Over 50 years ago, I lived through the violent destruction of the city where I grew up — Detroit. Fires burned and I heard gunshots from miles away on our streets emptied by a 24-hour curfew. It was unsettling seeing a tank and troop carriers with Vietnam-hardened soldiers patrolling. Also unsettling were threatening white youths in souped-up cars roaring through our quiet middle-class black neighborhood.
Mostly I remember the palpable, barely restrained hatred I felt as a college-age mail carrier when I passed mourners at a church during the burial of a fireman who died fighting a riot-related fire. If the press hadn’t been there, I felt I might have been attacked because of the color of my skin.
In that same year, a young black policeman (in uniform), was stopped by a white officer, threatened and shot at. The black officer later became Detroit’s Chief of Police. We were both fortunate to have lived through our experiences.
As a young seminarian, PJ, my current pastor (white) visited a black church. The black pastor said, “I believe Pastor PJ has a heart for racial reconciliation.”
Then he asked everyone who had ever been hurt by a white person to come forward for PJ’s blessing.
PJ remembered feeling scared, anxious, unprepared, uneasy, and not sure what would happen. He was struck most by the length of the line, the span of ages, and the tears in their eyes.
“The first person was a little girl,” PJ recalls. “In that moment, I reached out my arms in love and we hugged, as I did with each person in that line. It was a moving experience.”
Naperville is not immune. A good friend realized the “bubble” we live in, and took the time to look up systemic racism. My oldest daughter, Amanda, was called a name by two girls in her class — first grade, already. Their parents were shocked, but the kids got it from somewhere.
Amanda, now 35, recently shared her memory of that time with her colleagues worldwide.
“I spoke less from that day on,” Amanda wrote. “Great way to begin my formative school years. That was just the beginning of a thousand little paper cuts (and some more egregious slashes).”
It hurt me deeply to read that. As a parent, I’m supposed to protect my children and yet my child was protecting me from the constant hurts she experienced. One of Amanda’s school friends also wrote about his Naperville experience.
Is America going to change? I hope so because I believe we are better than our past.
