The System Counts on Your Exhaustion (or Your ADD)

“Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.  But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20:5-6)

My father was a plaintiff in a landmark civil rights case in Arkansas 25 years ago.

I always give people a minute to absorb that. Most of my friends have never seen my dad. He was a bit of a recluse, really all my life but definitely after the case. But in case you are looking at me and wondering, yes, he was a white man. And yes, he filed a racial discrimination suit. He was, as far as we could determine, the first person in Arkansas to file racial discrimination… due to association.

Now, if that sounds like filing a lawsuit because you have a black friend, that’s because it pretty much is. In my Dad’s case, he filed it because he hired two of the first African Americans to work in non-menial positions (i.e. they were salesmen and warehouse management instead of janitors) in the company’s history.  Shortly after he hired the salesman, he became the target of bizarre and ridiculous expectations that could not possibly be met. He went to see a lawyer who advised him to copy everything he could before he got fired (though the lawyer was not convinced the company would be so stupid as to actually fire him – it was 1995 after all). My dad followed his advice. And because he did, he had significant proof of discrimination.

My dad filed the lawsuit with the intention of making a company he loved change and become a more just place to work. Discrimination is wrong, and they needed to change. We supported my dad. We were all in for the fight.

We were all incredibly naïve.

I am not going to go into details of the case. That is for another day and another story. I am going to spoil the ending, though (somewhat). After three years of fighting to get into court, three years in which my brother and I lived with the assumption that we were constantly being followed by private investigators so we had to be stellar citizens (and my dad was fired on the second day of my brother’s freshman year of college – no fair to him), three years in which my dad’s physical health deteriorated, in which he struggled with depression and caused my mom deep stress and worry, three years in which I was often the primary breadwinner of the family making $7.75 an hour, three years in which my family got tangled up in the two government shutdowns of the Clinton era and then found ourselves impacted by the breaking of the Clinton scandal involving Monica Lewinsky, after all those three years we finally made it to trial. And after 4 days of testimony, including 11 hours of testimony from my dad, the other side came to my dad.

They came to him, and told him he had beat them. They told him he had won. And they told him that they would spend years burying him in appeals. And they knew the state of his health. It had been part of the testimony. So their goal would be to kill him. They told him that.

And then his side, his own lawyers, who had fought for three years, also told him that they wanted to be paid in full. Now. Dad owed them over 100K.

Dad, facing those realities, weighed the settlement offer. He knew enough about the company to know that it would be enough that they would have to answer to their shareholders. Dad really was never primarily focused on the money. He never intended to be set for life, which is a good thing, because he wasn’t. But he felt like he had made these abuses public record. And people would ask questions. So he took the settlement.

And a few things changed. But not the sweeping change we had all hoped for.

I learned a great deal in those three years. First, I learned what racial discrimination felt like, and I also learned that I will NEVER understand what it is like to be an African American in this country. I have just a tiny insight into the reality of racism because of my family’s experience, but all during that time we also freely drove around without fear of being pulled over. We also had a pretty significant safety net under us due in large part to generations who had benefited from white privilege. We could afford the fight. Kind of.

But I also came to understand the reality of systemic racism. The system fights hard to keep things as they are. The system will even take out one of its own to preserve the status quo. Without hesitation. And as many resources as we have as beneficiaries of the system, the system itself has so much more. And it will use those resources to distract you.  Or it will use those resources to exhaust you. Or, as George Floyd certainly knows, it will use those resources to kill you.   

As we settle into the second month past the death of George Floyd, I still see posts on social media. I know a number of groups that continue to gather to discuss Black Lives Matter. Cities continue to move toward removing Confederate statues. All of these are powerful and significant moments in our culture.

How long will it last?

Take it from someone who has tried to fight the system. The roots of this reality are deep.

I opened this blog with a quote from the Ten Commandments. We don’t often discuss that explanation of idolatry. It makes us uncomfortable, because it describes an unjust God. It also makes our very individualistic country uncomfortable because we (especially those of us who benefit from the system in large and small and infinite ways) believe we should stand on our own merits and not have to pay for something someone else did. But our fight for justice changed how I view those verses. I don’t see them so much as God visiting retribution on us, though it does feel that way. I see them as an announcement of how things will be. When we build systems that idolize certain images of God over others, when we do not see the fullness of the imago dei in everyone in the world, when we build statues to white supremacists and glorify one human image over the image of God (and why no one is calling this out as idolatry is beyond me – it is a clear violation of the SECOND COMMANDMENT!), then we will pay for that sin. We will all pay for that sin. And we will pay for it for generations. But if we built a world of mercy and justice, if we honored who our God actually is and built a world around that image, then peace. Peace. The loyalty of God – for us! For a thousand generations.

So keep up the fight. We have generations of fighting to do. And don’t let the system fool you. Stay the course. And if we all do this together, we will unfurl the hate.

But stay the course. There are many obstacles yet to come.