America Lost and Found

These five essays dramatically image the wonder, goodness, decency, and human promise of America. They also reveal the unfilled expectations of this democratic experiment. America promises the ideal of equality and justice. Yet we do not always manage to live out that value. We promise a classlessness of rich and poor, of learned and laborer, yet we sometimes experience dramatic inequities between the rich and poor, those who have no home or hope. We promise a color-blind society, where white and brown and yellow and black blend into one and yet we still segregate races in our urban ghettoes of inequity and our embarrassing salary differential between white Americans and Americans of color.

The answer to our segregation tendencies lies as much in the realm of fear as in racism. We have in our family eleven grandchildren, six are white and five are black or bi-racial. Jeremy’s story is that of my grandson. But it is also the story of my own exposure to the personal question of racial injustice. It is one matter to affirm integration, interracial marriage, and absolute equality of races as long as it is not a part of one’s own family. It is quite another matter when one’s first grandchild is bi-racial. Slowly I began to love Jeremy as part of my being, my life and my family. Now with the racial mix of grandchildren and in-laws, inter-racial feels wonderful and holy. When our family is together we have African American dialects and white Anglo Saxon speech. Now I experience pride and love as I reflect on our familial accomplishment. Color blindness ought not be an achievement but rather the metaphor to which we all should aspire.

So I hold Jeremy and Nate and Yasmine and Christopher and Maddie and celebrate their colorful countenances. I know as well that the real reason for interracial hostility is finally fear and a lack of intimacy. And my shame about my own discomfort is healed by the love of these wonderful grandchildren. As to my healing, it was largely their doing, their hugs, and smiles and love.
So my encouragement toward a cultural solution is not complicated. I think we learn to live together by being together. There is no other way to heal. That means we create living spaces for mixed races, we build schools and quotas of mixed races in those schools, risking friendship and acquaintance with persons of other races than our own. And slowly the color begins to rub off. We become strangely more colorful.

This spring I celebrated my 70th birthday. My wife and children gave me a surprise party. All our grandchildren were there and they added color and interest to the evening. And everyone who left our home that evening must have had a small twinge of new understanding and appreciation of color. For these children hung close to me, they hugged me, they sang with the others, they laughed at the fun made of their grandfather and they felt absolutely at home! That’s American, and that is our future if we are faithful to the promise of America.

Two honest last words: This business of being comfortable with other colors takes time, for all of us. But we do not need condemnation for our limitations but openness to the possibilities. And that happens only with mixed marriages and strong family support. These are not impossible healing virtues. They are at the heart of the Christian Gospel. We are all loved by a colorful creator.

Stephen A Schmidt, Editor