This past Sunday Reed was working, so I decided to plop down on the couch and watch a movie (for he rarely is up for watching anything.) Yes, I know, I have it rough. This particular Sunday I decided to watch For Colored Girls in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and the day many have off because of his steadfast, hard, loving, challenging work. I have read and own the choreopoem, the term as coined by the author Ntozake Shange, upon which the movie is based. We recently bought the movie from a local Salvation Army, but had yet to watch it. So, I thought this would be the perfect time.

But, I forgot how hard it was to read the choreopoem. I forgot how difficult it was to read about rape, abuse, murder, and racism, let alone see it in a film. As a white, middle-class U.S. American male, I too easily forget the horrors that are enacted upon black people, specifically black women on a daily basis in this country. Shame on me for forgetting. Shame on me for being complacent in the knowledge of my own racism and privilege, but forgetting to take the next step to enter into the real, everyday lives of those I claim to want better for. I can get so lost in the heady talk of racism and systemic oppression that I neglect to enter the story and empathize as best I know how as a gay, white male with those I fight for with my words.

Seminary introduced me to fabulous black authors that I continue to read and look to for unearthing my own prejudices and my own privilege. Alice Walker, Renita Weems, James Cone, Karen Baker-Fletcher, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes and Jacqueline Woodson are continuing to speak to me, to help me author a better, more Christ-like story, because I am convinced that Christ sits with the black teenage girl who is considered an abortion from the drunken coat-hangar lady down the street. I am convinced Christ sits with the black veteran who can find no one to hire him because his mind has been affected by the wars our country continues to wage in the fight for “freedom.” I am convinced that Christ raises a fist in protest with the black woman in her Master’s course at Seminary while she gets righteously angry about the racism that still persists at an institution that equips future leaders of the Church. And since I believe that Christ does not only write with words, but speaks with actions, so too must I do the same.

I pray that I may forget less the everyday atrocities inflicted upon black people in this country, upon Latino and Latina Americans, upon our Muslim brothers and sisters. I pray that I can be an active part of the change this country so desperately needs, both in word and deed. I pray that I can sit more patiently at the feet of black women and learn about my own privilege, my own racism, my own ways of being part of the death-dealing system. I pray I can be humble enough to admit it, to change it, to step out and speak up, because it will not change until we all change, and the least I can do is to change myself.