Necessary Reminders

This afternoon was the 17th Annual Celebration put on by the Alliance for African-American Music. Piedmont College and Covenant Congregational Church have been actively involved in this group for many years, so I am part of the Alliance and serve as Publicity Chair. The goal of the group is simple; using music, we work to create a muti-cultural, multi-racial, and inter-generational music program on an annual basis. Additionally, we collect an offering that funds a scholarship in music for a minority student at Piedmont College. Obviously, this is a fitting event for Black History Month.

The choir from the Shady Grove Baptist Church, an African-American congregation, closed the program, which was held at the Level Grove Baptist Church, a white SBC congregation. Bishop Burns, the pastor of Shady Grove, led the closing benediction. As he spoke in appreciation of the participants and worshippers at the event, he reminded us all that, at one time, his church would not have been welcome inside this year's host church.

Now, I am not a person of privilege. My family was not upper-class or even upper-middle class. Our home was in the "not as nice" part of town. I was the first in my immediate family group to graduate from college. Still, I know that, as a white male, I have enjoyed certain benefits just because I am a white male, even if they were not always immediately obvious to me.

Bishop Burn's comment and my reflections on my status put me in mind of an item in the latest issue of Christian Century. The item related a story from David Novak, a Jewish theologian, who was walking down the street in a southern town in 1963. The gutters of the street were filled with mud because of a heavy rain during the night. As Novak approached the synagogue where he would attend Yom Kippur services, an older black woman approached him. She stepped off the sidewalk, into the muddy gutter, to let him pass by on the sidewalk. According to the item, in remarking on the encounter, Novak said, '"So, on the holiest day of the year, when I was supposed to feel that I was being cleansed before God, I felt profoundly dirty, not for what I had done, but for what I represented" to this woman ...' I wonder how many people have figuratively 'stepped into the gutter' because of what I represented to them. I wonder how many have done so because of you?