Why? Just because she dared to push for answers about what happened to her son?

At the onset of this tragedy, I don’t remember hearing anyone accuse any of Nolan’s friends of killing him. Nolan’s mother couldn’t understand some things, like what happened to Nolan’s phone. The reports said that he left his phone on the boat with his friends, but Christine said, and I think most would agree, that no person, teen or otherwise, leaves their phone anywhere, not on purpose. That seemed strange and out of character for Nolan, and so Christine pressed for answers.

Her anxiety grew when the Grand Jury declined to indict anyone for what happened to her son. The narrative had been that he had drowned, but the Mississippi autopsy and an independent autopsy ordered by Nolan’s family said that there was no water found in his lungs, stomach, or throat. In addition, the independent medical examiner said Nolan’s body did not include those organs when he received it. Why was that? Christine wondered out loud why, as many who read the story did.

And so, Christine kept pushing and continues to push for answers, and for this, she has been criticized. Some have suggested that she accept that her son drowned and “get over it.”

She can’t. And she shouldn’t.

Does anyone remember the hunt Natalee Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, went on when her daughter vanished in Aruba on May 30, 2005, during a senior trip? Beth was devastated and refused to let go of the search. She kept the pressure on the authorities in Aruba. Joran van der Sloot was the son of a prominent Aruban judge. Holloway’s mother met van der Sloot several days after her daughter disappeared and says she knew van der Sloot knew something, but she wouldn’t know what for years. It wasn’t until van der Sloot was arrested for another murder of a young girl in 2023 that Joran confessed that he had killed Natalee.

Beth stayed on the case, relentlessly pressing the authorities for answers and questioning people in Aruba who she hoped would have them. There were none. It’s been 21 years since Natalee, who, like Nolan, was 18 years old, disappeared, and to date, Natalee’s remains have not been found. Beth still has no answers about what happened to her and still hopes that one day at least her remains will be found.

I get it. That’s what mothers do.

Given my belief in the power and drive of motherhood, what I cannot understand is why so many white people have been so callous when dealing with Nolan’s mother. The attack on her career as a nurse was bad enough – and the case was so superficial that it was dropped. But why would anyone do that? Why wasn't there an outpouring of support for this mother? Why did it seem that some people were more concerned with their sons being suspected of doing something to Nolan, or having something to do with it, than with the grief of this mother? Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath has accused attorney Benjamin Crump of race-baiting because he noted, accurately, that a Black youth who went out with his white friends was the only one from the group who did not make it home. ( https://www.wlox.com/2026/09/24/stop-playing-games-jackson-county-da-responds-claims-made-press-conference-nolan-wells-phone-data/) His observation was not out of line; everyone in this country knows that had the situation been such that a white kid who had gone out with four Black friends was the only one of the group not to make it home, the outcry would be loud, and all of the Black kids would probably be thrown in jail as the case was investigated.

Of Whiteness, I ask, what is it about what you were taught about Black people that makes you so hate-filled that you cannot feel a mother’s or a parent’s distress when a Black child has been hurt? The comments not only by the Mississippi DA but also by some white observers who have blamed Christine Wells Wonsley for doing something nefarious just because she continues to seek answers about her son’s death are disturbing. Why is it that this DA notified Mrs. Wonsley about the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict anyone via a text message – and then proceeded to make a big announcement about the case on Facebook? (

)

All of this reminds me of the sadness I felt when I read about how a six-year-old Black child, Ruby Bridges, was yelled at and called names by angry white mobs as she was escorted into the William Franz Elementary School in 1960. I noticed everyone shouting at her in the pictures I saw, but what struck me – and still strikes me – is that many of the people yelling at this little girl were mothers who were incensed that their children’s school was admitting a Black child. For one full year, little Ruby Bridges sat in a classroom by herself because the parents- and, in my mind, especially the mothers decided this little girl was so unacceptable that she deserved to be treated that way.

There was no compassion for her, no thought of how their hatred and name-calling and whatever else they did affected this little girl. It was clear that whatever she felt because of their words and actions did not concern these people; if anyone’s feelings were hurt, or if this little girl was sad, it was too bad. She was Black. They were white and were unhappy with her presence, and they felt justified in doing and saying what they did.

I cannot imagine a mob of Black mothers doing what those people did to Ruby Bridges, and I cannot believe how the whites in power have treated the pain of Nolan Wells’ family. Whatever else Whiteness is, it is surely toxic. As it affects those whom it targets for attack, it has apparently also, over decades, affected the capacity of those who adhere to it to practice compassion. Neither the pain of a grieving mother nor the terror of a six-year-old child compelled white people involved in their respective situations to pull back and consider the impact of their actions.

It has been proven that the effects of brutality that Whiteness has practiced have been passed down through generations. This intergenerational trauma has resulted in Black people adopting skills to cope with the trauma. What seems equally true is that Whiteness has likewise passed something down – the incapacity to care and feel compassion for those traumatized by white hatred.

A candid observation.

He was always a problem for me. He lied, it seemed, about everything. From the beginning, his obsession with ratings and crowd size led him to lie and led him to make people in his circle lie, too, or be fired. Consider Jeff Sessions.

He called people names. He refused to reveal his tax documents, as every other president has done. He mocked a reporter who had developmental challenges; as he did so, his supporters roared with laughter and applause. He labeled women reporters who challenged him or asked him hard questions “nasty,” and was fond of calling the challenging actions or questions posed by other journalists a “disgrace.” He showed his disrespect by smugly affirming that he had power with women because he had money and therefore, power and fame. Women liked that, he said; all you have to do, he said, is grab them by the ...and they’d be yours.

It seemed he trained everyone who worked for him to filibuster during interviews, so there were never any intelligent, cogent conversations about the things I wanted to know. His goal wasn't to come off as a knowledgeable or caring politician, but to keep the rabble going so his ratings would go up.

I stopped watching CNN because I felt like the on-air personalities were just as interested in boosting their ratings by using the then-presidential candidate as he was. All that I heard was rabble, people talking over each other, with nobody making any valid sense. Cable news became, for me, not news, but ongoing talk shows. It was like watching a wrestling match; those matches look like there’s real technique, but my dad told me long ago that the wrestling matches were really just performance. So was cable “news” once the 2015 candidate got into the political ring.

He played the race card with perfection. It took me a while to understand why he said he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any supporters.” (https://abcnews.com/Politics/donald-trump-jokes-shoot-losing-support/story?id=36474145) Why was that? What so endeared him to so many people? (https://abcnews.com/Politics/donald-trump-mexico-vice-versa/story?id=41767704).

It was his racism, his promise to get rid of the immigrants. Targeting Mexico, he said America was getting the worst of them: "They're sending rapists. They’re sending murderers…” His racist rancor seemed to soothe the souls of many, and they loved him for his bigotry that seemingly matched theirs. (https://abcnews.com/Politics/donald-trump-mexico-vice-versa/story?id=41767704).

It was his ability to speak their language and feed their long-standing resentment against any person of color that gave him a unique power. Racism has always been this nation’s weakness. For many, Black people within the US were a problem, but brown people coming over the border between Mexico and the United States and from other countries of color were too much for them. These anti-immigrant supporters were not only white but brown-skinned, recent immigrants themselves. Little did the latter group realize that as the immigrant purge solidified, the agents in charge would pick up and deport or detain any non-white person they wanted. One’s criminal status didn’t really matter. It was one’s color that was the north star that mattered to the poorly-trained, well-paid agents. Men, women, children, babies, pregnant women – none of them were exempt.

Eventually, I had to stop watching anything that called itself “news.” I resorted to reading newspapers and magazines and listening to podcasts that I trusted, but even then, as I read what he had said or done, I could feel my gut knotting up. When I would read how people were giving in to their racist beliefs and actions, which had long laid dormant, I realized that this country was in a bad place. It wasn’t a new place; it was the place that had always been here, lying just beneath the layer of faux civility. When the outcry against critical race theory erupted, and actions began to be taken to undo the gains people of color had made in this country despite racism, especially Black people, my knots grew tighter. I could see that the white supremacist spirit, which was a key component of this nation’s founding, was rising; I knew we, Black people and many other marginalized or unappreciated groups, were in for another years- long battle to secure and keep rights promised by the US Constitution.

All of this has made me and keeps me angry, but the thing that most gets me is that a slew of white men, including the president who has been convicted of 34 felonies, are leading this country to ruination. While lambasting DEI, a group of men with little to no experience in what they’re leading are in power. Pete Hegseth has fired experienced and decorated military personnel, some because of their color, others just because he could for whatever reason he came up with. The president, who has never been in the military, made Pete Hegseth the Secretary of War – and he is following the directions of the military-ignorant president who declared war on Iran on his own. Under Hegseth’s leadership, American sailors are suffering on submarines that have been out to sea for months without setting foot on land. That fact is weakening them for conflict, should the Iranian situation expand and explode. Additionally, it seems that the United States is running out of munitions. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-used-virtually-all-its-long-range-precision-missiles-during-iran-war-2026-08-04/) The president is not concerned. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-dismisses-concerns-over-conditions-on-long-deployed-uss-abraham-lincoln)

People working with the president represent the new DEI – meaning, for me, “Did Not Earn” the positions they’ve been given. The only requirement is loyalty to their boss; to hell with the country. The newly confirmed Attorney General, Todd Blanche, is working for the president, protecting him from the alleged or apparent crimes he has committed, including sexual crimes against children! His minions in office are keeping him from being prosecuted for taking classified documents from the White House and hiding them at Mar-a-Lago. Blanche is working hard to make sure the president and his family cannot and will not be audited by the IRS. They want to make the people of this nation feel so desperate and hopeless that they will bow down to nearly anyone who says the things they need to hear.

I could go on, but there’s no need. We have all experienced these years with our own set of emotions. I am disappointed in the country. He ignored things I thought were required, and none of the mechanisms so many of us learned about in school, including checks and balances between the three branches of government, have done anything to stop him. In fact, they have helped him.

All of that contributes to the uneasiness in my soul, but the thing that makes me most angry is that this man, who has been credibly accused of masterminding the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, has not been taken out of power, arrested, and jailed. And to add insult to injury, he pardoned all of those who were convicted and sentenced for their roles in the insurrection. Every time I think about these people, many of whom had committed other crimes before January 6, who are now walking around with guns, wearing masks, and terrorizing anybody they want, I get angry. When I think of them deporting American citizens to wherever they want, or detaining them in what some have called concentration camps, I feel the anger. When I think of how these January 6 insurrectionists have been given the power – and guns to guarantee that power- and are being paid good money by the federal government, and have benefits including health care and student loan deferment, my anger explodes within me. (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-money-ice-agents-really-183000261.html).

My anger will not help me, but it's pushing me to work as hard as I can to inform people about what is going on and what is at stake. We have all gotten used to being Americans. Too many Americans see but do not understand how bad things are or what’s at stake. There is an active coup going on in this country, and the American people elected those who are running it. The people in charge are doing bad things, but will work as hard as they can to erase what they’ve done and will tamper with evidence they know can’t be erased. Simon Wiesenthal, in his book The Murderers Are Among Us, recalled what the SS told Jews and others about what had happened during the Nazi occupation of Germany:

However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world will not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed. They will say that they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers. (p. 11-12)

I daresay that many people in this country are fighting a slew of emotions including anger, depression, disappointment, fear, and more. We have all been on our own escalators. The question we have to ask is: where are our escalators taking us? Are we moving toward defiant determination to hold onto democracy, or are we allowing ourselves to be gently led to our own misery and destruction of this country so many say they love?

In a country that likes to think of and call itself Christian, there is very little evidence that the lessons of Jesus are being practiced or even considered.

Instead, we see actions taken that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of people losing their federal jobs, and we have heard of the plan to eliminate Part D of Medicare. This part allows seniors to afford their medications. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/business/medicare-drug-subsidies-part-d.html Increasingly, we are witnessing an invasion of poorly trained men who think nothing of attacking, kidnapping, and detaining people with brown and black skin, members of a paramilitary organization called ICE. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/ripple/2026/01/28/ice-not-only-looks-and-acts-like-a-paramilitary-force-it-is-one-and-that-makes-it-harder-to-curb/). We see wealthy men using money to buy their way into holding onto their power.

A senator has been out of commission for two months, able, apparently, to talk to selected people for 20 minutes at a time but not do a 30- or 60-second video or soundbite for the American people to be assured that he is alive, and we see Republicans protecting the story of what is actually going on. (https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/scott-jennings-mitch-mcconnell-cnn-b3031436.html)

We have a president who drops off to sleep wherever he is, and legacy media saying little to nothing about it. As former President Joe Biden struggles with cancer that has spread to his bones, we see the person who holds the office that historically exhibited courtesy and decorum when opponents suffered or passed on instead telling people not to feel sorry for him because he is a “vicious” guy. His words and commitment to revenge are causing a sense of anxiety amongst many who fear Biden will die soon, and the nation and world will be subjected to experiencing the way this man attacks anyone he believes has challenged, crossed, disagreed, or, in the case of Biden, defeated him. (https://www.abc4.com/news/hill-politics/trump-calls-biden-bad-guy-dont-feel-badly-for-him/) Many think he will not allow Biden to lie in state at the Capitol, another American tradition, and that will sadden many people,

The divide between the small percentage of the very wealthy and the rest of the nation is becoming more pronounced; one percent of the population holds as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of this country’s citizens. (https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/top-wealth-in-america-new-estimates-under-heterogenous-returns/).

We are in a war that the president started and apparently cannot end, and Americans are suffering at the gas pump. His tariffs have yielded good returns for corporations, but average Americans are having trouble making ends meet. Gas prices and food keep going up, while the president and his friends continue to spew the lie that the economy is doing better than it ever has. (https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/corporate-america-got-billions-dollars-090025387.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFzUl5nqUq-8hRzutpSbXOWl5ekvzsjZ0LsP0q4LHkooFjSvIptC0nsNmKeiJegu6yVO0ggRBm61wqel8ODzyxS63-eqReOyF93VDMTeS2nUJMQ7YE0547P31Ku3zYR99sNNn6FG43Jjyd0v9ISDeqUGC9KBmMn1jZPzNqbR-mf_

There’s too much going on, too much undoing and unraveling of the America I grew up in. “We the people” feels like a joke, as the people in power run roughshod over the rights of Americans, and count on their most controversial and destructive policies to be eventually approved by the US Supreme Court. The president, his cabinet, and MAGA seem totally unconcerned with the harm and destruction they’re causing; in fact, cruelty is the point of what they’re doing, some have said. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/) Russell Vought, one of the primary authors of Project 2025, said in an interview some time ago that they wanted to traumatize federal workers or the federal system. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/who-is-russell-vought-trump-office-of-management-and-budget)

Innocent, unarmed people are being detained, some deported, not to their countries but to places they have never been; some groups, including Haitians, have lost their temporary protected status (TPS) and now, though many have been in this country for years, working and paying taxes, are facing deportation.

All this has been done and is being done under the umbrella of Christianity and patriotism.

Though many Republicans and MAGAs declare themselves to be both Christian and American, they are clearly ignoring Christian and Constitutional principles. This country is and has always been a country that honors wealth and has equated wealth with worth. Although slavery technically ended in 1865, it never went away; those who believed owning human beings was their right as Americans never stopped believing that and have lived in resentment since the end of the Civil War because the formal abolition of slavery affected their bottom line. The unpaid labor of Black people built this country's wealth. White Americans from the beginning felt entitled, and like the entitlement had come from God. Therefore, there was no angst about enslaving people and making them believe that their predicament was the will of God. Europeans, from the time of Columbus, believed they had the right to capture and kill people on their own land – and then steal the land of those people and claim it as their own.

The plantation mentality was not new; it existed in ancient cultures and was passed on over centuries. War was viewed as a God-approved activity that permitted the wealthy to kill innocent people in order to keep their elite status. Aristotle once said, “If there is menial and servile work to be done, there must be menial and servile people to do it.” Clearly, that belief was born long before America came to be. Jesus never said anything about it being the will of God that some people should rule over others -and treat them poorly- but the American ethos, shaped by its belief in capitalism, seemingly created its own version of Christianity, in direct opposition to what Jesus taught. Donald Trump Jr. once alluded to the redefinition of Christianity when he said, “Christianity hasn’t worked out so well for us.” Christianity, as recorded in the Bible, and the rights of all people as written in the Bill of Rights, accompanied by Thomas Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” gave people the idea that they could make Christianity and American citizenship and patriotism into what they wanted them to be. And they did.(https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/gospel-donald-trump-jr/621122/)

Jesus taught that we should live with each other; the imploding American democracy has decried, fought against, and resisted that belief from its birth. Now we sit in a place where the destruction of not only the United States but the world seems eerily near, and neither the Gospel nor the Constitution is being used to remind people that relationships and community-building that draw people together are the greatest strength any nation can have. America, claiming its multi-racial, ethnic, and religious nation as evidence of its “exceptionalism,” is being destroyed by its commitment to wealth, greed, and power at the expense of people whose labor made it wealthy. The oligarchs are destroying the community of America. Though that community was discriminatory toward non-white people, it at least allowed all people to fight for their rights guaranteed by the Constitution. America’s greed is like the water that melted the wicked witch of the west. The evil spirit of that witch led to her downfall, just as the greed and commitment to money and not to God, which it claims to love, is causing the slow but steady melting of what has been called “The American Dream.”

In this period of transition, America is showing its true colors; it is no better than many of the countries it has criticized in the past. And it is the innocent people of America who will bear the brunt of this move into a space where there is no room for God or a government that respects all people.

For weeks, I have been silent, reading, scrolling, seeing images of ICE agents, most of whom are white, harass and terrorize people with brown or black skin, just because they can. I can feel the rage roiling in my gut as I watch these men, arrogant because they have been deputized to terrorize people and, if at all possible, get them out of this country. Their victims are not the “rapists, the murderers, people doing drugs” that the president said his administration would target to deport. No, these are, for the most part, legal immigrants who have been here for years, employed and paying taxes.

These ICE agents have gone into their churches, their schools, and their homes, taking and detaining many – just because they can.

They have good-paying jobs. After minimal training, they are on the streets, reminding everyone they harass that they are “federal agents.” According to the Office of Immigration, ICE agents earn a base salary of between $51,632 and $167,603 annually, and receive benefits including health care, student loan repayment of up to $60,000 and federal forgiveness options, tuition reimbursement, and transportation subsidies. (https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-announces-most-successful-federal-law-enforcement-agency-recruitment-campaign) (https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2026/law-enforcement-officer/)

They can claim qualified immunity in civil rights lawsuits filed against them.

Thus, they feel fairly confident that they can do what they want and get away with it – which seems to be the case. In the tradition of the KKK, where whites, including prominent members of communities, including law enforcement officers, attorneys, judges, medical doctors, and other professionals, went on their raids of terror wearing white sheets so they could not be identified, ICE agents wear masks to hide their identities as well. They are deputized cowards who really do not care about “the law.”

It is sickening to watch.

But the most troubling thing is their arrogance. They apparently believe deep in their souls that people of color are a problem for the United States; concurrently, they believe that they are members of the master race, which apparently has been anointed and charged by their God to get rid of everyone they believe taints their purity.

White arrogance is not new; it is a worldwide social infection. Columbus exhibited it when he landed in the Americas and felt no remorse as he and his European accomplices made it their business to eliminate native peoples who had been living in the lands he “discovered” for generations.

The late Randall Robinson, in his book Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land, recalls a situation he witnessed as white people, primarily American whites, began to visit St. Kitts, a beautiful island in the Caribbean. He said there was a newly built store on the island that visitors frequented. One day, a man drove into the parking lot with his child and dog in the car. He and his child got out, leaving the dog in the car. As he walked into the store, he ignored one of the native employees who greeted him and instead looked past her and dropped a brown paper bag he was carrying into a trash can behind her checkout counter in aisle one.

“Trash,” he said, continuing to walk forward and still not acknowledging the cashier’s greeting;

After a while, the other cashiers and customers noticed a horrible smell. By this time, the man had gotten his items. He and his son were checking out in aisle two, so he heard the concerned chatter of people wondering about the smell. He said nothing. The clerk in aisle one, however, looked at the man and asked, “What did you put in my trash can?” While she confronted the man, another clerk came by, got the brown paper bag, and looked inside. Incredulously, she looked at him and said, “You put dog mess in her trash can?” The man looked unconcerned and said, “I thought it was alright.” (pp. 65-66)

It was the arrogance of his behavior and his unconcern with how it made the people who worked and shopped in that store that was so infuriating. In his mind, Robinson went on to write, “they were just black island people.”

It was arrogance that shaped the white supremacist narrative that was rehearsed, recited, and internalized all over the world. Black people were no good; they deserved nothing in this country because God created them to serve white people. The Native Americans were “savages,” and again, using God as their justification, they essentially erased them as a people. In the Caribbean Islands, white people went to the land inhabited by brown and Black people for generations, and pushed them aside, using their labor to build their wealth but ignoring their status as human beings. Columbus looked upon them as savages. Robinson writes that “in 1492, about 8 million Taino were living on Espanola; within 20 years, there were less than 28,000, and by 1542, 50 years after Columbus set foot on Guanahani, there were only 200 Taino on the colonized island of Española.” (p. 46). He arrogantly did what he needed to do to rid the country of its native people so that he could have it and have his government take advantage of the wealth it offered.

Arrogant white supremacists, some convicted felons and others accused of doing so, are carelessly destroying the country they say they love; what seems to be driving them is their racism. They do not care if people of color have good jobs or jobs at all, have access to health care, or get a good education. They want them gone, by any means necessary. They don’t care about “the law,” or “the rule of law.” They make their own laws and ignore laws they do not like, as well as the US Constitution. They make it almost an art form to throw people into detention centers where, reports say, the living conditions are barbaric. (my word) (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/30/lawsuit-camp-east-montana-texas-us-immigration-ice)

The thing about the arrogance is that it is fed by ignorance. I will never forget when I was in college, sitting in my first sociology class. I was one of two Black people in the class. We, of course, got to a point in the class where we talked about racism in America. My classmates were sharing what they “knew” about Black people, and why this country was being ruined by them.

Something in me rose up, and I asked, “How many of you have ever met a Black person before this class?” Not one hand went up. Many bravely admitted that they had never met or seen a Black person. “How then can you spout off about Black people, who we are, what we do, and what we believe?” I asked. I was so angry, and a hard truth hit me: white people think they know us because of the narrative their social class has created. For Black and other non-white groups, what we have is different. We don’t just think we know you; we know you because you have taught us exactly who you are. You have taught us how you think, your morals, your version of American history, and that you hate us and believe us to be lower than you. You have taught us to be “white” in the way we think and live, knowing you will allow us to go only so far. You tried to teach us your version of Christianity, where your God apparently sanctions your hatred, but most people of color have rejected that.

We know you.

Your arrogance, as concerns your impression of your intelligence and privilege, is destroying this country. As it implodes, it will be your arrogance that will make you blame everyone but yourselves. White supremacy has put this country as we know it in hospice, but even as you take your last breaths, you will never own your part in the destruction of the country you claim to love.

Blame that fact on your arrogance.

With all that is being done to erase the history – and even the presence – of Black and Brown people in this country, I find myself wondering why white people, this group of highly privileged individuals, are so insecure and so unable, unwilling, and afraid to acknowledge the worth of others.

The United States government has never been a friend to Black people. Anything Black people have achieved – from becoming educated, to building Black communities, to establishing successful Black communities – has been done not because of the United States but in spite of it.

The recent move to erase the presence and the history of Black people in this country has been troubling, but it is not rare or new. Despite smirking over their belief that Black people are less intelligent, with lower IQs than whites, Black people have not been able to be stopped. Angry mobs have been a common component of Black lives here. Mobs of angry white men have stormed churches, communities, jailhouses, and more, destroying Black property by burning it to the ground, and destroying Black lives by some of the most horrendous violence committed by any other ethnic group. They have been so crazed with hatred that in some of their takeovers and destruction of Black communities, they have dropped bombs filled with turpentine on Black communities, with white men shooting the human beings fleeing out of their burning homes as they have tried to escape the flames.

But what is puzzling to me is why it is that white people are so easily triggered and angered by Black progress. Why hasn’t their adherence to their belief in the superiority of white people kept them calm and unbothered when this group of people, who have been so sorely abused by white power, have moved on and, despite having so few of the advantages given to whites, been able to pull themselves up and out of the miry mess called racism that has motivated their hatred and disdain and disregard of “the law,” the US Constitution, and even the Bible?

Whites got angry and burned down the Greenwood community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They burned down Rosewood, Florida. They attacked and destroyed much of East St. Louis, Illinois. Why? Mostly because they could, but more deeply because they resented Black progress. These communities were not bothering or threatening white life. They were communities where people had “found a way out of no way” and had made lemonade out of the lemons offered to them by white supremacy. The angry white folks included police officers, sheriffs, judges, prosecutors, professionals, and others.

Why was Greenwood destroyed? What set it off? A sensational story, carried by the press, about a Black man grabbing hold of the arm of a white elevator operator- who happened to be female – to steady himself as the elevator began to move. What set off the massacre in East St. Louis? White men were angry that, when they went on strike, the company hired Black people to replace them. In so many instances, it has seemed that white people are -and always have been – afraid that Black people will take what they see as “theirs.”

Anger fed by fear is all rabid white supremacists seem to have – and there are more white supremacists in the midst of us who will admit it. Angry white mothers yelled hateful and vile words at little Black children trying to integrate white schools. Angry white mobs set buses filled with people protesting segregation in public transportation just because they dared challenge the unjust and unfair caste system that white supremacists embrace and enjoy.

I was thinking about this when a group of colleagues and I were talking about the PBS documentary on W.E.B. DuBois, the great African American historian, and considered to be the founder of American sociology. In discussing the documentary, we honed in on how President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation to Booker T. Washington to dinner in the White House caused a stir. (https://www.npr.org/2012/05/14/152684575/teddy-roosevelts-shocking-dinner-with-washington) White folks were furious! The ill-fated dinner was held on October 16, 1901, at what was then still called “The President’s House.“ Though records say he had changed the name from the President’s House to “The White House” on October 12, it wasn’t until the day after Booker T. Washington had supped with the president on October 16 that the new name, “The White House,” was made official; the name was printed on all official federal documents, including its stationery, on October 17.

What is puzzling about this scenario is, again, the rapid insecurity and anger displayed by white people because a Black man of stature had been invited to the dining room of the most powerful person in this country. It was nearly 30 years before another Black person was invited to the White House as an official guest.

The white mind that has been created, shaped, and incubated by an irrational need to feel superior on the basis of the color of one’s skin has been damaged beyond repair. Are they insecure because they know they are not superior or supreme? Those who live in racial hatred are enslaved by it; it is akin to a dangerous and highly contagious infection that no antibiotic can stop. Watching how the insecure privileged live and work is exhausting, but more importantly, it is killing this nation. Whiteness is the weakest link in the chain of human life and the weakest part of American democracy. The foot-soldiers who support it are desperate to get rid of all that makes it insecure, but it will not succeed, because, ironically, what whiteness has meant for evil God has meant for good, and those who whiteness tries so desperately to permanently succumb to despair, will not do it. The evil of whiteness has created a strengthened spine and spirit in those it attacks. All of its frantic and irrational evil will eventually bring it down.

That type of hatred, the kind that people are taught as a matter of course as they grow up, must erode parts of all that makes us human, making people unable to see the pain they cause others, or, if they do see it, shrug it off as being deserved by those who are the recipients of their vitriol, violence and sense of entitlement that tells them what they’re doing is not only all right, but is sanctioned by God.

We know the story of little Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old Black child who was yelled at, called names, and terrorized as she walked into what had been an all-white school. Most of those whom we see in photos are women, presumably mothers, who are yelling at this child like she’s a criminal who has committed a heinous crime. I’ve always wondered how anyone could do that to a baby – six years old is “baby” in my book – whose only offense was to dare be brave enough to go into a space that had, up until then, been lily-white.

I felt the same horror I felt then when I read the story of how a Florida teacher at a middle school showed the characteristic cruelty practiced by white supremacists when she took a Black baby doll and hung it after wrapping a cord around its neck, leaving it suspended from the cord for the remainder of the class. (https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2026/05/19/hillsborough-teacher-doll-hanging-display/) When class was over, this teacher is said to have tossed the baby into the trash.

What?

This teacher, who described teaching as her “gift and passion,” later said that her stunt was “just a joke.” The students, both Black and white, were horrified. She traumatized all of the students, and though she has been fired, the damage has been done. That kind of trauma is a part of the legacy of being Black in America. The stories are too numerous to accurately document, as too many of them were not recorded, and records of their murders were scant. Families that had friends, children, and spouses were often - and still are - too traumatized to talk about it.

But it was real, and was practiced and approved of by people who called themselves Christian.

There is so much trauma that is being experienced by Americans in general right now due to the chaotic, anti-Biblical, anti-Constitutional, and anti- human policies being practiced, and many people are going to suffer, if they are not already. But the threat of racial violence is increasing, sanctioned by the Federal government, and supported by states with governors and legislatures that believe that “civil rights were bad for white people.” The president said, “Civil rights for Blacks resulted in white people being treated very badly.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trump-interview-white-people-discrimination.html) His words continue to empower whites who have been sulking for years because they have been taught, and have internalized those lessons, that Blacks, women, and everybody else who is not white are responsible for what they have not been able to accomplish in life. With the president being given a “go” from the US Justice Department to take billions from the US treasury and use it as a slush fund to pay those who he says were treated very badly after the January 6 insurrection, many fear that these angry white men and women, who have been pouting for years, will be further encouraged and empowered to “get the bad people,” those whom they have determined to be so, and are assured that they will not be punished for it.

What the Florida teacher did with that Black baby doll does not demonstrate “supremacy,” but rather, a deeply rooted knot of hatred that has depleted their capacity to see or care about what their hateful actions do to others. Contrarily, they laugh, they smirk, and strut like peacocks because their whiteness has given them a license to treat others in whatever way they want.

The foundation of the “anti-woke” rhetoric is or was a belief that little white children should not learn the part of American history that demonstrated how white people treated so many people who were not the right color, class, religion, or ethnicity. They believed that going on an erasure rampage, destroying books and attacking any source that sought to tell Black history, was going to save their children from seeing them as the offspring of ancestors who lived and worked in hatred.

Books be damned. Their children are watching their parents, pastors, teachers, and relatives in real time.

Ask the kids in Florida who saw their teacher hang a Black baby doll.

I remember how I felt the day after Donald Trump won the election in 2015. My spirit was sad, and I shuddered when I thought about what I believed he was about and would be about. He wanted to “Make America Great Again,” using the same words Ronald Reagan used during his 1980 presidential campaign. Many Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, loved him, but I could never understand why.

(https://www.ussc.edu.au/reagan-making-america-great-the-first-time) I respected him as an effective campaigner and communicator; his years as an actor had made him a competent candidate, but there were little things that made me wonder about him, like officially beginning his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the place where in 1964, three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were found dead, tortured and murdered by the KKK with help from the deputy sheriff near Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi. (https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/chaney-goodman-schwerner-murdered/) Very few people knew or remembered where those men had been murdered, but Reagan knew, I’m convinced, and I remember thinking then that he was sending a message to white people in the South. To me, it seemed that he was saying, “Don’t worry. I’m on your side.” The Voting Rights Act had been passed, and Black people, as well as other marginalized groups, were taking advantage of the privilege. Many states in the South resented the “intrusion” of the federal government into their ways of doing things, including how they treated Black people. For better or worse, how they treated Black people was their business, they believed, and Reagan seemed to be endorsing their position.

The country was in the midst of a serious civil rights movement. Black people who had been shut out of the privileges of citizenship on all levels were tired of being treated like impostors in the land they had built. Black men had gone to war and fought for this country, and when they got back, they were unwilling to be quiet. They resisted. Black women could shop in downtown stores and had gained the right to try clothes on. Segregation in public transportation was being challenged and shot down. Segregation in public schools had been shut down thanks to the brilliant legal prowess of Thurgood Marshall and his team. Changes were happening, but not without pushback from resentful whites. Emmett Till had been brutally murdered, and the incident had sparked the embers of resentment that Blacks had been carrying for years into a full-blown movement for civil rights, especially the right to vote, which had been essentially erased by government policies in the late 19^th century. It had been nearly 100 years since the dominant culture had successfully ended their right to vote by various methods, including issuing poll taxes, requiring them to pass literacy tests that many whites who administered them could not pass, and, worst of all, beating them, running them out of towns, or killing them. Southern whites resented the changes. Reagan knew that, but chose that place to officially begin his campaign there anyway, saying that he would “make America great again.”

I didn’t know exactly what Reagan meant or the message he intended to convey when he said that, but I was sure that at least part of what he meant was that a “great” America knew how to challenge a political system that he and those who supported him hated. He supported big business, making it easier for corporations to become more powerful, wealthier, and more numerous. He seemed to believe that businessmen, and not politicians, were the better choice to run a government, especially a government that had been operating on the myth of American exceptionalism, a country where there was supposed to be “liberty and justice for all.” There was not, and Reagan knew it; more importantly, he and the big businesses that supported him did not necessarily believe everyone was entitled to liberty, justice, fairness, and a way to live dignified lives. His “trickle-down economics” plan was good for corporations; his plan included reduced government regulation, a reduction in non-defense government spending, widespread tax cuts, and tight monetary policy. . His policies rewarded big businesses, but the wealth they earned somehow did not trickle down to the masses, as he had predicted.

Non-white people and women, meanwhile, were making great strides as barriers to democracy were dismantled. The highlight of the century-long struggle for freedom and equality was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, but that didn’t stop Republicans' commitment to shaping this government the way they believed was correct. That “right way” was laid out by Lewis Powell, on his way to becoming a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Right before he was named to the court by Richard Nixon, he wrote “The Powell Memorandum.” (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/usa-courts-secrecy-lobbyist/powell-memo.pdf) It was a roadmap for making America right and white again. Written by Justice Powell in 1971, the eight-page document outlined in detail what Republicans needed to do to get into power and stay there. Politicians responded positively. Institutions and organizations were created to facilitate and support the rebuilding of America from the inside out, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Those institutions and politicians began to follow the recommendations laid out in the Lewis Memorandum, and, despite losing some critical elections along the way, they remained focused on their purpose. The big goal was to undo the Voting Rights Act, and this week, that goal was achieved as the US Supreme Court effectively neutered the 1965 law. The quest to “make America great again” never weakened, despite some losses. The ascendancy of Donald Trump to the Political Throne of this country began when he came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his intention to run for president. He must have warmed the hearts of the people who still carried a torch for Reagan as he said he would “Make America Great Again.” The subliminal message was that the work, the ultimate goal, was still before them. Though some Republicans said they didn’t like him, the masses that make up the Republican base, especially those who had been disturbed at the progression of rights enjoyed by everyone, were elated. They realized that Trump would put people back in their place, including Black and Brown people, women, and all groups who had experienced difficulty in living as free Americans. The Voting Rights Act said all Americans had the right to vote; it was a law that said all people would come as close as feeling and being treated like full-blown Americans since Reconstruction. But as that victory was being celebrated, there were those who were systematically and strategically against the victory, plotting the course that would disassemble the policies of a government that had been born out of prejudice, racism, and sexism. The groups that emerged in response to the Powell Memorandum continued to make America “great” according to their ideological, economic, and spiritual beliefs.

The party that used to stand for small government now seems to be in favor of huge government, an authoritarian nation where the government controls everything and everyone. The Eurocentric ancestors are grinning. Mr. Trump is standing near the throne; his 20^th-century forebearer, Ronald Reagan, hovers over him, and US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell stands near him, smiling, holding a copy of his Powell Memorandum. I would imagine that Trump supporters who died believing that Trump was sent by God to save America are in the cloud of witnesses, are surrounding him, rejoicing and spiritually encouraging him, while there are those still alive who are continuing to serve a man who is intent on destroying this nation, even as he plans to celebrate its 250^th birthday, declaring that all that is happening is the will of God.

For a brief 50 years, from the Civil Rights Movement until Donald Trump became president, we and the world got a glimpse of what the American experiment could be. The United States Supreme Court, under the guidance of Chief Justice John Roberts, has let down the fighters for liberty, justice, and fairness. The country will move forward with no guardrails to protect the rights of those who happen not to be the right color, the right gender, or the right religion, and that being the case, I wonder what this birthday celebration will really be about.

There are too many people who worked and suffered to get everyone the right to vote, for this to be happening again. Democracy really never was what America was, and with the refusal of Whiteness to acknowledge its toxicity and how it has traumatized and caused so much suffering, nothing will change. We who believe in freedom are exhausted, but we will once again take up arms and fight for equity and justice. We have no choice.

As I watch and listen to people who call themselves Christian—but whose words and actions seem at odds with what Jesus taught—I find myself asking a simple question: Where is the Jesus of the Gospels? And why does it seem that too few are holding people accountable for how his name and teachings are being used?

It troubles me to see those who claim the Christian faith support policies and laws that cause real harm to others. Over time, I’ve come to understand that some who identify with White Christian Nationalism are not only selective about Jesus’ teachings—they are uncomfortable with them. In The Power Worshippers, Katherine Stewart describes how some reject both the image and message of Jesus, seeing him as too gentle, too compassionate, even too “weak” to admire. She recounts the insistence from certain leaders that Jesus must instead be recast as strong, aggressive—even militant.

That reshaping matters. In their version, Jesus becomes a warrior—someone who endorses power, dominance, and even violence when it serves a particular cause. He is imagined as physically imposing, aligned with cultural and political strength, and firmly on the side of those who already hold power.

History offers sobering parallels. There have been times when Christianity itself was reshaped to serve ideology rather than faith. In Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow, Dean G. Stroud describes how the Nazis viewed traditional Christian virtues—love of neighbor, forgiveness, humility—as signs of weakness. The command to love one’s enemies was not just dismissed; it was despised. The vulnerable and the marginalized—those whom Jesus consistently lifted up—were instead targeted and dehumanized.

Reading that history, it’s hard not to notice echoes in our own time. When compassion is mocked, when strength is defined only as dominance, and when the suffering of others is dismissed or justified, something essential has been lost.

I’ll be honest: I am looking for Jesus. I am looking for people who will speak and act in ways that reflect his teachings—his care for the vulnerable, his insistence on dignity, his willingness to stand with those pushed aside. But too often, I don’t see that. Instead, I see a version of faith that emphasizes certain sins while overlooking the harm done to “the least of these”—through policies and practices that deepen hardship and exclusion.

We are living in a moment when power is being exercised in ways that feel harsh and, at times, unmoored from the moral framework many of us associate with the Gospel. Resources are being redirected, priorities reshaped, and voices of dissent challenged or dismissed. Meanwhile, support for the most vulnerable—both at home and around the world—feels increasingly uncertain.

That is not the model Jesus gave us. His ministry centered on those in need—feeding, healing, restoring, and building community among people often ignored or rejected by the dominant culture.

So where is Jesus?

The answer, I think, is both simple and demanding: Jesus is here, but Jesus shows up when those who believe in him live out what he taught. He shows up when people act with courage, compassion, and conviction—especially when it is difficult or costly to do so.

Those who promote a narrow, exclusionary vision of faith have made their voices heard. What has been quieter is the response from those who were taught a different way—the way of love, mercy, and justice.

If that silence continues, we may come to regret it.

History reminds us that silence in the face of injustice carries consequences. There have been times when people have watched from a distance as suffering unfolded, unsure whether to speak or afraid of the cost. We know now how much that silence mattered.

Jesus himself was targeted and ultimately killed because he affirmed the worth and dignity of people whom others overlooked or rejected. He challenged systems of power, stood with the marginalized, and called for a different way of living—one grounded in love, humility, and justice.

If we believe in that Jesus, then the responsibility is ours. We cannot wait for someone else to speak. We cannot assume that the values we cherish will defend themselves.

Those of us who claim to follow him will have to speak up—and accept the cost of doing so. We will have to live out what we say we believe, not just in words but in action.

That has always been the call.

And perhaps that is where we will finally find him

It has never made sense to me that, despite the teachings of Jesus, which seem so clear, there is hatred and bigotry, a disregard for people experiencing poverty and those suffering in so many different ways. I have shuddered when I have realized that so many who call themselves Christian have either been active bigots and accepting of the oppression of so many, or silent about all that happens that appears to be directly contradictory to Christian doctrine as described and taught using the Gospels and specifically, the words printed in red, which supposedly are direct quotes of Jesus.

I am working on developing a concept I’m calling “arrogant naivete” that characterizes the way all of us think when it comes to God, religion, and specifically, Christianity. I’ve come to understand that there is no one way to interpret religious beliefs. The words we read may be the same, but our understanding of those words varies greatly based on how we were raised, where we grew up, who taught us about God, and our own basic beliefs about this world and the people who inhabit it.

We - individuals and social groups alike - all live in silos in which our beliefs sit, and because those beliefs are not only what we know but also what we grew up with, we believe we are right, regardless of anything that challenges them. We stay where we are, for better or worse.

When it comes to Christianity, the silo phenomenon is stark. In my silo, Jesus is a man who cares for and loves all people. Jesus is the one who taught us to forgive our enemies and love our neighbors, regardless of who they are. Jesus reaches out to and touches those whom society holds in contempt. In my silo, Jesus is the one who challenges our bigotry, our prejudices, and our fears; he teaches that we are to follow him, follow his example, not worship him. He says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me. Jesus’ words, for me, in my silo, are wise and insightful, used to help us understand what it is to have life on earth, as it is in heaven.” His entire life was spent teaching us how to navigate life to bring about Beloved Community.

Because I was raised that way, and I deeply believe in what I was taught, I am arrogant enough to believe that my way of believing is the way the Gospels should be understood.

But not everyone was raised that way. Some who call themselves Christian interpret the words of Jesus that I interpret one way in an entirely different way, or ignore them altogether. I frequently go back to the way I felt when I read words in Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire spoken by the late West Virginia Democrat Senator Robert Byrd. When he was asked, given his rabid racism, if he didn’t believe in the words of Jesus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” he said he did, but also believed that people could choose their neighbors.

That’s not how I understand the scripture, where Jesus clearly quotes the Great Commandment in Matthew 22. But that’s the interpretation in my silo. The way I understand Jesus’ words, the option of choosing our neighbors is not included in Jesus’ response. But the fact is, just as I live in my silo and am arrogant about what I learned and it being right, so does Byrd, and people who live in silos where the inferiority of certain people has been taught as being correct. Byrd’s silo and mine do not meet, nor do they intersect.

Much of what I hear in this country in terms of Christology is directly opposite to what I believe, and much of the reason for that is that America’s Christology is directly linked to the sanction and acceptance of the enslavement of Africans in this country. In the book Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, editor Dean Stroud provides a deep dive into Christology as believed in and practiced by Germans under Hitler. Christianity came “under attack from every side,” Stroud writes. “Without a sense of sin, there is no need for Christ… For Nazis, sin and forgiveness demonstrated passivity in a culture that honored forceful actions and glorified the hero who bends the world to his will” (p. 20)

Echoes of that belief in Christ as a strong male figure have been heard throughout this most recent rise of White Christian Nationalism. Many in that movement believe that Jesus, from his appearance as created by Eurocentric artists to his words, is weak. That image and depiction are totally rejected.

Clearly, in this country, there is a great divide as to what is a sin and what is not; abortion, the most contentious and heinous sin for the past 50 years, was created as a wedge issue when openly white supremacist schools lost their federal funding. Groups within their silos define moral issues. So, while abortion is a sin in some silos, racism, sexism, and homophobia are not considered sins. Translated, from my silo, “they” believe that God is OK with racial and gender-based oppression and violence.

Stroud continues: “The most basic of Christian truths – that God is love, that we are to be imitators of Christ whose love for us reaches it pinnacle at Golgotha, that we are to forgive “seventy times seven” and that God will judge each of us against his standards rather than the world’s presented a fundamental challenge to everything Hitler and followers represented.”(p. 21)

“The German Christians, then, were Christians who read the gospel through extremely nationalist and anti-Semitic lenses.” (p. 22) “German Christians,” Stroud continues, “redrew the doctrines of the faith to fit the worldview of the Nazis: an Aryan Jesus, no Old Testament in the Bible, at least not as an authentic part of the canon: the elimination of the Jew Paul and all his letters; and a watered-down New Testament that would present Germans with a Germanic Christ who fought the Jews the same way as Nazis.” (p. 23)

There it is – another silo, within which many Americans, it seems, reside.

So, not only yesterday but for all of Holy Week, I squirmed. What are we doing? What is salvation? Who is “saved” by their belief in Jesus? That fact is that “Christians” who believe in a God who condones white supremacy, state-sanctioned violence, and reject much of what Jesus said, were celebrating the gift of salvation, using the same historical figure, Jesus, as the north star, as those who celebrated the Jesus who taught love and forgiveness. The Christians who look at the current president as having been sent by God to save the white race celebrated with joy, as did those who celebrated it as evidence of the power of love and forgiveness to release people from oppression and bigotry.

There are probably more silos in which the beliefs about Jesus, what he taught, and what he stands for don’t fit either of the two mentioned here. Still, the reason I squirmed is that I know that this major Christian holiday represents the beliefs of those whose heels are dug into their silos, arrogantly believing that their truth is the truth.

And my question is, “Can a country that is in such economic, psychological, sociological, and spiritual disrepair survive with these silos squeezing their own interpretation and meaning out of words and lessons that seem so clear?

I don’t know.

A couple of weeks ago, in the aftermath of a plenary I presented to a group of predominantly white United Methodist clergy and denominational leaders attending their annual peace conference, I was asked during the question-and-answer period why people were so angry.

I thought he was asking about Black people, since much of what I presented that day dealt with what all of God’s people had to do for there to be peace in the world, and it felt like the familiar what’s wrong with you people question and complaint I’ve heard over the years when the subject of race is addressed. In this country, we talk about angry Black women, but we live with the reality of angry white men.

I asked him for clarification on what he was talking about. We waltzed around linguistically until he finally gave an answer that helped me understand what he was talking about. “OK,” I said, “You’re asking why white people are so angry at Black people,” and he – a white man -said, “Yeah. White men. Why are white men so angry?” I deferred the question to the group and asked them to answer from their perspective.

A young white woman said the reason was that they are afraid. They are afraid of being left out, of losing what they have, and that when Black people get jobs, they are stealing, in essence, what should have been theirs. I had heard that rationale for white male anger before. As she talked, I thought that there might be an even bigger reason for their anger: the failure of all of their tactics to kill off Black people or somehow convince them that their fights for justice have been futile and that is the fear of white men that too many of their women, white women, whom they have set up as paradigms of virtue, beauty, and purity, are having sexual relations with Black men, not because they are being forced to, but because they want to. Too many of their women like Black men, and that fact infuriates some white men to the point of irrational anger and vicious violence.

From my reading of history, it seems that white men have been afraid of white women liking Black men more than they do white men for a long time. During the hundreds of years white men raped and enslaved Black women at will, getting away with it, white women began to notice that their men seemed to prefer enslaved Black women to white women when it came to sexual intimacy. This reality resulted in a separate chapter in the sordid history of race relations in this country. But it also seemed that white men began to be afraid that what they were doing in the dark was something that was happening with white women as well, with an important difference: they began to believe that too many white women preferred Black men to them and were being intimate with Black men as a matter of choice. (https://news.wttw.com/2021/02/14/new-book-white-fright-investigates-roots-american-racism)

There might be yet another reason for the anger of white men, and that is that, despite their social position, their power, their privilege, and their money, they have failed to destroy Black people, despite all their efforts to do so. From enslaving them, to tearing apart their families, to making it illegal for them to learn to read and write, to lynching them at will and preventing them to defend themselves in court or say anything against white people in general when it came to the law, they have not been able to destroy the spirit, the joy, the hope, the tenacity and the faith of Black people.

Scholars who study the anger of white men say that much of it is because of shifting demographics, and that may be the case today, but was it always? Before there were so many diverse ethnicities living in this country, white rage, often carried out by wild and uncontrollable white mobs, massacred Black people, destroying their communities, churches, businesses, and homes, driving them out of communities they had built up despite all the legalized barriers put in place to stop them, and looting those communities, taking what the formerly enslaved had built. Not only did they initiate the violence, but many times they blamed Black people for being the instigators.

It is a real possibility that they are so angry because they have not been able to stop Black progress. They watch for a while, and as Blacks, given more rights, take advantage of those rights, they decide that they are being “given” too much, “taking” what rightfully belongs to whites. Black people have steadied themselves on rocky and uneven ground, fighting voter suppression techniques including poll taxes and literacy tests, police brutality, and a justice system unwilling, too often, to make sure “the law” is applied equally to everyone, and have succeeded between the waves of white violence, and it has made white people angry.

They know they can depend on the unjust justice system to “do the right thing” and make sure as many Black people as possible are thrown into prison, where they are sentenced to spend a large part of their lives. That gives them confidence and feeds their arrogance.

But it doesn’t quell their anger, because we, Black people, keep on coming. Regardless of how unfair life is, how difficult it has been made for Black people to get equal rights in this country, no matter how many poll taxes, lynchings, community destructions, and innocent Black people getting thrown into jail, Black people keep coming. They keep getting up, wiping themselves off, swallowing their fear, anger, and outrage, believing in the fairness of God and the rightness of their quest for justice rather than in the ruthlessness and insecurity of white men. The poet Sterling A. Brown described this remarkable faith and determination in his poem, “Strong Men.” (https://poets.org/poem/strong-men)

For many Black people, the statement “God is good all the time” is equivalent to ingesting a divine antibiotic that fights the toxic bacteria called racism that works to destroy the sinews, muscles, bones, and spirits of those who refuse to bow down to it.

The proclamation of white supremacy has damaged white people’s souls. If white people are superior, then they must and will do anything and everything to stay on top. They might be angry because they are afraid of losing all they have, but another reason for their anger might be that despite all they have done, they have failed to stop Black people from staring opposition and hatred in the face – and winning victories anyway. The antics of the dominant ruling group have not been successful in shutting down the faith of Black people. As Professor Daniel Black expressed brilliantly in a commencement address he gave in 2024, “Here They Come, Y’all. Here They Come,” Black people just keep on coming, pushing against hatred with the wind of faith at their backs. It must be maddening for those working so hard for a different outcome.

The anger of white men is dangerous and is allowed to continue, with excuses and rationalizations being offered to help take the heat off what they do, but that anger, which has often been justified by the government, is tearing the world apart. It is as much a part of the American story as is the founding of this country itself. If it is not faced, it cannot and will not stop. That being said, what should be done?

I am assuming that those to whom I speak will be primarily white. I’ve spoken to all-white or nearly all-white groups on the intersection of race, religion, and politics, and I’ve always been a little concerned, but not like this. For some reason, because this is a group of clergy, it all feels so much more threatening.

I am unable to speak to placate people, to gain favor, or perhaps earn an invitation to speak somewhere else. The truth about what this country is and why, and the fact that so few people are willing to face that truth, bothers me personally and spiritually. I possess a certain naivete, primarily given to me by my mother and my pastors during my youth. We were taught the Gospel. Yes, we heard sermons on other scriptures, but our primary lessons were from the Gospels, the “red-letter” words that are said to be the actual words of Jesus.

That perspective made me naïve; it made me believe that everyone was taught the same way that I was, but that’s not the case. All professed Christians were taught that Jesus was born in a manger and was crucified on a cross; the big bang about Jesus was that he “died for our sins.” That proclamation gave people hope and made them feel safe despite their shortcomings.

But in my house, and in so many families with whom our family interacted, it was the words and the lessons of Jesus that were pushed. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Inasmuch as ye have done it (or not done it) for the least of these, you have done it to me. Those words were drilled into us. And I believed them. Those words walk with me; though my mother has been dead for years, I can sometimes hear her voice when I want to step around what Jesus told us to do and do things my way. I can’t do it. Don’t get me wrong; I am so far from doing what Jesus said all the time, but the point is that his words guide me, and I try to obey his lessons.

I really believed that everyone was taught the same way, and I have walked around my whole life in a state of arrogant naivete - believing that my way of thinking was the way to think. That is pure arrogance – and it’s also not true.

I remember being shocked when I listened to a sermon series by the late Rev. Dr. John McArthur, the title of which was “Social Justice is Anti-Biblical.” Huh? What was he talking about? In his sermons, he tells us. I listened and was shocked, which is why I made my seminary students listen to the series and my Bible study as well.

I was shocked; how could anyone read the Gospel, the experiences and teachings of Jesus the Christ, and not “get it” that the need for social justice was at the heart of what he taught? He himself was a member of an oppressed group; he knew what it felt like to be denied justice, so how could anyone say that social justice, or preaching social justice, was anti-Biblical? He also took issue with the story of the Good Samaritan. He effectively absolved his students and listeners of the need to take that pericope seriously. “Nobody does that,” he said.

Well, yes some people do, or try to, but I listened to this man preach his version, his interpretation of that parable and my heart sank, the same way it sank when I read that the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia said to an interviewer talking about that same parable and asked if he didn’t value what Jesus said, replied, “Of course I do, but we get to choose our neighbor!”(https://candidobservation.com/category/christian-nationalism/)

There are people who claim to be deeply “Christian,” yet who are rabid racists and think, somehow, that it is OK to hate people on the basis of their race. That fact made William Augustus Jones write the book, Is God a White Racist? Jesus said that we are to love our enemies – a totally distasteful teaching, and yet, we were taught that that was the way to live. (Matthew 5:43-44) That foundational belief was probably at the core of Shirley Chisholm’s visit to segregationist Gov. George Wallace after he was shot during the 1972 presidential campaign. Her campaign was furious, but Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and who ran for president, ignored them. I get the feeling that she was as arrogantly naive when it came to what Christianity is about as I was and am.

The way many Black people were taught made them inclined to love people who do not, will not, and have never loved them. That arrogant naivete compelled them in 2015 to invite Dylann Roof into their Bible study at Mother Bethel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, though they didn’t know him. They included him in the discussion. And then they sat, horrified, as he pulled out a gun and began shooting, killing many of them in cold blood. All of us heard some of the survivors of the victims say they forgave Roof. I knew where that was coming from, and shuddered. That’s not unusual. Sometimes, what you’ve been taught about Jesus and what he taught, you do, in fact, shudder with distaste and disdain, but you also comply.

But the “other side” is equally as arrogantly naïve. Many of them were members of the KKK and still celebrate and honor white supremacy.Their God and their Jesus approve. They think nothing of attacking people of color, women, and other groups of people, apparently discarding their worth to God and their right to exist. I will never forget the story of Samuel Bowers, the founder of the White Knights of the KKK, and who was the group’s first imperial wizard. He would gather other “good Christian men,” hold Bible (mandatory) study with them, pray and fast with them, and would then lead them out to lynch Black people! He shared that he had gotten his assignment from God to save white people during his own Damascus Road experience.He is said to have been responsible for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. He, too, and his followers I would call arrogant and naïve when it came to their Christian beliefs.

So, there we are, with two groups of arrogantly naïve groups caught in that naivety, not willing to step out or look up for possible kinks in how they believe. Unfortunately, my arrogant naivete makes me believe that the “other” naïve group is responsible for the spread of racial hatred and violence – despite the presence and teachings of Jesus.

It is with that heaviness that I am going to North Carolina to talk to a group of clergy. I am going to quote James Baldwin, who said, “Not everything you face can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.” I am going to suggest that theology is fluid rather than a hardline belief system. Theology changes at the whims and desires of those in control who want to stay in control. It has been manipulated over time to make theology align with different ideologies. The Rev. William Augustus Jones said, “Your theology (how you see God), impacts your anthropology (how you see yourself), which finally impacts the way you treat others, (your sociology.) It is clear that we don’t all see God with the same eyes. For some, Jesus is a powerful prophet; others see him as a triumphant warrior. The late James Falwell said, “Jesus was a he-man!” (See Katherine Stewart’s book, Power Worshippers.) Falwell and other white supremacist Christians think the image of Jesus is too effeminate, and they work actively to adjust that perception. There are others who believe Jesus was not white, with the features we have seen for hundreds of years. We adjust our theology as we adjust the image of Jesus that we see.

So it is with a lot of trepidation that I am going to North Carolina. These are troubling times. I wish I could just go and lead hymns and have everybody feel good. But this is not a feel-good time. This is a time when empire and wealth are in direct confrontation with the teachings of Jesus, whom they say they love.

And we have to talk about it.

The war unilaterally declared by the president of this country, supposedly because Iran posed an “imminent threat,” seems to be as shady, illegal, and unconstitutional as was the Vietnam War. That war claimed over 58,000 American soldiers, an estimated 310,000 Cambodians, and 250, 000 Vietnamese boat people, who died at sea. Approximately 84,000 of those who died between 1965 and 1975 were children under the age of fifteen.

In the Israel-Gaza War, a report issued in 2024 revealed that as of that date, 14,000 Palestinian children had been killed and thousands more orphaned. Many of them are believed to have been buried beneath rubble, and at least 17,000 have been separated from their parents or caregivers. There are other issues as well; Persistent restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial commodities, and the inability of humanitarians to safely reach all children and families, have rendered the Gaza population acutely food insecure. All 335,000 children under five are at high risk of malnutrition.

Israeli children have suffered as well; in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, it is estimated that 37 Jewish children were killed and 36 abducted into the Gaza Strip. (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-year-of-tears-12-months-of-war-on-children-unicef-report/)

Since 1985, Iran and Israel have been at odds, primarily due to Iran’s objection to the right of Israel to exist. The war declared by the president of this country, partnering with Benjamin Netanyahu, is sure to add sordid statistics to the number of children who will suffer physically, emotionally, and economically. The bullets and bombs that will be used will affect adults in the military, but they will ultimately affect and disrupt the lives of innocent families and children.

In this country, while there are at this point no bullets or bombs falling from a foreign source, the economic repercussions for everyone will be huge, and those repercussions will affect the children. Benefits, including health care and Medicaid, are being or have already been slashed by this government. Oil and gas prices are expected to increase. (https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/01/business/oil-prices-us-attack-iran-vis) Grocery prices have stayed the same as before this regime took over, or have increased, making it far more difficult for families to eat and, most importantly, to feed the children. Without the war, 1 in 5 children in this country deal with food scarcity. Instead of taking care of US citizens, funds that could help alleviate the suffering of Americans are being used to kill people in the quest for more power. Without the war, this country was committed to pay Israel $3.8 billion per year through 2028. (https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-aid-israel-four-charts) The cost of this combined US/Israel offense against Iran could cost billions per day.

Forbes Magazine estimates that it costs $6.5 million a day to operate a carrier strike group, which brings the daily cost of this war, considering just that aspect, is about $13 million. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilanberman/2026/02/26/the-dollars-and-cents-of-military-action-against-iran/) An AI overview states that a war with Iran is projected to cost the United States billions in initial munitions, with total long-term expenses potentially reaching trillions if it mirrors previous Middle Eastern conflicts. Preliminary calculations estimate $350-$600 million for just two to three weeks of preparation, while specialized missions, such as attacking nuclear facilities, could cost over $2 billion for a single operation.

The economy is already in big trouble, despite what the regime leader says. People are struggling, needing more help from the government than before, but there will be fewer dollars for American citizens, because we’re spending billions to pay for a war. The budget is being compromised by the war and by the outrageous tax cuts for the wealthy.

Families will have less of the money they need to live decent lives, and it will be the children who will suffer most. But the children will suffer even more. Many of their parents are in the military and will be deployed. Some of them will get back home, but many will not, and children who don’t have relatives to take them in will suffer as they try to figure out why God let their parents die. There will be no answers; they will be left to deal with their confusion on their own.

It won’t be the children of the wealthy who will suffer, financially or otherwise. They won’t miss a meal; they will have their health insurance; they will live the lives they always have. But for the masses of children, in this country and in all of the countries involved in this unnecessary, illegal, and immoral war, this will be a time of deep grief and confusion.

In Kenya, people greet each other by asking, “And how are the children?” and the answer is supposed to be, “The children are well.” We will not be able to answer that question that way, and a country in which the children are not ok is a country that will suffer great consequences.

I began to ask that question when I saw photos of white people, some men, but primarily women and young people who looked in age to be from high school through college, as Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African American child, was accompanied by federal officers as she walked to the front door of her new school. She might not have noticed their faces, and maybe the noise was so intense that she couldn’t hear the hurtful words being screamed at her. She got through that first day and went an entire year sitting in a first-grade classroom by herself because the parents of the white children would not let their kids be anywhere near her.

While I know that story, what bothers me as much today as it did when I read about this disturbance years later was the hatred I saw on the faces of the women, many of whom were, I suppose, mothers themselves. What in the world happened that prompted these people to attack a 6-year-old child verbally? How does one hate a child who has done nothing but be born with brown or black skin? I have wondered time and time again whether any of those people who stood outside that school felt bad about how they’d acted years ago. I needed them to feel bad because the hatred they spewed toward that little girl was totally uncalled for.

It feels like people who hate Black people are addicted to hatred; hating Black people and showing it seems to be how they get through life. They may not have a job or health insurance, but they do not hate the system that leaves them struggling financially and unable to make ends meet. They hate Black people, and at least for now, they hate brown people as well. The same hatred that moved those parents so many years ago to go to a school to shout hateful words at a 6-year-old baby is the hatred they were taught to have by people in power who needed the labor of Black people to build their personal wealth and the economy of this country. The economically elite needed for there to be a breach between Black and white people; there was no room for liberty and fairness for all people. To get their narrative to “take,” they developed theories on how Black people even got here. They were despicable people, the elite told the masses. They murder people, they are thieves, and are inherently evil because they were born that way. They were taught these lessons in church and pushed “scientific” proof of their beliefs. Men like Josiah Nott, a medical doctor who had received recognition for his work on finding the reasons for yellow fever and malaria, sought to put a researched “reason” for treating Black people poorly. Just as he researched causes of disease, he sought to find the causes of racism and why treating Black people inhumanely was justifiable. He was influenced by the work of Samuel Morton, who measured brain sizes across races and concluded that white people’s brains were larger than those of other races. Black people had the smallest brains ofhumankindnkind, he concluded, and therefore, it was proper and true to say that they were inferior to white people.

That information, coupled with a theological belief that GodGodd not create all people, just white people, helped cement white supremacist ideology. Black people were another species, not even human, created by a separate deity or godGodhose “facts” being the case, Nott agreed with Morton that it was OK with God if Black people were treated like they were “less than” white people – because in fact they were inferior – and they were a different species of life, maybe not human at all, but certainly not “human” like white people were. It was OK and wise to fear them. Scientists and other professional groups did all they could to make the general society understand what they were teaching. Books were written, including Charles Carroll’s book, The Negro: A Beast or in the Image of God, to drive home the emerging and solidifying white supremacist beliefs. President Woodrow Wilson invited people to the White House to see D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” and said afterward that the movie was “like writing history with lightning.” God, who had created white people, had outsourced the creation of Black people to some other deity; therefore, white people did not have to worry about treating them badly. The enslavement of other people was not wrong or a sin; it was the will of theirGod, and God was OK with white people treating Black people cruelly. God, their creator, understood their anger. Because God did not create Black people, the white people who claimed God embraced Christianity but hated and feared Black people did not have to worry about what would happen if they treated Black people badly, because they weren’t human. How they treated the people with brown and black skin was not going to cause God to cast them into hell.

Black people were, then, the perfect tool to use to get them to do the work of building a new country. White people were carefully and intentionally taught that hating those “objects” who did not “obey” their masters was the right thing to do. They did not have to worry about disobeying Jesus’ words, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” because Black people were not human, and therefore, not their neighbors. They were put on this earth to serve white people, and it was the duty of white people to make them do what God told them to do on earth. They were to understand that Black people were commodities, to be used, fed, abused, and released like any farm animal.

And what tools would they use to make sure they were doing God’s will as it pertained to the treatment of Black people? Through violence- physical, economic, psychological, spiritual, and emotional. The state has sanctioned white violence against Black people since slavery. White people could kill Black people without worrying about consequences, and did. And it seems that the more they killed or terrorized Black people without having to answer for it, the worse they got. However badly Black people were treated, it was because they deserved it. That brand of hatred has been passed down from generation to generation. While not all white people adhere to white supremacist mythology, enough do to have caused rank suffering and injustice for Black people for decades. It is part of the spiritual, emotional, psychological, and sociological DNA of white culture. Those white mothers and young people who yelled and screamed hateful things at Ruby Bridges all those years ago were not thinking about Jesus’ words when they did that. They did not worry about going against the teachings of Jesus. They believed they were right, and if anything, their religious beliefs emboldened them. They were trapped by their own racist genetics, as are so many white people.

And for that reason, I think they are to be pitied. With no allegiance to the principles of God or Jesus, this disease of white souls will not get better or go away. All they have is the race hatred they’ve been taught, and the only tool in their box to deal with what they are challenged by is horrific violence. That’s not much, and in the long run, it’s not sustainable. The question is, if they are to be pitied, what is to be the work of everyone who sees what’s going on?

.

To be honest, I had not heard of it. I had to look it up, and when I read the description of it, I had to pause. From the beginning of my education, I was taught about American democracy and how it was far better than and, therefore, exceptional when compared to governments in other countries. We were the best country. America was exceptional because of how it came to be: people fought for deliverance from a monarchy and won, and we developed a government in which a democratic republic would govern the people, not the Crown. (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2017/02/28/a-brief-history-of-american-exceptionalism/)

We were the envy of other countries; politicians around the world studied our government and sought to imitate it. We learned the lofty words of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” As we learned about how “good” America was, we simultaneously learned about Russia, or the USSR as it was called then. The “Commies” were bad, as bad as Native Americans were to the white men who settled in this country, we were taught. “Commies” were responsible for any problem that the world would face; democracy was the cure.

And we believed the hype.

We learned how the “bad” countries did awful things to their own people. We were taught that people in Communist countries did not have the freedoms that we had, including freedom of speech, the press, religion, and peaceful assembly; the Second Amendment was not pushed very hard then, but we did learn that people ( not a well-regulated Militia) had the right to bear arms.

How wonderful this country was! That’s what we were taught! I was in district choirs, and we sang all of the America-loving songs, including “America the Beautiful,” “This is My Country!” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee!” We – all of us – solemnly put our hands over our hearts every morning and said the Pledge of Allegiance. America, according to the descriptions and what we were taught, was certainly “exceptional.”

But the longer I lived, and the more I studied and read the history of America, the less “exceptional” it seemed. It was a country that played favorites; one was “free” and had “freedom” primarily if one was a white male, preferably with a lot of money. We did not dwell on the business model of slavery, how the enslaved were treated, and how their bodies and labor were exploited, resulting in this new country becoming the most wealthy country in the world. We did not learn about the Trail of Tears, and how their land was stolen from Native Americans by the white people who decided they wanted it, and how they made the owners of the land leave it and walk over 1,000 miles from the South to Oklahoma – and we certainly were never told that the removal or upheaval of Native Americans from their land was considered ethnic cleansing. (https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/what-happened-on-the-trail-of-tears.htm) (https://nhbp-nsn.gov/timeline/the-indian-removal-act/). Nor did we learn about coffles of enslaved African and African-American people, products of the very lucrative slave- trading business, who were often seen walking past the White House in Washington, DC, the symbol of the myth of American democracy, where there was supposed to be “liberty and justice for all.” (https://www.loc.gov/item/98510280/) We learned about Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, we were told, were bad. We were taught that, but we didn’t learn about how Japanese living in America were rounded up and thrown into internment camps after that debacle, and we didn’t learn how American officials and intelligence had warnings that an attack from the Japanese was highly possible, but they did not take it seriously enough to prepare for the devastating attack.

We were not taught that the foundation of America was cracked from the beginning, built on a lie that the founders believed all people were worthy of American ideals and freedom. They did not. Black people, Native Americans, women – those were the original groups whose rights to freedom were ignored – but that list grew as the leaders of this country worked hard to make sure only a few people were really “American” as defined by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. We were not taught that in school; we were simply taught that in this country, there was a democracy where everyone had the same opportunities to prosper, at best, but even if they did not, they at least had their freedoms.

We were called “exceptional” because of the façade of democracy that we presented to the world, but we were never exceptional. We were new, but we were settled by people who believed that some people were better and more deserving than others, and that they had a divine right to treat those who did not meet their standards and requirements necessary to be considered American as they pleased. The “others” had no rights; the Constitution did not pertain to them.

The crack on which this country was built has never been admitted; we gloss over it, but we never look at it eye-to-eye in order to see what it is and therefore how much damage it has done. This country has been sinking in the mud on which it was built until now; what was once this country is nearly completely destroyed. That might not be a bad thing; a new foundation needs to be built, one that is sturdy and able to handle the gift called pluralism, where people are truly free regardless of their ethnicity, race, or place of national origin.

People like myths because myths are much easier to live with than truth and reality. They are fun and can be comforting. This country is like a once-great artist or dancer who has never been able to accept that their heyday is over; that has been the case for some time, and they remain stuck in a blurry nostalgia. That’s where this country is now. Despite the desire of many to remain wrapped in the myth, the holes in it are becoming too large to be quickly sewn or stitched back together. The myth of American exceptionalism has been exposed to the world. America is like the emperor who had no clothes. We cannot see our tattered myth, but the world can.

The question is, how will we handle it?

If you are an African American in this country, there is a sickening, familiar feeling that resides within you. Its seed was planted at the beginning of this country’s determination to treat people of African descent as subhuman, and as it relied on its adherence to that belief to justify and excuse the practice of uncompensated labor, also known as chattel slavery. Children of African Americans learned it early. Though we watched popular television programs like “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” and saw ourselves as like the characters on screen, we were to learn that we were not like them, nor did the world intend for us to believe that we were or ever could be.

The television programs did not say anything overt about how the content producers viewed this country. You didn’t hear words like “racism” or “sexism” anywhere near these programs; they did the job of reinforcing the vision of this being a country ruled by white people, who made sure white people lived good lives, lived in nice houses, and had well-behaved children.

Those who lived in all-Black communities enjoyed some of the childhood bliss depicted on television. Children who lived in these communities lived amongst people who surrounded them, took care of them, made sure they stayed out of trouble as well as they could, and that they went to school. Their schools might not have been as good as the white ones because they received less state funding, but the teachers were excellent and expected the children to live up to their potential, regardless. The reality of racism and a belief in white supremacy resulted in Black teachers having to do a first-rate job with second-rate resources, but with first-rate, first-tier determination and faith. They made sure that the children knew love and affirmation. Knowing that gave African American children strength for the journey through school, and when they left their communities to enter the world and Whiteness, the operating system of the world. Through the love and guidance of their parents and grandparents, neighbors, “aunties,” and “play cousins,” they learned who they were. That self-knowledge was what helped them as they left the comfort of the community that loved them. They took love, faith, and the reminder of who they were into a world that, for the most part, neither wanted nor believed in them.

Those who lived in integrated communities, however, and attended integrated schools, were taught a different worldview and what it said they could and could not do. From a very early age, they faced racial hatred and had to endure the pressure of being considered “less than” their white classmates. They had teachers, primarily white, who resented school integration and thus, their being in their classrooms, and classmates who didn’t really understand what was going on as far as race, but who communicated what their parents, grandparents, teachers, and often, their pastors thought about Black people. The biggest burden these children had to carry was the idea communicated to them that they were deficient in many ways because of the color of their skin.

Both groups of Black children endured; both watched the same television programs, and many identified with the Whiteness they saw on the screen, but when they left their homes and went out into the world, there would be instances where they would feel or sense a familiar dread that came when Whiteness pushed them or obstructed them and reminded them that they were different, and therefor deficient, and that they should not, therefore, yearn for what they saw white peers receive or how they were treated.

And once they reached the age when they could recognize experiences and circumstances that were not for them, they began to learn to recognize a creeping feeling of “the familiar,” in which their values, beliefs, hopes, and dreams would be challenged.

“The familiar” is a feeling or dread, rage, and sometimes terror that one feels in one’s gut when certain things happen. This country has been masterful in putting or keeping African Americans “in their place.” Any time, historically, African Americans were able to push against Whiteness and make a decent life for themselves and their families, Whiteness would come in mobs, some large, some small, but all with violence, to destroy what they had built. Black businesses, churches, and homes were burned to the ground. (https://robertsmith.com/blog/19th-and-20th-century-race-driven-massacres-and-violence-on-african-americans-silenced-in-american-history/) Elections were stolen. (https://eji.org/news/wilmington-massacre-of-1898/) Using fear, Whiteness has ridden into Black lives like a knight in shining armor, determined to save the world for white people.

African Americans know the feeling of “the familiar.” Slowly, other non-white groups are coming face-to-face with it. They see how desperate, ruthless, and cruel wealthy people, wealthy because of the labor of those whom they terrorize and threaten, act when money and power are their reasons for living. Even poor whites, who have been used by the system, stoking their feelings of anger caused by “the wrong people” getting ahead, are beginning to see that Whiteness, the system, will destroy anyone and anything that gets in its way for total control of all of us. We see a creeping feeling of despair and anger in our streets now as ICE storms neighborhoods and communities in a quest to make America white. The powers that be say they want to make America great again, living in the nostalgia that comes from remembering “Father Knows Best,” “The Lone Ranger,” or “Leave It to Beaver,” but not even in those programs was America white. Native Americans were already here when white people arrived. The settlers stole land that belonged to Native Americans. They lynched and exploited Black people, but stopped short of completely erasing them from this country. They needed their labor to make America’s economy. We, African Americans, see, hear, and feel what’s going on. “The familiar” is walking through our communities and finding places in our spirits. It needs to be in our spirits so that we can resist.

But for those who are surprised at how they are being treated by the system called Whiteness, this time will be painful to absorb and understand, and that’s because it is not based in truth or fairness or the will of God, but is, rather, the fruit produced by the seed of bigotry planted in the core of this country’s beliefs by men including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Acknowledging “the familiar” has helped African Americans and other marginalized groups in this country to find the strength needed to fight it. Now, it seems, other groups will have to learn to recognize it as well. It looks like not just African Americans, but many Americans whom Whiteness has turned against in its quest for total power, will have to admit a feeling of “the familiar,” and push against it with everything they’ve got. One thing is for sure: none of us can allow “the familiar” to advance unchallenged. The need for communities that may not have, up to this point, even considered each other, is now. My prayer is that distaste and disdain for “the familiar” to have its way will guide our feet, our hearts, and our thinking.

When I was a child, I read everything I could, including The Reader’s Digest. Their stories were always short and easy to read, and quite interesting as well.

I remember reading a lot of stories about babies or young people who had contracted some kind of illness or disease due to a deadly virus. Their pain and suffering were great, with the virus sometimes resulting in lasting physical evidence of it having ravaged the young bodies, and as I remember, some of those results of the virus were serious and, in many cases, deadly. What made these stories so compelling to me is that the conditions they caused were so serious, the effects of the virus were so deadly, but there was no easy treatment to prevent or get rid of it. If it got into you, it was going to stay for as long as it wanted; the victim just had to wait until it worked its way out of their system.

Even today, when I hear about a virus, I get nervous. The COVID-19 virus worried me, as well as the Ebola virus. There was no magic shot or pill that would eradicate it. If you had a virus, you were going to suffer. So, from my reading as a child, I knew viruses were deadly.

I grew up getting vaccinated for measles, mumps, whooping cough, and other maladies to which babies and children were particularly vulnerable. I remember being in elementary school when the polio vaccine came out; all of the students in the school lined up to go into the gym where there was a table at which sat a doctor and nurse, who proceeded to give us shots with some kind of vaccination gun the first year; I seem to remember that we had to take boosters to ward off the disease for two years after that first does was given, but with those doses, we were able to take the med in the form of a sugar cube.

We learned that if we were vaccinated against the targeted diseases, we stood a good chance of not getting sick, or, if we did, our illness would be less severe than without the vaccination. Those viruses, still alive, would not have the power to infect us as badly. I remember my mother talking about how important that was and how, when she was little, her friends got things like whooping cough and German measles and were often very sick.

While I know we were vaccinated against measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus, I don’t remember being told we had been vaccinated against chickenpox. The cure for chickenpox was getting it. Once one had gotten through the early stages of the highly contagious disease, there would be little chance of picking it up from anyone else. The younger one was when one got chickenpox, the better. Once the interminable itching stopped, we were past the danger stage of getting it again.

But what I didn’t learn, what nobody talked about, was how the virus that caused chickenpox, Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV) remains active in human nervous systems after the bout with chickenpox is finished, and that this virus can be reactivated later in life, causing the condition known as shingles. Anyone who has had chickenpox has this virus in their body; it never goes away.

Thinking about this unfortunate truth about VZV, it came to me that whiteness, the social condition that results in social illnesses, including racism, sexism, and the other “isms” that support the idea that white men are superior to everyone else, is a virus. It was brought to this country by the English, who, once they settled in the United States, touted white supremacist beliefs. Those beliefs resulted in the scarring of America’s soul, like the blisters of chickenpox scarred infected bodies. The infection, the scarred souls, created the ethos of this country, and despite Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that “all men are created equal,” that social virus did not allow those words to become the north star of this country. The racism that made them believe that it was OK to say there was “liberty and justice for all” while enslaving human beings and denying them the rights their words indicated they had, was the evidence that the virus that reared its ugly head during the writing of the US Constitution, was embedded deep within America’s social nervous system. It was relatively silent during the early days of this country’s life. But throughout our history, it has come back with a fury, including during the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and now, the age of social rupture, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a speech he gave at the World Economic Conference held in Davos last week. “The old world order is not coming back,” he said. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-speech-davos-rules-based-order-9.7053350)

This virus is not an indication that all non-white people hate white people. It doesn’t “blame” white people; it blames the white system that was put into place at our founding. Whiteness is a virus, the virus, if you will, that has been the foundation of so much of the pain people have experienced as they have tried to live decent lives. “Whiteness” is not a person; it is a mindset, not just of white people, but of people of all ethnicities, races, and religions. “Whiteness” has taught the world that being white, wealthy, male, and in power are what are important. “Whiteness” teaches individuals that some humans are more or less human than others, thereby justifying the way some people are treated. Whiteness teaches men, in general, that being a male makes them superior to women and that they have a right to treat women like they are property. Whiteness teaches women, including white women, as well as African Americans, to accept the pronouncement given by the white system that they are inferior and somehow deserve the treatment they receive from men, who are primarily but not exclusively white. Whiteness makes it possible for those in power to treat people like property, and though what it brings out in people is abhorrent, it makes people strive and yearn to be white as well.

It is a mindset.

What is going on now in this country is the evidence of the eruption of the virus called whiteness that has always been embedded in the social nervous system of America, in its soul. It has always been a powerful virus, so powerful that Germans studied America’s race laws as they created Naziism. Whiteness believes it has and is ultimate power, given to certain people by God.

This virus has been agitating for a few years and is raging now, but if it follows the way of most viruses, it will die down again. It will be energized by life and erupt again. Whiteness is a virus, and like any virus, it cannot be eliminated, and the only effective treatment seems to be admitting the hard truth that it exists and is deadly. Truth is, it is the vaccination this nation has never had. It is a part of America’s legacy and history. If we admit it, we might be able to dilute its toxicity and subsequently have fewer episodes of pain caused by its eruption. But it will always be with us. And because we will not admit that it is at the core of this nation’s problems, that pesky virus will continue to interrupt the false steadiness experienced in the world. It will always come in fits and starts. If this world is truly erupting and not transitioning, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, who knows what the next iteration of this country and the world will look like? And will it be this eruption or implosion that is happening in the United States, yes, but also all over the world, be the event that makes this virus impotent as a new world order is created?

It might be an understatement to say that what is going on in this country is maddening.

All my life – all of our collective lives as Americans – we have heard that the United States is a country of laws. We were taught that the structure of the US government, with its three equal and independent branches – executive, legislative, and judicial – would never be like the kind of government there in other places. During my youth, the major “other place” was Russia (then called the USSR).

I remember being taught about the great American presidents; in my lessons, the two presidents most often mentioned were George Washington, who, we were taught, “never told a lie,” and Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves. We were not taught that the third president of this country, Thomas Jefferson, the president who penned the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” enslaved 600 people. At least 12 presidents owned other people and exploited their labor, and 8 of those,12 owned them while in office.

We were taught that there was slavery, but the way it was presented, it wasn’t bad, just a way of life. We were not taught much about Indigenous Americans, other than that they were the bad guys that the Pilgrims and Puritans had to defeat in order to carry out God’s plan for them to take this land as their own. We were not taught that their land was stolen because a group of people believed it was their Divine Right to eliminate them and take their land. We never learned about the Trail of Tears, and how, as the land of Indigenous people was stolen, over 100,000 of them were forced to walk from the Southeastern part of the United States to what is now known as Oklahoma. And of course, since we didn’t talk about the Trail of Tears, we didn’t learn that nearly 4,000 to 15,000 died along the way.

I grew up loving Abraham Lincoln because I believed he “freed the slaves,” but my love turned to disappointment as I learned that he did not like Black people, did not believe they were equal to white people, and could never be. We didn’t learn that Lincoln favored sending them “back” to Africa. We learned that it was a bad thing for enslaved people to try to escape, and to ensure they stayed in their place, the Fugitive Slave Laws were written. What the enslavers and their overseers and wives did to them as human beings was not taught; again, it was just “the way things were.”

Lynching was mentioned but not discussed much. The rape of enslaved women by their owners and overseers was touched on but not dwelt upon. We were taught that this was the land of the free and the home of the brave; all of us in elementary school said the Pledge of Allegiance every day, declaring that this was a country where there was “liberty and justice for all,” and we, progeny of the enslaved, would say those words along with our white classmates, with our full chests.

We learned about Dred Scott. He had once been enslaved in Missouri, but then lived in Illinois and later, in the Louisiana Territory, both places where slavery was prohibited under the Missouri Compromise of 1820. We learned that when he moved back to Missouri, he found that, though he had been free in the other places he had lived, he was not free there. We learned that he took his case to the US Supreme Court and that he lost. What we did not learn, however, were the words of US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who ruled that there were no rights of a Black man that a white man was bound to respect. We learned that there was plenty of resistance by white people to the Brown v Board of Education case, but we did not learn that many white school districts defied and ignored the law, causing many public schools to fail and many teachers, most of whom were Black, to lose their jobs as a new structure was put into place and implemented. These people did not respect the ruling of the highest court in the land and approved the law that said that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

The older I got, the more I realized that we were not a country of laws, and that some people were above the law, while others were not even considered worthy of inclusion within its bounds. I learned that if one were wealthy enough, one could escape most illegal actions. There were exceptions, but it seemed that, as Bryan Stevenson, CEO and Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, said, it was true that “it was better to be wealthy and guilty than poor and innocent.” Native Americans didn’t deserve justice under the law, nor did African Americans. In the case of African Americans, they could be captured, arrested, tortured, and murdered – regardless of the laws that were in place. It was almost as if the judicial system of this country considered the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” to have been given to Moses by God with a European standing over His shoulder to advise God to be sure to include the small print, providing the explicit understanding that the laws being stated would not have to be applied to all people

As a country, we began in lawlessness, so we should not be surprised by the lawlessness we see practiced and sanctioned by all three branches of the Federal government today. The man who murdered Renee Good is being protected by the US Justice Department, while that same Justice Department is targeting and arresting Democrats for “allowing” disorder in places of worship. The regime wants to cite certain people with Contempt of Congress for refusing to honor a subpoena, while some of them have ignored subpoenas they received to talk about the January 6, 2021, insurrection in our nation’s Capital. Despite the proclamation, “Nobody is above the law,” it is clear that the wealthy and powerful do not believe that proclamation applies to them. With their money, they will do as they want. Though some have said publicly that if MAGA doesn’t win the 2026 midterms, and the regime doesn’t win the 2028 general election, some of them will go to prison, which they should, because some of them have been convicted of felonies, they’re not particularly worried; as long as they have big money, money enough to buy whomever they want, and a US Supreme Court which functions as their ace-in-the-hole, they will prevail.

It is maddening to watch. Whatever “the plan” is, it is working as they have intended. The president wants to have a war – anywhere, it seems, and any place. If he can, with the help of his stooges in the legislative branch and on the US Supreme Court, declare the Insurrection Act, his goal of assuming total power will have succeeded.

The country of laws that never was is in its Battle of Waterloo; it is using its own people to bring itself down. Its enemy is the democracy and pluralism this country has touted since becoming an independent nation. And with the defeat of democracy, those in power will be able to more easily make and enforce laws that protect the powerful and wealthy, leaving those who are not in that category to figure out what “the law” really means.

What, actually, is ethical Christianity? I ask because it feels like it does not exist in this country. Instead of reaching for God, many of us are silent as we watch anarchy explode around us, as innocent people who happen to have brown skin are accosted, assaulted, kidnapped, detained, and now, shot and killed. Instead of the nation’s leadership denouncing what is going on, they are remaining silent, supporting a man who is the US president, but who is destroying not just this country but the world, right in front of our eyes. There is no American entity on the federal level that is protecting us, with the exception of some of the federal courts; neither the Congress nor the US Supreme Court are doing anything with the power they have to protect us.. The people who took oaths to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States all lied. This accusation can be safely applied to MAGA, aka the GOP, but some Democrats are as guilty as their MAGA friends.

In the past, we had some confidence in the media to look for the truth and expose it, but not anymore. The mainstream media is as complicit as the three levels of government. The reporters, for the most part, do not challenge MAGA/GOP guests who openly lie about what’s going on in this country. Were we to listen to and read some of what used to be reliable sources for sharing what’s going on in the world, we would be clueless. The press is the “enemy of the people,” says the president, who does nothing but spew lies. He resents the press because they tell the truth, or they’re supposed to, but too often, they do nothing but ask softball questions and do not push back when their questions are answered untruthfully. The lies this administration shares are exponentially bad.

Because of the lies spoken boldly, despite what he says not lining up with what is going on, these 21^st-century Trump-era news operations leave us distressed, annoyed, and panting for the truth about situations we know are more explosive than what is being presented.

In light of how this administration is treating the people of this country and how it is bullying nations all over the world, I find myself asking again, “Where is God?” Not only is this president working as hard as he can to throw the world into World War III, but he is also doing it as a convicted felon who somehow won a second term. The people around him lie for him, forgetting their oaths and, definitely, I would think, forgetting God. My frequent question to God is, “Are you trying to tell us to get ready for mass violence and suffering, that there is nothing You can do?” It has happened before, in other countries. We thought we were immune, but it turns out we are not. This country has not seen the destruction war causes since the Civil War. Immigrants who fled to this country after their own countries killed democracy say with worried voices, “We have seen this before.” There are still too many people who do not believe that “it” is happening here, and so I pray that there are enough of us who do see what’s happening to do what we need to save the country.

But as we grapple with what is happening and why, there is the pesky question of God’s presence and role in all of this. Did we who read the Sermon on the Mount, found in the book of Matthew, get it wrong? How could that be? How much clearer is the divine directive than we should love our neighbors as ourselves? What are we who read in Matthew 25 that inasmuch as we have attended to or ignored “the least of these” to do with the apparent fact that many who call themselves Christians do not believe we are supposed to do what the Good Samaritan did? The late theologian, pastor, and preacher, John McArthur, said that doing social justice is anti-Biblical (

),

But isn’t that what Jesus did? Where is God when such abhorrent evil is being carried out against people who have done nothing but what and who God created them to be?

As I watch what is going on, and how this president is working as hard as he can to throw the world into a war; as I watch this convicted felon do all he can to put people in prison who have done nothing but challenge him, as I watch ICE agents, whom I believe are deputized criminals with no training, run rampant through neighborhoods, attacking people with brown skin at will and throwing them into unmarked cars to be detained or deported, as I watch them escalate their “power” by shooting and killing people who are exercising their First Amendment rights, as I watch the federal government cover up what appears to be a horrific sex trafficking operation, as I watch people in office holding positions that they supposedly got on merit (though they’ve had no experience in what they’re doing), making policies that are going to harm a lot of people, I have to pause and ask, “God, where are You?”

But then yesterday happened. And I am filled with rage. An ICE agent shot and killed an American citizen. The president and the Secretary of Homeland Security immediately got on the air and spun the story to make the dead woman the culprit in this situation, and defended the actions of the ICE agent.

(https://www.startribune.com/she-was-an-amazing-human-being-mother-identifies-woman-shot-killed-by-ice-agent/601559922)

In other words, the president and one of his most loyal sycophants did what “law enforcement” in this country has historically done in situations when one of its officers has shot and killed an unarmed person: they lied and absolved the perpetrator of the violence of all responsibility.

This administration is trying its best to make the collective rage of Americans who are incensed with how it is treating immigrants blow up so that there is mass violence on the streets. The thugs who are posing as government officials are insulting even the concept of justice, and innocent people are being kidnapped, deported, detained, and in some instances, tortured.

Some are illegal immigrants, but many are not. American citizens, native born and naturalized, are being whisked up at the whim of any particular ICE agent who wants to flex his muscles and treated like disposable property.

So many people say that this is not America, but it is. This is what America has always been. “Law enforcement” has, for too long, been about stoking fear among certain groups of people to maintain control. Undeserved violence and fear of it have been used as the major tool to control people since Europeans came to these shores. They have worked to keep people in fear for their lives, while, at least in more recent times, they have switched the narrative and said it was their fear of the people they attacked that justified their use of force. They made people who merely wanted freedom, dignity, and justice the “bad guys,” deserving of the violence meted out against them.

In this country’s movement toward authoritarianism, violence by “law enforcement” is being used in the same way it was used by men who were deputized during slavery to hunt and capture enslaved persons who had escaped. Insecure white people in power have not only ignored but also participated in mass acts of violence against non-whites, including Native Americans and people of African descent. Deputized thugs have historically killed and captured people and gotten away with it.

This is America.

So many African Americans in this country have lived with rage, as shooting after shooting of unarmed Black people have continued, with the offending officers not being held accountable. The rage sits deep within us, quivering each time an incident occurs.

But that rage isn’t reserved for Black victims of American thuggery. The fact that an innocent white woman was shot in the face and killed caused rage to quiver in people of all races who have been enraged since the assault on immigrants began in 2025. The fact that these men did not allow a doctor on site to attend to her caused a familiar quivering. The fact that the president and his girl-sycophant got on television and the internet and lied about what happened in Minneapolis yesterday, making the murdered woman the cause of her own death, made the quivering more intense. And this morning, as people sit in shock and anger, I suspect that the quivering rage is felt by those who never felt it or believed the stories of lawlessness by law enforcement that African Americans have talked about for decades.

In this regime, they are seeing and experiencing what the African American community has experienced since being brought to this land.

What do we do with the rage? My hope is that we will forget racial, sexual, gender, and ethnic differences and form a community that will collectively beat this evil. We will not be successful if we try to match their violence; they have the power to use “the law” against us, which they ignore. If we play their game, we will either be murdered or wind up in prison, and we will give this president the excuse he wants to declare martial law.

But this is the moment when we are called to figure out what community means, and to collectively figure out how to use the rage to force change in the lawlessness that is and has always been a part of the American story.