The inquiry should rightly begin with ourselves, to ask and answer some key questions: What did I do, spiritually, that was effective? Where did I walk that demonstrated my faith in action? In what manner did I get out of my individual zone of safety to speak truth to power, to provide nourishment to the spiritually hungry in my midst, to clothe those exposed to the harsh social ecology, to provide a way to those who thought they had no way, to change the lives of others for the better?
Maybe we then ask: What did we do collectively to shift the civic discourse to tend toward justice, inclusive opportunity, and concrete compassion? How did the hopefulness of a new national leader begin to translate to real change for the least of us? Did we stand for peace? Did we put the mandate into effect in the communities that we can impact, right where we live, and not simply leave it to President Obama and others to make the world right?
How will we judge and be judged in this regard as the days, weeks, months and years of our life unfold?
We all have some standard by which we measure our success spiritually and socially. The concept of judgment day is a persistent one in many of our religions. One of the oldest comes to us from the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley. The people of Kemet (known in modern terms as Egypt) believed that each life is taken into account on a day of reckoning in order to determine the disposition the soul in the life after this earthly one. They symbolized this process with the deceased coming before Asar, the agent of the Most High in the underworld, with a balancing scale which weighed one’s life-work against the feather of Maat - truth, justice, harmony, order, reciprocity, righteousness.
When read closely, the translation of their funerary texts call this process Wadjet Medu - the "weighing of words." The vessel which represented the lived life was a heart. In essence they posited the question, “Does your heart balance with the feather of Truth?” Interestingly, their view was that it was not just one’s physical actions and behavior that was judged, but one’s thoughts, words and deeds were brought to account as a whole. They believed that these three elements of personal living were, in the composite, the driving forces of creation. In other words, humans, just like their Creator, bring the world into being on a daily basis by thinking the thing, speaking the thing, doing the thing. To think Maat, speak Maat and do Maat was the aspiration of their way of life.
Consider for a moment what the end of the year "judgment scene" for us as individuals and collectively would be using this lens of Wadjet Medu. If we took, for example, the conditions and circumstances which are indicative of life for too many American African boys and men in the United States, how would our society fare on the scales of truth? When we see Black boys, what do we think and feel at the most visceral level? What is the dominant narrative that we tend to adopt? How do we react or not when we see our boys with white t-shirts, black hoodies, sagging jeans, and baseball caps cocked to the side coming toward us on a busy urban street? How do most of us engage this part of our community which experiences homicide-fratricide as the leading cause of death, a 50% high school drop out rate, and unemployment rates upwards of 35%?
Derrion Albert is a 16 year old honor student who was beaten to death on his way from school in Chicago in the Fall of 2009 by other Black boys. His killing was broadcast on TV and internet connected devices because a bystander filmed it. Inexplicably, someone filmed it but did not act with others to stop it. Was it because Derrion and his peers have ceased to be our children, our brothers, fellow humans in our view? Was it that he and others who look like him have become problems to be fixed at best, contained and shut away in prisons at worst? Where is the social change, the transformative practice when it comes to them? What did we think? What did we say? What did we do?
The examples are too many. They come too often. On the first day of the year 2009, a young Black father, Oscar Grant, is killed by a BART transit authority policeman while subdued on the ground. A girl in Richmond, California is brutally gang raped at her school by a group of young men.
While we know, we believe, that there is significant Good in the world, what are we called to do as "friends of God" to address injustice that is all around us? How will next year be different and better? What are we called to do?
For starters, lets challenge ourselves to undo racism, a chronic social disease in America, where it persists. Dr. Camara Jones, a nationally recognized public health official teaches us to take a look at three forms of racism. She defines racism as a “system of structuring opportunities and assigning value to people based on the social interpretation of how we look”. It unfairly disadvantages some while unfairly advantaging others through unearned privilege. She is right when she says that racism saps the strength of the entire society because it wastes human resources which are sorely needed to heal our world.
We must attack this predator at all levels. Structural racism provides differential access to goods, services and opportunities by race. Personally mediated racism takes form when we make differential assumptions about the abilities, motives and interests of others by race - from police brutality, to shopkeeper vigilance, waiter indifference and devaluation by classroom teachers. Internalized racism is the acceptance by the stigmatized race of negative messages about their own abilities and intrinsic worth.
With Derrion, all three forms were probably at work. The boys who killed him devalued his life because they probably devalued their own. Some cop, teacher or corner store owner has treated those boys and Derrion with disrespect or fear simply because of how they looked. And finally, school officials, civic leaders and other systems players did not create a safe neighborhood or school because that community is expendable and somehow not worthy of being fed, clothed, sheltered, resourced and made whole.
Let’s endeavor to make 2010, a year of real hope in every regard. In our homes, schools, places of worship and work, in our every day dealings. Let’s make our thinking, saying and doing align with the best of who we are. Let’s not just love some of us, but all of us with intention. Let’s strive to be more focused, more committed, more compassionate, more loving. Not just with those we know but with our sisters and brothers who may be differently hued, shaped, loved, attracted, resourced. Let’s start now, so when we take stock of our world at the close of 2010, we can say without hesitation that we thought Love, spoke Love, and gave Love to the glory of Spirit and Life Everlasting!
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Gregory Hodge, JD is an organizational development and community building consultant with Community Development Associates. He works with a range of groups from small non-profits and foundations to public agencies, particularly school districts. In addition, Gregory served two four-year terms as a member of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education beginning in January 2000. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the Workforce Investment Board, City of Oakland.
Hodge has also worked as an attorney in private practice handling a variety of civil litigation matters. His involvements include work with African American youth as a teacher and mentor; board member and minister at Wo'se Community; drummer with Bantaba Dance Ensemble; and member of the national Annenberg School District Reform Task Force.
For more information about Greg’s work, check out the following links:
Community Development Associates: www.cdatrust.com
The 2025 Campaign for Black Men & Boys: www.2025BMB.org
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