Black Lives Matter: The Witness of a White Man

This past weekend, I had the rare opportunity to visit the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina with my adult son, Sam.  It was idyllic.  We walked mountain trails, watched birds, rested on sunny rocks beside tumbling water, and took lots of photographs.  Some photos I’ve shared on FaceBook, others I wanted to share more today.  However, the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, and the events of this weekend demand that I write rather than post pictures.  

            Recently, Clemson University Professor J. Drew Lanham has posted heartfelt messages to FB friends expressing a whole range of his emotions —anger, grief, sorrow, fear, and frustration.  His very honest words have been emotional, thoughtful and powerful—and for me, heart rending. My first impulse was to ask him to change the privacy settings on his posts, so I and others could share them broadly.  But then, I thought differently: I shouldn’t be asking a suffering African-American man to share his intimate messages so I can re-post them.  As a privileged white man, I should be writing myself about the social injustice that so troubles my FB friend. I should be witness to the suffering that my family and I avoid simply because of the color of our skin.  These thoughts have led me to recall two experiences:  

When our son was young, I was camping as a leader with a group of Boy Scouts in a primitive campground in a National Park.  One evening after dark, we saw lights in the distance.   An eerie line of small bluish lights was winding its way toward us.  All of the lights were the same, and they looked to be about five to six feet off the ground.  We wondered aloud.  It turned out to be another group of Scouts and leaders each wearing a headband with an LED light attached—the first we had ever seen.  When the group arrived, we found out about the LEDs, and most of us laughed about the mysterious lights floating through the woods.  However, one Scout—one of two African-American boys in our troop–said quietly and seriously, “I thought it might be Ku Klux Klan.”  

The Scout in my story was a tough kid.  He played football in high school and college, and now he’s a running back in the NFL.  He was not normally timid or fearful, but that night he was, I think, quietly and bravely, terrified.  White terrorism of people of color has deep roots in America, and I believe this Boy Scout was living with the mental legacy of that terror.   

My second witness came to mind when I first learned of the recent and brutal shotgun murder of jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County Georgia:  

We were having timber cleared on our property to make way for pasture, and one of the loggers, a black man, asked if his son could come over the weekend and cut up some of the “trash” trees for firewood.  I said sure, have him come on.  This was a win-win situation, they needed firewood and I needed the land cleared.   However, that weekend no one came to cut.  A few days later I saw the logger and asked by his son didn’t come cut wood. He told me this frightening story: 

            The young man had come down a road near our place, seen a clear cut with downed trees and figured he was in the right location.  Pulling his truck in and parking, he began sawing.  Soon a white man who lived nearby, but did not own the land, showed up with a shotgun, and without accepting any explanation, held the young man at gunpoint while he called the sheriff.  This was a situation that could easily have ended in tragedy, just as with Ahmaud Arbery. Fortunately, when a deputy arrived all was sorted out.  Of course, on hearing this story, I apologized and asked that the young man return to our place to cut wood.  I offered to meet him at a nearby store and lead him to our clear-cut.  He never came.  

Later, while thinking about the incident, I became aware how unemotional and matter of fact the father had been when told me this story.  Had it been my son, I would have been furious.  Aline and I would have been on the telephone to the sheriff to ask why the man with the gun had not been arrested for threatening our son with a gun for such a trifling offense. We would probably have contacted a lawyer.  This father, however, simply told me the what had happened.  Likely, he held back some emotion because I was a white man.  Nevertheless, I think there was more.  He told the story as if his son’s situation was one to be expected.  I suspect that inside this man was enraged at what had happened, but he stuffed that rage down knowing that there was little chance of recourse for a poor black man and his son in rural in South Carolina.  

The concerns of black people for their livelihood and their very lives in American society is legitimate.  It is deeply-rooted in an ugly history of enslavement, lynching, segregation, and systemic racism.  In recent weeks it has spilled out in the blood of Ahmaud Arbery and the breath of George Floyd.  We desperately need conversations reconciling the differences that are literally killing us.  Moreover, I believe it is a responsibility of those of us who have benefited from white privilege to initiate and engage in these conversations.  We are the ones with the most to learn.  We must sit with our suffering friends, we must listen to their stories, we must examine ourselves, and we must bear witness to injustice.