The shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, earlier this summer has been deeply troubling to us and other people of faith in Anderson Township.
This act of racially motivated violence took us back to 1998 when a swastika was painted on the home of a Jewish family in our community. That act of hatred prompted 21 congregations to respond with a declaration that said, in part, that silence condones acts of hatred while action demonstrates our community’s desire to be welcoming. We believe that our churches and our community continue to be bound by that declaration.
Three months following the heinous shooting at Emanuel AME Church, racism continues to dominate the daily news. We who live in substantially white communities like Anderson Township may be comfortably insulated from racism – which makes it easier for us to be part of the problem.
We recently read a perspective that convicted us to the core and reminded us of why we cannot be silent, essentially condoning acts of hatred. “It’s not hard to fume at the thought of the killer of Mother Emanuel’s Nine,” Lisa Sharon Harper, senior director of mobilizing, wrote in the September/October issue of Sojourners magazine. “And it feels good to click ‘like’ and share posts calling for the removal of Confederate flags. But if we stop there, bias beats us. It is the unconscious biases of the masses that keep us from moving forward, not the explicit biases of the few.” Conversation around this sensitive and complicated issue of racism is not easy, but it is necessary.
In Anderson Township, a group of concerned individuals in our interfaith community, along with members of Greater Anderson Promotes Peace, have been meeting to dialogue about racism and how we can respond with action that transforms hatred into welcome. We are asking some questions:
•How can we, living in substantially white Anderson Township, become more aware of, informed about and sensitive to matters of racism?
•How do we get in touch with our unconscious biases?
•How can we better understand the concerns and experiences of people of color?
We are developing a program that we will offer to our community. Our first event, Oct. 6 at Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, 1950 Nagel Road, will be a film screening and discussion of the documentary “Slavery by Another Name,” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas A. Blackmon. The event, 6:30-9 p.m., is open to the public.
Our conversations and planning are ongoing, and we hope to continue talking and offering programs well into next year to grow our awareness and understanding of racism. In respect for those who died at Mother Emanuel Church and those who continue to suffer the oppression of racism each day, we simply cannot rest.
In Anderson Township we are attempting to do the hard work to repent of our bias and be people of action working toward a unified vision of what it means to be community, fostering the common good of all.