Lift Every Voice and Sing

Last weekend at the Shaw University graduation we sang, as always, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Fore some time now, I have been able to sing this song without checking the printed words. When I first began teaching at Shaw in 1994, it was a song with which I was only vaguely familiar. At our convocations and commencements, roughly three times a year, I got practice singing this James Weldon Johnson anthem.

The words of this song have inspired many writers in Black studies. Various phrases have become book titles, such as "Lift every voice" or "Stony the road we trod." Singing it as a white man in the midst of people of African descent has certainly stirred reflection on the different point of view my skin color and heritage casts on the lyrics. No line more consistently stands out to me as being sung with a different meaning by me and the person next to me than, "We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered." White or black in the U.S., the generations have trodden a bloody path, but the relationship to the bloodshed is not the same. That's part of singing this song for me.

Shaw University is the place I learned to sing this song and learn its significance. The 2010 commencement is the last time I will sing it together with my colleagues at Shaw. I pray that what I have learned will continue to grow in me as I move on in my pilgrimage.

I've been doing research on whiteness in relation to theology, and it has led me to a great deal of work being done in educational theory and practice, and of course in sociology. A few theologians have started to tackle the subject, and I'm trying to digest what they are saying. At the heart of Tracy West's discussion in Disruptive Christian Ethics, are three characteristics of white domination and white privilege in U. S. society: a sense of entitlement to social goods, a practice of denial of privilege or domination, and systemic social investment in white privilege. The latter comes in the form of distribution of various goods such as transportation, education, health care, etc., in ways that facilitate their use by whites in contrast to more difficult access to non-whites.

It is a fascinating discussion, and I am not completely sure where it will lead in my theological reflections. In the meantime, I am learning quite a bit.

One of my students, Marcus Croom, pointed me to another blog related to this topic. It is called "Stuff White People Like." Apparently it started in January and has taken off dramatically in popularity, to the point that the blogger already has a book deal.

I read it with some sheepishness and some relief. Certainly I found some of my likes in the list of things white people like. I also found I only matched a portion of the stereotype, closer to 50% than 90%. Take a look. "Whifolks" like me will have some hearty laughs and some uncomfortable ones, too.