Okay, humor me with one more college story!

All four years at Colgate I lived in a special interest house. Colgate had several of them on and off-campus: Latin American, Peace, Vegetarian, Jewish Studies, to name a few. The one I lived in, the Harlem Renaissance Center (HRC), focused on African and African American art, history and culture. Each of these houses contained enormous cultural treasures.

But there was only one that came under regular, unrelenting attack every year. Harlem Renaissance Center.

At first I didn’t understand why in a university with numerous houses, why our intentional community around Black life was so threatening to white students. We even made enormous efforts to lessen the misperceptions so many Euro-students had.

But we were threatening! Chief among the threats-masked-as-accusations was that we were unwelcoming to non-Blacks, and separatists on a so-called integrated campus. Nothing was further from truth! At least a third of HRC’s residents were other students of color white students. Our collective counter-response that was never acknowledged was that white students and faculty needed to see the many ways they self-segregated on a regular basis as the majority populace. The crosshairs of white racism, cultural difference, and prejudice is a powerful deafening force, however. The proverbial sword of integration-talk between whites and HRC residents never cut both ways at Colgate (and probably still doesn’t). Whites at my alma mater never intended it to.

I could not help but think of this failing experience of “integrated” community as the furor over Rev. Wright’s “inflammatory and hateful” words and his connection to presidential hopeful Barack Obama have been beaten like a dead horse by the media. Thank God (I’ve been told) PBS aired a special on Black Theology! There’s so much about the Black experience in America that is either misunderstood or simply not known, even in 2008. And if one is not acquainted with such things as Black Theology, people like Rev. Wright can be summarily dismissed at a precise moment we need to hear.

Do you know why? I am going to go out on a limb and suggest there is really only one reason, founded on one supremely racist principle: the oppressing group arranges a complex system whereby all Others must know who their dominators are, but the oppressors never have to know who the Other is. Unless they choose to, and even then the relationship is laced with poisons of paternalism, imperialism and exploitation. It’s time for all of us to break this deafening cycle!

For such a Black Church Father as Rev. Wright to therefore speak from his location within the Black (Church) experience, afrocentrism, and Black Theology is doing the same at times painful, responsive call to white America I and other sisters and brothers did at Colgate. Is there anger? Yes. I don’t believe it’s possible to live in America as an African American (to name only one group!) and not struggle with the anger and rage racism inflicts upon our lives daily.

A point must also be made about cultural difference as well. Many of us, Black, white and otherwise, are largely ignorant to the role differences in cultural expression play in how we communicate. Often at Colgate white students bemoaned the fact that they couldn’t communicate well with African Americans about race because we “flap our arms and yell and get so upset.” To be sure, violent anger or rage never leads to anything productive.

But that’s not the same thing as an African-descended people who are passionate about everything we do.

Life has an indivisible whole we live and express in our total being at all times. When African Americans are angry about something, you will see it in our body language more than most ethnic groups. There’s nothing wrong with us. It is a difference from other cultural modes of expression. The solution is not for any of us to extricate parts of who we are to make others comfortable. The awesome task facing our nation is learning how to be a more authentic with each other, where we rise above fears, prejudice, and negative experiences of each other to deeper understandings—and, I hope, solidarity.

There’s so much more to say. I suppose I should try to say something profound about all this tying into Holy Week. The best I can come up with is pointing out that Jesus wanted us to become more like God by becoming more and more authentically human. He died to accomplish that mission. He left us with the Way. If we lack the ability across “races” to hear the radical trust in an Other’s expression of anger or rage, we risk having the Resurrection without the execution. That makes zero sense to me! None of us can get to authenticity – spiritually, politically, socially – without going through the gestation of things within and without that need to die. The Christ, as a faithful Jew, had to have heard the Song of Songs echo somewhere deep. Deep as death took him. Deep as Life claimed him.

Remember, therefore, the Song’s imperative: Love is strong as death. Death is inevitable and comes for all. But so is and does Life. It is our only Easter hope.

What do you think?