Erin Haines (an African American reporter for the AP who has covered race and civil rights since 2005) published an intriguing article this Friday on Barack Obama and American culture. She accurately, I think, noted that, “Obama’s candidacy is about race and it isn’t. It has illuminated the fact that black and white America don’t really know each other all that well, and has forced both sides to rethink what they thought they knew about each other and themselves.”
Add to this the “near miss” that Hillary Clinton experienced in her run to be the first female nominee for President in a major American political party, and we all wonder whether racial and gender prejudices are finally crumbling in America.
You don’t have to be pro-Democrat, pro-Obama, or pro-Hillary-Clinton to be hesitantly excited about the prospects that Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech may becoming a reality. Is the day at last dawning when the color of our skin and our gender is no longer looked upon as something that makes us lesser-than?
Being a “voice for the voiceless” is in my DNA. That’s why, with Karole Edwards, I co-authored Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. That’s why with Susan Ellis I am co-authoring Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Feminine Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors.
African Americans have a treasure of Christian spiritual care to offer all Americans. Christian women throughout Church history have a treasure to offer all Christians.
Reading the incredible wisdom of African Americans and women throughout church history buoys my spirits. It reminds me that God grants great spiritual abilities to all people of all races and both genders.
And . . . he gives great leadership abilities to all people of all races and both genders. Again, whether one is pro-Obama, pro-Hillary, or not, is not the specific issue for me personally. I am pro-respect, value, voice-for-the-voiceless. And I would like to think, along with Erin Haines, that maybe, just maybe, we Americans are at long last coming to a point where prejudices are crumbling in the face of mutual respect.
