Is the pandemic enabling us to finally see systemic racism?
Our state’s first case of COVID-19 occurred March 3. The NCAA basketball tournament, fittingly known as March Madness, was called off nine days later. Schools began closing the next day, and the Augusta National Golf Club announced it would postpone the Masters. It would be the first time since 1934 that the tournament would not occur in March or April.
Earlier that same morning, shortly after midnight on March 13, police in Louisville, Kentucky, killed Breonna Taylor.
Our city’s restaurants closed, and by the end of March the Governor had issued a stay-at-home order. In horror we watched the nightly news about New York City—tractor-trailers becoming makeshift morgues, hospital workers donning hazmat suits. On the first day of April, Samaritan’s Purse opened a field hospital in Central Park. On April 12, Easter came and went on computer screens. The Pope held mass to an empty St. Peter’s Square.
You remember the news from April and May—a blur of political mayhem; viral songs, online art, and making-the-best-of-it comedy; ships in quarantine, airlines grounded, and city skies emptied of car pollution; unemployment claims, businesses going bust, and record-breaking gun sales; heat waves in Siberia and raging fires in the rain forests. We sat inside staring out windows, studying budgets, hanging onto the news, watching too many movies, and eating sandwiches for dinner. Days of the week began to blur as people worked from home. Deprivation felt strange. No shopping. No sports. No Y or gym or yoga classes. No school. No travel. No restaurants. No parties or galas or graduations. No salon visits, manicures, or massages.
And then on Monday night, May 25, police murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis.
And the world went crazy.
God, in his omniscience, had slowed down the whole planet—was it for this moment? He took away our toys, knocked down our idols, and focused our full attention on a single man’s cruel death. It galvanized opinion across the world: America, it’s time to clean house of systemic racism. When William Barber II preached at Washington Cathedral a few weeks later, he catalogued America’s sins with holy clarity. Using Amos 5 as his text, he said, “a time of reconstruction, a time of repentance, and a time of reckoning has come.” With the confidence of an Old Testament prophet, he declared, “the Holy Spirit is saying to America, accepting death is not an option anymore.” The Black preacher from North Carolina who married his college sweetheart, who’s the father of five and who made national news in 2013 for his leadership of Moral Mondays at the state’s capitol, this man’s humble presence amplified the power of his words. They fell as a firestorm of indictment.
I watched that sermon glued to my chair, barely breathing. Barber gazed upon an empty cathedral, its wooden seats quarantined by the pandemic. He couldn’t see there were thousands—ten thousands—of us listening in makeshift seats of worship commandeered from office chairs, beds, and sofas. His case for change was irrefutable.
And here it is, July. Week after week, protest after protest, and story after story, America is grappling with her past, a past that lives in the present, in the groans and grief of the oppressed. Statues have been thrown into rivers, flags have been taken down, and new laws have been written. A thousand variations of protest have emerged. CNN’s photographic history of the last seven weeks, titled, “A Racial Reckoning in America” (July 9), includes Breonna Taylor’s face painted on a pick-up court in Maryland, volunteers building a garden where George Floyd was slain, and “BLACK LIVES MATTER” painted on city streets in D.C., Seattle, and even here in Charlotte. The once-blurry narrative of black oppression has become LED clear.
The white majority needed to hear this narrative as it coalesced around words like Juneteenth and places like Flint, around people like the Central Park Five and terms like mass incarceration. Nikole Hannah-Jones’ article, “What Is Owed” (June 30 New York Times Magazine) presented a CliffsNotes version of post-Civil War injustices. It’s as if, up until the pandemic, we’ve had a connect-the-dots picture but never filled it in. God shut down the world, called white people into the classroom, and sat us down. He’s forced us to stay in our seats until we’ve connected the dots and taken a hard look at the picture before us.
Ecclesiastes says there’s a time for everything. With the world sheltering in place to avoid death, it seems one death is certain: the death of systemic racism in America. Consider the oddness of the hour, how it echoes a biblical story. The first case of coronavirus was reported in 2019. America’s first slaves came to Virginia in 1619. Four hundred years passed between those two events, just as 400 years passed between the biblical enslavement of the Jews under Pharaoh and their deliverance. Coincidence? God told Abraham, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.” (Genesis 15:13 NIV) At the end of that time, God responded to their cries. “I have heard them beg for my help because of the way they are being mistreated. I know their pain.” (Exodus 3:7 CEB, CJB) Is it too much of a leap to ask how many hundreds of thousands of oppressed Africans have cried out to God during these centuries? It’s nothing short of miraculous that so many embraced the Christian faith despite oppression from the very people who shared it. God rewards those who seek him, and this appears to be their time.
“You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, being your best friend. Well, live like it, and maybe it will happen,” said William Barber, reading aloud Amos 5:14 in The Message. He continued, “I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.” (verses 21-24)
Last summer in France, I visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Angers (David d’Angers’s hometown) where I took this photo. I had never heard of him, although he was highly regarded in his time. Victor Hugo called him “the Michelangelo of Paris.” Recently, in 2013, The Frick Collection in NYC mounted an exhibition of his work that explored his influence on public statuary, “Making the Modern Monument.”