovered that 5% of blacks approved of the verdict, while 49% of whites approved of it, almost ten times as many. Alternatively, 86% of blacks said they were dissatisfied with the verdict, but only 30% of whites were dissatisfied, or about a third as many. Two weeks ago in our regular Sunday morning forum, when the Zimmerman trial came up, I asked how many people thought George Zimmerman was guilty of at least some kind of crime, and a majority thought he was. The Pew statistics report that 80% of blacks say the trial verdict raises important issues about race that need discussion, and only 28% of whites think that. Sixty percent of whites say that race is – quote – “getting more attention than it deserves.”
Do those figures shock you? If not, why not? How can anyone hear numbers like that without going numb? How can white Americans be so strangely tranquil about this verdict? Do you agree with the verdict? If so, are you a racist, albeit perhaps a cultured one? What is a racist?
Almost fifty years ago, Lyndon Johnson, a native Texan, was President. Under his courageous and forceful leadership, the most important civil rights legislation in the history of the country was passed. It transformed life for millions of black people, particularly in the South. But when the legislation was finally pushed through, President Johnson said it meant the South would be lost to the Democratic Party for a generation. He was correct in his basic idea, but very wrong in his math. The South became essentially lost to the somewhat more liberal party for at least two generations, and only heaven knows when – or if – that will change.
Jury selection in high-profile criminal cases can be a travesty of justice before the trial even begins. The defense team in the O.J. Simpson murder case insisted on holding the trial in Los Angeles, because it would be very hard for the prosecution to strike large numbers of potential jurors on the basis of race, and many minority Americans live in Los Angeles. Thus the jury which ultimately was selected had a preponderance of black people. The trial lasted nine months, and the jury deliberated just four hours. The verdict: Not Guilty. A mainly black jury acquitted a famous black sports star. For reasons of their own, the State of Florida decided to have six rather than twelve on the George Zimmerman trial. Further, a jury selection expert hired by the defense lawyers recommended that they try to engineer a jury of six white women, because he thought they would be the most sympathetic to Mr. Zimmerman. At a far briefer trial than the in the Simpson case, the six women, after nine hours of discussion, found the defendant Not Guilty. An all-white jury acquitted a white man of murder or manslaughter in the death of a 15-year-old black boy.
How racist are we, you and I? And how racist is America? Anyone who is genetically a member of any race, or perhaps of two or more races, may be subconsciously, if not defiantly consciously, racist. And that’s true for both whites and blacks. The poll numbers do not lie. After the Zimmerman trial, any white person who says race is “getting more attention than it deserves” is either woefully ignorant, or racist, or both. To deny that is deliberately to overlook how angry black Americans are. And it is imperative that white Americans acknowledge this anger, or otherwise the racial gap may never be narrowed. We whites must not return to ignorant inflexibility regarding race.
To their enormous credit, this perceived injustice has caused very few black Americans after the Zimmerman verdict to engage in the kind of violence which followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, or the riots which resulted when the Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. Nor is this like the Watts Riot in Los Angeles in 1965 or the Hough Riot in Cleveland in 1966. Nevertheless, many blacks are exceptionally disturbed by the verdict, and we whites must recognize that, and deal positively with it.
To be sure, people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have recently vented their spleen on television talk shows. But they are to some degree “professional blacks,” that is, men who are most noted for speaking out on frequently on black issues. But many other black commentators have also expressed dismay over the verdict. Leonard Pitts, whose columns appear regularly in The Island Packet, and who writes about a great variety of topics, wrote several days ago, “We are living in a perilous era for African-American freedom. The parallels to other eras have become too stark to ignore.” This comes from someone who is not a firebrand or rabble rouser. If whites ignore the thoughts of people like Leonard Pitts, we are missing something very crucial.
Apparently one of the things being stated in the black community is that blacks should not try to avoid jury duty. If true, that is outstanding. I have no idea what the racial composition of potential jurors was in Sanford, Florida. If it was heavily white, it is not surprising that many blacks believe the verdict was pre-determined, whether or not that was in fact the case. But remember, this sermon is not essentially about the legal issues in the Zimmerman trial. Rather it is about the perception of most blacks regarding the verdict in the trial, and how much at odds that is from the perception of most whites regarding the verdict.
The President of the United States has seriously addressed the issue of race at length only twice in five years. Barack Obama is considered black by most people, even though he is half-white. He is so cerebral as to diminish emotion almost into oblivion, and obviously he does not want to be seen by anyone as only our first black President. A couple of years after he was elected President, he spoke about race in a lengthy televised speech. He spoke about it again, finally, several days after the Zimmerman verdict. At least he, “the ultra-liberal black President,” did speak up, and he did so sooner than the ultra-liberal white preacher who is finally saying what he thinks needs to be said. Mr. Obama said he could have been Trayvon Martin 35 years ago, implying that he might have been racially profiled as a suspicious ne’er-do-well. He also might have been killed, even long before there were “Stand Your Ground” laws to support vigilantes, should they need support, which in many courtrooms in many parts of the USA they don’t need.
For the time in which he lived, and possibly for any period of time, the prophet Isaiah was an ultra-liberal. He always expressed concern for the least, the last, and the lost in Israelite society. In Isaiah 55, he was saying that Israel had a priceless gift to offer to themselves and the world, and that was a relationship with God. But in order to pass along the gift, it had to be positively presented to those who needed to receive it. “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near,” said Isaiah. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:6-7). Preachers and prophets and presidents can speak out forever, but if too many people refuse to listen, there will literally be hell to pay.
However, said Isaiah, if people do listen, and respond affirmatively, and change their ways, life for everyone is certain to improve. “For thus says the Lord,” Isaiah said God said, “’Behold I will extend prosperity to (Jerusalem) like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an ever-flowing stream…. And as one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you’” (Isa. 66:12-13).
Society really runs smoothly only when most people follow God’s laws and other ethical principles regarding justice, equity, fairness and love. No people – white, black, Latino, Asian, or whatever – can follow God if racism is a primary motivator in how they think and act. Whether or not their belief is accurate, white Americans need to realize that many black Americans do believe a great injustice was done in Sanford, Florida, both in the killing of a young black man and in the acquittal of the young white man who readily admitted to killing him. If we ignore that reality, we do so at our own personal and national peril. If you personally have not comprehended the level of the anger, you have either chosen to ignore it or not to think sufficiently deeply about why the anger has surfaced so strongly.
I’m not saying you are racist. Only you, and God, can decide that. But I am saying that the USA is still alarmingly racist, if only because of what the statistics show after the Zimmerman verdict was made public. The disparity of the figures between whites and blacks cannot be so skewed unless many people assess what happened in central Florida through flawed, racist eyes.
Blacks, or Latinos, or Asians, or others, should have exactly the same rights in this country and culture as whites. But blacks and Latinos and Asians and others will tell you, if you are willing to listen closely, that they are sometimes not treated the same way under our laws and customs as are whites. Four white men and one ever-predictable, ever-incomprehensible black man recently struck down state laws which have been in force since the late Sixties regarding voting. By so doing, almost surely they have guaranteed that minority voters in certain states shall likely be deprived of their franchise in the future. The Fearsome Five have engaged in yet another terrible scandal by their obviously obdurate and ideological decision.
Four days ago, in The Island Packet, Shoe was fulminating one of his frequent fulminations. Shoe is the bird who is the editor of The Treetops Tattler, the newspaper in the bird sanctuary of the comic-strip community known as Treetops. Shoe is at the lunch counter where the server (formerly waitress and then later waitperson) known as Roz is listening to Shoe, you should pardon the expression, grouse. “Sheesh!” says the addled editor. “Nothing but bad news…We’re going to hell in a handcart!...We’re all doomed! Doomed, I say!” To which the ever-patient and ever-caustic Roz says, “(Sigh) Poor Shoe. Always going through life with morose-colored glasses.”
Normal people don’t like ultra-liberals yammering about the theme of this sermon, because it upsets some of them. But if the ultra-liberals don’t fixedly gaze through their morose-colored glasses when bad things happen, who, literally, in hell WILL do it?