Illustration by Alex Williamson
The bandage covering the festering wounds of racism has been ripped off, giving us an opportunity to seize the moment and grow a movement that will finally heal this deep disease before another bandage is placed to cover it up.
Standing on the steps of the Old Courthouse the night before Michael Brown’s funeral, many who had been on the front line of the protests stopped marching and chanting, and quietly prayed for Brown’s family and the families of so many black men who have died. In that very place where Dred Scott sued for his freedom and was denied his citizenship and humanity by our legal system in 1857, we remembered that the next morning Michael would not be a cause, but the son of a family who would have to bury their child. We stood in silence, feeling the legacy of slavery and wondering whether the exposure of the disparities of Ferguson had to happen here to redeem the shame of the Dred Scott decision.
The narrative that has emerged again and again today is from mothers of young black men who, across lines of class, have “the talk” with their sons. “Keep your head down. Be polite. Don’t run from the police, and lose the attitude.” It will take all of us to change this culture, all of us to challenge the racial profiling, as well as the poison of racism and economic disparities that sicken us all.
We have been living under the illusion of separation: two Americas, two St. Louises, two Fergusons. We are divided by gender, race, and class. But there is one fragile degree of separation between us.
One afternoon, I marched in Ferguson to lift up the voices of the wonderful young people who have emerged to keep the peace on the streets, as only they can. I marched with a tall black 16-year-old who lives in Ferguson and celebrated his bar mitzvah at our congregation. As we were marching together, I heard a shout from the side of the road. It was a white ex-Marine, who’s now a St. Louis city police officer. He had come to serve the community and to help keep the peace. “Rabbi Talve, don’t you remember me?” he called out. “You did my bar mitzvah!” There I was, standing between two young men who shared a common tradition, one a kid of color from Ferguson who just wanted to get back to school, the other a police officer whose job it was to keep him safe. These relationships are what blur the lines of separation and will eventually help us to change.
Faith-based organizers often tell the story of Moses approaching Pharaoh to free the slaves. He did not ask for another after-school program for the slaves’ children; he took everyone willing to go out of slavery to create a whole new paradigm, one where everyone would be valued equally. The vision was to build a society where the riches of the “haves” were not dependent on the cheap labor of the “have-nots.” To build a society where the most vulnerable were lifted up, not left behind. To build a society where we know that if one child is at risk, all of our children are at risk.
There are both internal prejudices and external systems that lead to the inequitable distribution of power, respect, money, education, security, and opportunity between people who are white and people who are black and brown. As long as racial profiling of people of color is a given and the news media opens every broadcast with black crime, as long as our school districts are unequally funded by property taxes and we cling to regressive sales-tax structures, as long as we remain segregated by the Delmar Divide and by South Florissant Road and West Florissant Avenue, and as long as we support the ignorance that fuels fear of each other, racism will survive, and each and every one of us will continue to be part of the problem. Or we can choose to work together to heal old wounds and create a more just St. Louis.
Talve is the founding rabbi of Central Reform Congregation, the only Jewish congregation in the city of St. Louis.
