Category Archives: May You Live In Interesting Times

A Small Dog in Ukraine

A small Jack Russell terrier named Patron (the word means “ammo” in Ukrainian) has been trained to sniff out explosives in Ukraine left by Russian forces to maim and kill. Patron is credited with detecting over 200 devices for effective neutralization by bomb squads.

Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dressed in his casual wartime attire, recently presented Patron and his owner with a presidential medal for their heroism.

“A dog who helps clean our land from the traces of the occupiers, and who also helps teach children mine safety,” he said. “Due to the Russian invaders, this is now one of the most urgent tasks — to teach children to recognize and avoid explosive objects.”

Zelinsky talks frequently to his people with nightly news addresses, but he also walks among them, having refused evacuation when the war began.

Contrast this with the instigator of the war, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, sitting at a huge banquet table, several feet and sometimes more apart from the people he is talking to.

Or consider one of Putin’s earlier meetings with Andrea Merkel when he brought along his Labrador. Merkel, because of an attack by a dog earlier in her life, is extremely uncomfortable around them. Putin later denied that he had brought along his dog to discomfort Merkel.

At any rate, here is this short guy in work clothes giving a medal to a little dog who saves people’s lives by sniffing out explosives so they can be safely detonated.

I have a hard time imagining Vladimir Putin taking time to come out from his big table to present an award to a small dog.

The Elected Dictator

A new crop of dictators has arrived on the scene, but, this time, by way of the democratic process:

“Around the world, from the richest countries to the poorest, a dangerous new crop of leaders has sprung up. Unlike their totalitarian counterparts, these populists entered office through elections. (Moisés Naím, “The Dictator’s New Playbook: Why Democracy Is Losing the Fight,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2022)

Until the past couple of decades, we hadn’t realized that keeping democracy is just as hard as gaining it. For this system to work, we have to be willing to lose to the side that has more votes than we do (whether popular or electoral.)

Losing is easier if the other side still looks and sounds somewhat like us. In the past few decades, more and more people, in the United States and elsewhere, don’t look like the white men who founded the country in 1776 or even the Greatest Generation who won World War II.

One of the playbooks for the new leaders, Naím writes, is vilifying those on the other side as some kind of dangerous force: “Populists work to collapse all political controversies into this ‘noble people’ versus ‘venal elite’ dichotomy, explaining any and every problem as the direct consequence of a dastardly plan by a small but all-powerful group harboring contempt for a pure but powerless people whom it exploits. Of course, if that is the case, what the people need is a messianic savior, a champion able to stand up to that voracious elite, to bring it to heel on behalf of the people.”

Court after court has upheld the election results of the U.S. 2020 election. Probably no voting in the history of the world has been as examined and certified as that election. Doesn’t matter. A myth will serve against hard facts if needed by a would-be dictator.

Gerrymandering districts to filter out any power to groups who might be opposed to the would-be dictator is standard practice.

At the same time, “a pseudo press” is crafted. A news outlet practices, not independent journalism, but political propaganda.

Such is the end result of the inability to abide by one of a democracy’s most important rules: you have to be willing to realize your human imperfection. You have to be willing to accept defeat when your side loses.

Christianity: Servant of the State or of Christ?

In a recent speech to the Russian people, Vladimir Putin “praised Russia’s army with words from St. John’s gospel: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’” This is the army that has killed men, women, and children by indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine’s towns and cities.

Putin attempts what many leaders do: rally a country around religion.

According to a briefing in The Economist (March 26, 2022, “The Cult of War), Putin has revived an “obscurantist anti-Western mixture of Orthodox dogma, nationalism, conspiracy theory and security-state Stalinism.”

To cloak Putin’s desire to revive the greater Russia of the czars in the words of Jesus Christ is surely a horrible repudiation of Christ’s life and message.

The temptation to tie Christ to political causes, however, has been dangled before his followers ever since his life on earth. Indeed, Christ himself was tempted, according to Christian gospels, to worship Satan by accepting Satan’s gift of all the kingdoms of the world. He refused, as his followers been called to do ever since.

Crowds of would-be followers lined up to cheer Jesus toward the end of his ministry. They hoped he would overcome Rome’s rule of their country. Instead, Jesus rode into Jerusalem, not on a charging war steed, but on an humble donkey. A few days later, he allowed himself to be killed by the Roman state.

Throughout the two-thousand years since that death, those calling themselves by his name have struggled with the militant temptation. When they have succumbed, as in the religious wars of the 1600’s, Christianity suffered, eclipsed by more worldly options like Stalin’s communism.

When Christians accepted the more lowly call of service—raising the status of women, freeing slaves, building hospitals, and feeding the poor, Christianity has been strengthened.

In every generation, Christians are confronted with this choice—God as state or God as Jesus.

Overcoming an Attempted Coup

The picture of Russian politician Boris Yeltsin on the steps of the Russian parliament in August 1991 forever symbolizes his finest moment. He and a few supporters overcame a coup attempt to take over Russia’s first attempts at democracy.

Later, after the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down, Yeltsin became president of an independent Russia. He was never again as popular or as successful as in those heady days when he led the successful resistance to the attempted coup.

Eventually, Vladimir Putin took over Russian leadership and followed the path toward dictatorship.

A democracy is difficult to bring about and sometimes difficult to keep, once birthed, even in the United States.

During a hot summer in 1776 in Philadelphia, representatives from British colonies in North America declared their independence from Great Britain. They crafted their new republic with a Declaration of Independence.

As it was being declared, an onlooker in the crowd reportedly asked Benjamin Franklin, “What kind of government do we have now?”

Franklin is reported to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We may look back on January 6, 2021, as the day Vice President Mike Pence stood down an American version of a coup against that republic.

Repeat a Lie Often Enough

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” is a saying often attributed to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Regardless of who first said it, the concept is a well-used strategy of those seeking power with little regard for truth.

Some practice it with respect to the U.S. 2020 election. Numerous cases have been brought before U.S. courts in an attempt to cast doubt on Joe Biden’s election victory. All have found Biden the legitimate winner over Trump.

Nevertheless, the falsehood continues to spread.

A sister lie also making the rounds is that the attempt to defeat the electoral count on January 6 was merely a demonstration of concerned Americans. That was not the case when huddled legislators hid in terror and those “concerned Americans” shouted for blood in the hallways of Congress.

Our system of government is not a pure democracy, of course. We have leftovers from the founding fathers, some of whom weren’t all that sure about allowing ordinary men (women were denied the vote) to have true power. Nevertheless, most Americans today probably think they believe in rule of the majority.

This expressed belief is threatened in times of great change, when what has been the majority view becomes the minority view. The test comes then: do we really believe in rule of the people when many of the people don’t believe as we do?

Easier, perhaps, to shout “fraud.” Easier to lie and spread falsehoods about stolen votes. After all, we must appear to believe in democracy. Thus, we must lie about stolen votes. The only way we can appear to believe in rule by the people is to lie about how the people voted.

I don’t think the founding fathers saw this one coming.

Perfect in Weakness

Plough magazine devoted an issue (“Made Perfect; Ability and Disability,” Winter 2022) to those with special challenges: physically and mentally, as well as one person suffering from a mysterious, intractable illness. The articles remind us of Christ made flesh, experiencing human suffering as we do. He knew the shortness of life, the little time left to accomplish whatever we are here to do.

In his long struggle with what turned out to be Lyme Disease, Ross Douthat talked of faith surviving (“Hide and Seek with Providence”). “To believe that your suffering is for something, that you are being asked to bear up under it, that you are being in some sense supervised and tested and possibly chastised in a way that’s ultimately for good. . . . God brought you to it. He can bring you through it . . ..”

The articles are a blessing at any time, but especially as the Covid pandemic is reminding us of our vulnerability.

I don’t think we are being asked to overcome Covid just so we can buy more stuff. What we’ve lacked most in the recent past, I think, is community. If we have any ability to learn from our long Covid night, surely it’s the need to grow our communities.

We are all vulnerable, handicapped in some degree or another. We are all in need of family, neighborhood, and spiritual communities. When our acquisitiveness runs rampant, as seems often to be the case in these latter years, the pandemic can be a reminder of our more basic needs

Pandemic? When Is the End ‘in sight’?

I loved the cover of The Week magazine on March 26, 2021. On the cover, Uncle Sam had discarded his face masks as he gazed out the window at springtime’s arrival. His solemnity was overcome by a posture of dared hope. The title was: “The end is in sight.”

Businesses might again hold face to face meetings, we thought. School children might return to classrooms. Houses of worship might reopen.

Then the pace of vaccines faltered. About the same time, a new strain of Covid arrived.

Just as we had planned, finally, a return to normal holiday celebrations of families and friends, the virus numbers reversed and crept upward. The new strain of the virus spread. We heard more about “break-through” cases affecting even the vaccinated.

We returned to Zoom. Normal social gatherings were replaced by carry out meals. (Though some workers were unwilling to risk more exposure to the virus and undertake the necessary service jobs.)

What is our path out of this second invasion?

Though Covid sometimes breaks through and infects vaccinated individuals, the vaccinated (especially including those with booster shots) appear, on the whole, to be less seriously ill than the unvaccinated. Vaccination is more important than ever before.

Another lesson is the sharing of vaccines. As some predicted, the new strain of Covid broke through in a country with less access to them. We don’t stop after vaccinating our own citizens but push harder for sufficient vaccines for every country.

Past history indicates our ability to overcome infectious diseases, even in undeveloped countries. In the past, diseases like smallpox ravaged societies. Today, because of worldwide inoculation campaigns, small pox has been eradicated.

We have reason to hope for development of better vaccines against Covid, even while the current ones decrease Covid’s strength. As newer vaccines are found, developed countries must share them worldwide.

By practicing common sense and sharing, we can one day have that delayed celebration we looked forward to in spring 2021.

Dying to Live

At least 27 migrants, including children, trying to reach Great Britain by boat from France were drowned recently in the English Channel when their boat capsized. Four smugglers who are suspected in the attempted crossing have been arrested.

The migrant families came only a few days after British and French authorities reached an agreement to try to stem the number of people taking to the sea. Both countries struggle to handle large numbers of migrants into their countries.

Thousands of people this year have attempted to cross from France to Britain after French authorities closed unauthorized refugee camps in France. Authorities also have cracked down on smugglers attempting to bring in asylum seekers inside trucks crossing through the Channel Tunnel.

Many migrants from countries in Africa and the Middle East prefer Britain as an ideal destination because of its English language, fellow citizens already there, or because the job market is more favorable to them.

On the other side of Europe, multitudes of refugees flowing through the country of Belarus have been blocked by barricades placed by Poland between Poland and Belarus. The European Union has accused Alexander Lukashenko (leader of Belarus since1994) of an organized campaign to use migrants as a weapon. He appears to have encouraged migrants from crisis regions including Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq to fly to Belarus on tourist visas, then cross over into European countries. The migrants thus act as a threat against the countries who have criticized his rule.

Meanwhile, Mexico and the United States are the destination of refugees from Haiti and Central America, fleeing corruption and poverty, sometimes massing at border crossings. For years, American immigration policies have lacked responsible, humane goals and implementation.

Immigration done properly is a boon to developed nations. Immigrants are generally younger than the populations of receiving countries. They often revive economies with younger people and new workers. Massive flows, however, can be dangerous for the refugees and can strain the resources of countries they overflow.

Receiving democracies need co-ordinated immigration policies. Just as important are joint efforts to encourage more humane governments in sending countries to avoid massive outflows of their citizens.

Green Technology Race

“When it comes to climate change, the United States should compete, not cooperate, with its rival.” (Andrew S. Erickson, Gabriel Collins; “Competition With China Can Save the Planet,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2021)

The United States’ relations with China are among the most important in the world today. While the relationship is complicated, the authors suggest one area in which the U.S. should definitely compete, not cooperate.

The authors cite China’s commitment to coal technology, as seen by their continued building of coal-fired power plants. The authors believe that “cooperation” with China in the field of climate change would mean the U.S. would have to give up its own progress toward climate friendly energy generation.

Instead, they suggest, the U.S. should strengthen competition in green energy technology. “Carbon taxation now attracts serious attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and the world’s democracies are generally significantly ahead of China when it comes to both meaningfully pricing carbon and having the industrial energy-sourcing preconditions in place to make the transition to a future of net-zero carbon emissions viable.”

A race to find better energy technology? Much better than an arms race.

Cold War Nostalgia

Reading Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor, I was tempted to yearn for those Cold War days when friends and enemies and goals seemed more easily defined.

Macintyre’s recounting of a Soviet Union diplomat who spied for Britain during the Cold War is both fascinating and a bit nostalgic. We knew who our enemy was. In the United States, Democrats and Republicans actually cooperated for the good of the country.

Most important, World War III did not happen. Unlike the first half of the twentieth century, neither superpower desired a major war, though misunderstandings and challenges brought that war perilously close at times. The spy’s courage in passing information about our enemies may have contributed to this avoidance of a nuclear war.

Yet even while the glory days of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s played out, forces emerged to challenge our smugness. Racial sins haunted and divided us. Respect for our history too often turned into a worship of country. New role models challenged old ideas.

No need to yearn for the past. Struggles, temporarily hidden by those Cold War days, have emerged, requiring our attention, finally.

The problems we face today call for the same courage shown then by leaders of both parties: respect for those with whom we disagree; avoidance of self-serving propaganda; disregard for unfounded allegations spread today by social media.

We are all fallible human beings. No one of us has perfect truth. A respectful coming together with a bit of humility may overcome dangerous trends toward demagoguery.

Touching the Sore Spot

“No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores reacts strongly when someone has the courage to touch the sore and say, ‘You have to treat that. You have to eliminate that. Believe in Christ and be converted.’” (Oscar Romero, Quoted in Plough, Autumn 2021, “Daring to Follow the Call”)

Oscar Romero, a Roman Catholic archbishop, was a critic of armed groups in El Salvador and a spokesperson for the poor. He was assassinated in 1980 by an unknown assailant.

At the same time as I read of Romero, I was reading about bloody religious battles in 1500’s Europe over efforts to reform what had become an unbelievably corrupt religious system. Criticizing established institutions is not a job for the cowardly.

We Americans are like anyone else in our desire to be proud of our culture and our institutions. They are ours. They are us. We don’t enjoy seeing them criticized.

Yet no human institution is without error. To worship an institution or a country or a leader is not only idolatry. It also cuts off efforts to heal and overcome imperfections, to become, never perfect, but better and more useful.

Many sore spots are being touched today. If we are wise, we will not react with hatred or fear but with the ability to listen and change and heal. Perhaps even to love our neighbors as ourselves—including our critics.

Pledge of Allegiance in Saudi Arabia 1991

The first Gulf War, forgotten by most Americans by now, ended when Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein were pushed out of the small country of Kuwait in February,1991. U.S. President George H. W. Bush chose not to send U.S. forces further north into Iraq but to end the war with Kuwait’s liberation.

Saddam’s forces had taken over Kuwait in August, 1990. The reason for U.S. entry into this regional conflict was fear that Saddam would continue his southern march and send his troops into Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. The Iraqi dictator would end up controlling much of the world’s oil, as well as a country we considered an ally.

I had arrived at my first diplomatic posting in December, 1990, at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. push into Kuwait began a few weeks later. To say this time was an exciting introduction to working abroad in my chosen profession is an understatement.

No one knew the outcome, of course, when I arrived in Jeddah. Understandibly, Americans, Saudis, and other nationalities greeted our victory—after a short, anxious-ridden few weeks—with jubilation.

That spring, Americans working at the consulate gathered for a Memorial Day ceremony before the consulate flag. I don’t think I’ve ever joined with fellow Americans in a more heartfelt Pledge of Allegiance.

I think about that time in our quibbling over whether some meeting or other opens with the Pledge, or whether this person or that one is patriotic enough. I see such arguments as childish quibbling. Whether one does or does not say the Pledge should be a heartfelt personal choice. We are not, I hope, some dictatorship that requires mouthing loyalty oaths.

Evacuations from Harm’s Way

Following recent events in Afghanistan, I’m reminded of my own two departures from danger zones, as a U.S. Foreign Service officer. Mine were much less harrowing than the departures in Afghanistan.

Mentors for my orientation class in the Foreign Service told us we could expect at least one evacuation experience during our career.

Mine came in Algiers in 1993. Groups wishing to bring back a more fundamentalist government in Algeria began attacks against foreign interests. It seemed prudent to draw down embassy personnel. My job there as an economic reporting officer was deemed nonessential, and I was ordered to leave Algeria.

I flew out on a crowded commercial plane to Paris, where I spent an interesting afternoon and evening exploring the City of Light, attempting to make myself understood in very broken French. Eventually, I was reassigned to the U.S. consulate in Montreal, Canada.

My second exit, from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was a more serious affair. Americans in that country had been killed in attacks specifically targeting them, including one on a compound housing Americans. This followed the beginning of the second Gulf War in 2003. In this one, I managed to remain until my tour was up, then left by a commercial flight after being driven to nearby Bahrain.

Even this one, of course, never approached the danger level of the evacuations in Afghanistan.

I pray for those in danger, foreigners and Afghans. I pray that one day, the country may become a safer place, as well as free for women. I pray for God’s help in figuring out the complex world we live in. I pray for an appreciation of differences and respect for those with whom we disagree.

Syria and Dante’s Inferno

“. . . the Syrian conflict, with its bloodshed, destruction and human suffering, seemed immune to all our efforts to find a diplomatic solution.” (William Roebuck, “Raqqa’s Inferno: A Diplomat Reads Dante in Syria,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021.)

Such are the words of a weary U.S. diplomat, retiring after a 28-year career, on his last assignment to war-torn Syria, another country ripped apart by a dictator’s desire to hang on.

My own diplomatic career didn’t take me to places as devastated as he experienced. I was assigned to Saudi Arabia for two wars with Iraq and was in Algeria at the start of civil conflict, but I was never close to the terrible suffering recounted in Roebuck’s article. Nevertheless, I identify with the hopelessness of conflict which never seems to cease.

Lacking easy hookups to the internet, Roebuck caught up on his reading in off hours, including Dante’s classic Inferno. This is Dante’s literary picture of his imaginary journey through concentric rings of Hell.

Roebuck fits his daytime journeys into Syria’s destruction with his evening reading of Dante: “I had never seen anything like it—blocks and blocks where every single building had been hit. Slabs of concrete jutted out at wrong angles, like fractured limbs broken beyond any cast would ever repair. More concrete hung from blasted ceilings, dangling in a mesh of wrinkled steal rebar like insects caught in some horrific, oversized spider web.”

At night Roebuck returned to the Inferno. “Dante’s intense, bizarre, even grotesque imagery seemed to my mind to capture the depth of suffering and destruction in Syria.”

The situation in Syria is still bleak, but Roebuck took some comfort in the defeat in Syria of the Islamic radical group, ISIS, leading to a chance for recovery.

In the Inferno, Dante eventually makes his way out of the underworld, where he then notes a refreshing view of the stars. Roebuck compared that to evidences of life again in the broken towns of Syria: some refurbished schools, a bit of night life, families chatting on carpets outside their homes.

Small Patriotism

“What does it mean to be patriotic and should Christians even want to be?” Bonnie Kristian asks in “The Case for ‘Small’ Patriotism.” (Christianity Today, July/August 2021.)

Kristian identifies with the Anabaptist faith, a group traditionally placing their Christian call ahead of secular allegiance.

She asks: “What does it mean to be an American evangelical, to mark July 4 after January 6, when supporters of our former president—many of them professing evangelical Christians . . . overran the US Capitol in attempted sedition?”

She refuses such a patriotism that would support an “idolatrous civil religion.” Instead, she calls for a patriotism that doesn’t countenance conquest of others. It is more concerned for local communities and for foreigners than is the blustery nationalist kind.

Equating love of country with love of God is a dangerous heresy for Christians. Conquest and global power for Great Britain in the nineteenth century ended in two disastrous world wars in the twentieth.

Christians perform the role, first of carers, then of guardians. Caring includes rescuing the poor among us as well as welcoming refugees from destroyed countries. One generation’s poor refugees became the country’s future scientists and educators and leaders.

Christians also guard against pride misleading us to engage in wars having nothing to do with our survival.

Christian patriotism is an humble, watching patriotism, aware of how easily pride can become sin.

Killing Ourselves

It’s called the American sickness—the dissent into despair and addiction and suicide, recently chronicled by a couple of university professors:

“In the twentieth century, the United States led the way in reducing mortality rates and raising life expectancy,” they stated. “Now, the United States may be leading Western nations in the opposite direction.” (Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “The Epidemic of Despair,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020.)

This reversal especially affects the working class. “Marriage, churchgoing, and community,” hallmarks of this class, have all lessened. The authors single out “serial cohabitation,” the practice of men and women more frequently having children by different partners.

The authors fault the loss of good jobs as well as the lack of affordable health care. They call for practical measures like better regulation of the pharmaceutical industry and a more inclusive social safety net, as well as fair wages for the non technical workers.

However, notice the authors’ observation about the decreasing importance of “marriage, churchgoing, and community.”

An article by Charles E. Moore, Plough, Summer, 2016, suggests ways we have destroyed community:

“How would you go about destroying community, isolating people from one another and from a life shared with others?”

He quotes Howard Snyder (at the time Visiting Director, Manchester Wesley Research Center):

“Over thirty years ago Howard Snyder asked this question and offered the following strategies: fragment family life, move people away from the neighborhoods where they grew up, set people farther apart by giving them bigger houses and yards, and separate the places people work from where they live.

In other words, ‘partition off people’s lives into as many worlds as possible.’”

To facilitate the process, get everyone his or her own car. Replace meaningful communication with television. And finally, cut down on family size and fill people’s homes with things instead.

The result? A post-familial, disconnected culture where self is king, relationships are thin, and individuals fend for themselves.’”

Snyder’s words are harsh. Not all communities are healthy. Nevertheless, healing them is basic to overcoming today’s social isolation. In addition, the separations he talks about have grown with our addiction to social media.

Whatever solutions we develop for dealing with our social despair, building up families and communities must take the lead.

UnChristian Christian Nationalism

Peter Mommsen writes the following in an article in Plough (“Can Violence Be Good?” Summer 2021): “ ‘Christian nationalism’ is a conspicuous player in the political violence of the past few months, not least in the attack on the US Capitol. This movement combines exhibitionist public prayer and Jesus 2020 banners with strong elements of White supremacism and a readiness for lethal violence. . . . All this, it should go without saying, is not Christian . . ”

Plough is published by members of the Bruderhof community, self-identified as “an intentional Christian community . . a fellowship of families and singles, practicing radical discipleship in the spirit of the first church in Jerusalem. We gladly renounce private property and share everything in common.”

Similar views of white evangelicalism in American churches are expressed in sojo.net, a publication of a different kind of Christian organization. Sojourners identifies as an American Christian social justice organization. Here, Gina Cilberto writes of churches struggling against Christian nationalists: “Pastors across the country see them raging within congregations: beliefs that powerful, hidden, evil forces control human destinies.” (June 2021, “Can White Evangelicals Be Deprogramed from Trumpism?”)

Thus, the anger and hatred that produced the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are being condemned by concerned Christians of vastly different theological views and practices.

Their concern is justified. One sometimes gets the idea that Christian nationalists revere the United States as the new Jesus, to be worshiped as God himself. Criticism is blasphemy.

But nations, like humans, are sinners. To serve one as a god is to forget the Jesus who refused to worship “the kingdoms of the world.”

White Woman

Like a lot of white people, I have been affected by the George Floyd murder and its aftermath. Indeed, for several years many whites like myself have come to better understand the bitter harvest our country has endured due to racism.

One thing, however, remains true. I may sympathize with what people of color have suffered in my country. I may be sorry when I think of our history. However, when I go out the next day or even the next hour to the store or walk the streets, in most places I can forget about my color. I don’t carry in my skin the color that the person passing me in the street or serving me in the store will likely note.

Most of the time, I don’t think about my skin color or how it may affect those who deal with me.

Not so, the person of color who walks into a store or jogs or shows up for a job interview. Blacks can, I suppose, be themselves in some neighborhoods, often the poorer ones, or in their churches, or in a few other places.

Most of the time, however, people of color know they are noted because their skin is not white. They can rarely forget about their skin color when they leave home, as I can the knowledge of my skin color.

“Black lives matter” is stressed not because people of color matter more than others. It is stressed because their lives haven’t mattered like white lives.

The emphasis will no longer be needed the day we can all leave home without thinking about the color of our skin.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective