What Columbus' expedition bequeathed was a genocidal impulse in the culture in relation to people of color. Today, as a result of this, I as an African-American mother, and we in the African-American community, are facing serious questions. Will our black American children be allowed to live tomorrow? Will their children be allowed to live?
For the first time in the history of this country, a state has legalized its support of eugenics -- that ugly "science" advocating the elimination of birth "defects" through scientific procedures. The state of Maryland has legally declared that abortion may happen "at any time during the woman's pregnancy if the fetus is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality."
For generations in America, the mainline culture has considered "blackness" as bad and defective. Hate groups, dedicated to the elimination of black Americans and the establishment of a "master" (non-black, non-Jewish) white race, have increased to more than 200 organizations.
The current debate in many national locations over the drug Norplant has genocidal overtones. This drug comes in capsule form. It is implanted in women's arms and emits contraceptives slowly into the women's system for approximately five years. One Philadelphia newspaper urged its readers to consider Norplant a weapon against black poverty. The article does not suggest the use of Norplant as a weapon against white poverty. Hence I ask: In the work of interpreting the Maryland law, can black skin be defined as a birth defect and therefore validate the extermination of black babies? Who will decide what is defective?
NOTING SOME OF THE genocidal signs of the times, we must ask, What can our black community do to ward off what looks like pending destruction for our community through the destruction of our children?
There are signs of hope. For instance, some black medical doctors, administrators, and leaders are in serious dialogue about the possibility of starting a health insurance plan that would be affordable for the masses of black people. On June 13, 1991, U.S. News and World Report ran a front-page report about this health care dialogue among blacks. This means that black people could have some voice in determining the kind of death-preventing information the black community would receive as part of the plan.
In other sectors of the black community, qualified people are creating educational structures to counter some of the intellectual and psychological damage public school experience has done to black children. A case in point is Carter's School After School Tutoring Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Its founder, Gladys W. Carter, herself a retired schoolteacher, works along with other qualified black women in the center to begin preparing black children to achieve intellectually and to gain confidence in their ability to achieve their goals in life. And black churches are feverishly working to counteract the effect of the drug culture upon young black people.
As I see it, this kairos moment, this moment of truth regarding possible genocide of African Americans, poses several kinds of questions for the Christian church in general. First is the theological question: Can this religion, through its emphasis upon a suffering and innocent crucified Christ, have followers who are blind to the suffering and death of genocide victims?
Then there is the ethical question: Can the church's emphasis upon a love ethic be honest enough to extend justice, care, and life commitment to oppressed people of color? And, finally, there is the economic question: Can the Christian church (mainline and otherwise) put its financial, educational, and spiritual resources to work on behalf of those black human beings who live with a "moment of truth" that forecasts undeserved suffering and death?
Delores S. Williams was assistant professor of theology and culture at Drew University Divinity School in Madison, New Jersey when this article appeared.
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