It was the second week of my tenure as pastor. She was a well-spoken, well educated,
polished woman of color in her 70’s. She sat down in the chair in front of my desk and said: “Dr. Kelsey, we know you; but you do not know
us. You think you do, but you do not. But that is alright; we’ll teach you.”
She went on to share that African Americans are
bicultural. They understand and know how
to make their way through white culture.
They have to, she said. To get
their kids educated, their illness treated, and to earn a living they have to know
how to function in white American culture.
She shared there is also a distinctive stream of African America culture
in our country that I likely knew little about, being mono-cultural.
She was right, and they did teach me some things.
I learned about Jazz and spirituals and the poetry of
Langston Hughes. I learned what “good
hair” and “passing” mean. I was tutored in
the role people of color have played in science and medicine, inventing
things, and writing literature. I learned
about the place of people of color in world and American history. I learned how cooking skills brought from
Africa shaped southern cooking and then how this influence spread throughout
the country. I heard stories of the
Great Migration, narratives as central to the character of our country as the
stories of Lewis and Clark.
I witnessed how the challenges and indignities of being a minority
in America fostered in them a strength and wisdom and resilience that was
painfully beautiful. I saw the price
they paid for this depth of character.
Yeah, they gently and persistently taught me some things.
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we should not
see it as a day of victory. We should
see it as an encouraging landmark on the continuing road to justice in our
country. We still live in a segregated society and still live lives, to a great degree, apart from one
another.
Our segregated society breeds financial poverty among people
of color. It also breeds cultural and
spiritual poverty among all of us. Our
journey to wholeness is far from over.
“The time is always right to do what is right,” Oberlin
College Commencement Speech 2965, MLK Jr.
Jim KelseyExecutive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State
