A Deep Sadness

President Donald Trump recently posted
a video showing former President Obama
and his wife as apes, and he withdrew
this video only after considerable protest
but not without many approving responses.

Intense anger was my initial response
to this ugly, cruel, racist, offensive
depiction of the former president
and first lady. But underlying this anger
is another emotion.

That other emotion is a deep sadness 
about the 400 year history of racial oppression
in this nation, a history that the current president
and many others are trying to deny and
cover up and pretend it never happened.

This history is a powerful reservoir of
unmitigated suffering and sorrow that 
exists beneath all attempts to deny it.
And that suffering and sorrow fuels the
present trauma we now endure.

At the core of this suffering and sorrow
is the relentless effort to deny the 
humanity of people who those in power want
to banish from our common life together—
mainly people of color.

That’s the first move in this effort to banish— 
dehumanize people in order to justify
their mistreatment, abuse, and suffering
and every ruthless action to separate them 
from the whiteness of a mythically pure society.

My response to this reality is sadness—
deep, soul-searching, relentless sadness.
And so I pray to God, confessing: Dear God,
I believe you, too, are saddened to see this,
and, you, too are moved to sorrow.

Enlist me, I ask, in your ceaseless effort
to redeem this terrible and tragic quest
for racial purity so that we may all
join together in a diverse community of
compassion and mutual respect for one another.