Almighty, hear our prayer.
Oh God, how we suffer. We your servants are ensnared in tragedy that doesn’t end. We can do nothing to make our tormentors stop their evil. We cannot convince them that we are your children and don’t deserve this punishment. We have tried everything we can to keep them from slaughtering us in the streets. They hide behind the state to justify killing us. They say we are scary, that they are afraid for their lives. They say this even when we have nothing in our hands but air. They say this even when they are armed with weapons meant to remove us from the face of the earth. They say this even when they must throw down guns to pretend that we intended to do them harm. They say this even when video proves they are lying through their teeth.
Oh God, we are near complete despair. How can we possibly change our fate? How can we possibly persuade our society that we deserve to be treated with decency and respect? How can we possibly fight a criminal justice system that has been designed to ensure our defeat? How can we possibly combat the blindness of white men and women who are so deeply invested in their own privilege that they cannot afford to see how we much we suffer?
But most of all, Oh God, how can we keep racism from strangling every bit of hope left in our bodies and minds? How can we arrest the blue plague and keep it from spreading to our children, and our children’s children? Oh God, I have already seen the tragic imprint of grief and suffering on my own children’s fates. I have seen how the poison of racism has tried to claim their bodies and minds from the time they were babies.
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Oh God, I pray for all children who have to endure the curse of bigotry. It is the most wretched feeling of helplessness when one’s children suffer that fate. My daughter Maisha was six years old the first time racism stole upon her. She had been invited to an ice skating party hosted by a dear childhood friend. Her friend’s parents had moved the family from the inner city to a Chicago suburb. Yes, Oh God, you moved them on up like Weezie and George Jefferson. Maisha was delighted to see her old schoolmate. She was equally excited to get a taste of the suburbs. The group of kids that attended the party spanned the black rainbow from pale vanilla to dark chocolate. A few of the girls decided to break away from the group and play a game on the ice. As they huddled in a circle, three white girls between the ages of six and ten approached them.
I know they’re your creatures, too, Lord, but sometimes white folk act like the Devil is all in them. The Holy Ghost is nowhere in the vicinity. Well on this occasion the white girls yelled at my daughter and her friends in unison, “Move, niggers!”
Lord, Maisha was stopped in her tracks. She squinted her little green eyes to make sure that she’d truly heard what she thought she heard. The oldest girl in Maisha’s circle demanded, “What did you just say?” And those lovely little minions, with no hesitation, with the kind of confidence that whiteness offers in spades, blurted out again, “Move, niggers!”
Maisha’s heart sank.
And then it started. The predictable questions that hate provokes, all the self-doubt that racism means to implant. Do we know them? What did we do to deserve that? Why did they call us that horrible name?
You made her, Oh Lord. You know that Maisha’s little mind drifted off into a faraway place. You know she sought to deflect the pain she felt. But she was snatched back into a crude reality. It was a hell of a way for her to be introduced to the ugliness and nastiness that racism unleashes. But there is never a good time to be hated because of a small and insignificant thing like the color of your skin. There is never a good time to know that for many white folk your blackness makes you Old Lucifer himself. There is never a good time to realize that your childhood is gone, that it has been rudely taken away by something as simple as a word, a stupid, nasty, filthy, little word. Nigger.
By that time the oldest black girl harked up a mouthful of spit. For the occasion it may as well have been holy water. Lord, it should have been regarded as Holy Communion. The saliva in her throat was transmuted from mere water to divine disgust. That blessed angel of a child planted her feet and then showered those white girls with her liquid resentment. I swear that may have been the biggest miracle since you turned water to wine.
I don’t usually approve of such displays of raw anger. I usually counsel taking the higher road. But I must confess, Oh Lord, that the lower road was just fine that day. Because that was the day precious little Maisha was forced to learn what race meant. That was the day she got an inkling that the world is ruined with tribal loyalties and caste systems and blood oaths pettier than any grudge that children might hold. This was different. This was lethal. The havoc that grownups wreak is always more costly. That episode wore on her for a long spell. But racism is nothing if not persistent and cyclical. It came back to my daughter again a couple of years later.
When she was eight years old, Maisha received a wonderful gift. She tagged along with a close family friend and her two daughters for a private tour of Disney World. Maisha was incredibly excited. It was her first time in Florida. She got a kick out of pronouncing the nearby town of Kissimmee because it contained the word “kiss.” After Maisha and her two little companions settled into their modest hotel in Kissimmee, they begged the girls’ mother to let them go downstairs to the pool immediately. It was a luxury they didn’t have back home; they were just grateful to be in a warm climate away from the chilly winds of Chicago.
The girls plunged into the deep end of the pool. They played mermaids. They played Marco Polo. They pretended to be water gymnasts.
The girls finally took a brief break from play and parked themselves on the pool stairs. Just then the cutest little girl swam their way. She had the biggest blue eyes and natural blonde hair. When she got a gander at Maisha and her two friends, the little girl exclaimed in a matter-of-fact tone, “Niggers.” The girls straightened their backs and screwed up their faces in disbelief. The little white girl stood up in disbelief too, perhaps amazed at the power of her single utterance to evoke such dramatic response. For a moment, they all froze. Maisha and her friends were in shock.