(ThyBlackMan.com) “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…” The opening lyrics of this Buffalo Springfield song have been ringing in my head and will be familiar to any child of the ‘60s. This seems to be where we are now. The mass protests are familiar, but, this time, something feels different. Everything is happening everywhere, at once, and it’s too soon to tell how this will end.
Plague and pestilence
Although the televised murder of George Floyd momentarily diverted media attention from COVID-19, the plague-like virus continues to spread. As of this week, there have been over 7.5 million cases of infection world-wide and 422 thousand deaths. The United States, always quick to tout its status as number one in everything, has the dubious distinction of leading the world in cases and deaths.
Remember the hubbub about the invasion of “murder hornets”? What has received little, to no press attention at all, are vast swarms of locusts sweeping the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Some of the swarms are so huge they cover hundreds of thousands of acres, devouring all of the vegetation in their path. The resulting famine is likely to cause population flows that will exacerbate refugee problems in that part of the world. Will this lead to a major conflagration between nations?
Fire and ice
This spring we have experienced more, and more severe, tornado outbreaks in memory and we have had named storms earlier than usual in hurricane season. On the East Coast, while we had wildfires in Florida, we had blizzards in New England: on the same day. The world-wide slowdown in human activity allowed people in California to see the San Gabriel Mountains and people in India to see the Himalayas. Whether you believe in Christ, or Karma, or neither, it certainly seems as if the world is heading for some cosmic reckoning, like the highway sign that says, LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL.
Look what’s going down
And then there’s the brutal murder of George Floyd and its aftermath. Not only have the protest crowds been bigger and more diverse than following other recent incidents of police violence, we’re already seeing state and local governments adopting police reform measures, like banning chokeholds, which should have been enacted years ago. Even Congress, which normally moves at a glacial pace, has crafted measures to curb police abuses and they actually appear to have some bi-partisan support. Yet, unarmed brothers are still being killed by police. What’s it gonna take to stop this?
The bigger, more impactful, events are about changing our culture. The City of Boston – Boston – just declared racism a public health emergency. Confederate statues are coming down and the United States military came forward to say they were open to renaming bases named for Generals of “the lost cause.” All you need to do is read the Articles of Secession for any of the Confederate States to see that the “cause” was a monstrous perversion of the founding principles of this country. These traitors, and that’s what they were, should never have occupied positions of honor anywhere in this country, and neither should those who, claiming heritage, want to cling to them today.
The race for the cure
Governments around the world are racing to find a cure for the coronavirus. The consensus is that economic activity will not return to normal until there is a vaccine. But should we return to “normal” while the virus of racism is still rampant as well? Will we search as desperately for its cure?
I believe the “vaccine” for racism is education. When we begin to teach the truth about American history, indeed world history: That the civilization we enjoy today is built upon the contributions of many earlier civilizations and not just from the so-called “Enlightenment”; that ancient Greece got many of its ideas and its architecture from the earlier civilizations of ancient Africa; that cultures dating back thousands of years in China and Persia (Iran) gave us poetry and literature; that religious concepts from India, like Trimurti or Trinity, informed what became Christianity in Europe; that Arabic numerals gave birth to modern math. Until the contributions of all humanity are recognized and taught, we will not be ready or willing to accept the universality of our human-ness.
We are flowers in God’s garden. The variety of our colors are what give the garden its beauty. And when God walks through the garden, does He not love all that He created and say, “it is good”?
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell
