How sweet it isn’t

I may not understand race, but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on pancake syrup.

And rice.

Let me tell ya, from where I sit it feels like we’ve been given a serious, nation-wide wedgie. All of a sudden we became very aware of something we’d been pretty doggone comfortable with, taken for granted, not given a second thought. One minute we’re busy social distancing and then next we’re picking our Fruit of the Looms out of our collective psychic backside, wondering “What the heck brought that on?”

Of course, it’s mostly us white folks doing the wondering. As if seeing a white man’s knee slowly squeeze the life out of a black body wasn’t enough to put sound and face to a gruesome reality that our day to day experience doesn’t reflect or share. A reality we’ve chosen to ignore or simply not chosen to see.

That’s where breakfast comes in.

Let’s be clear about it, though I think its safe to say most folks would have assumed it, I didn’t grow up in a household populated by servants … still don’t. When I was a kid, either Mom served up the family breakfast or we made it ourselves. Still, we could look over to the box of pancake mix on the shelf or the jug of fake maple syrup on the table and momentarily fancy ourselves, not as Minnesota pig farmers we were, but genteel Dixiecrat planters doted upon by a coterie of loyal, loving retainers so grateful for their rescue from darkest Africa that Aunt Jemima couldn’t wait to bake our pancakes and Uncle Ben was just a-rarin’ to boil our rice.

It would seem a bit of harmless fantasy, a passing moment of “Gone with the Wind” inspired romance – 30 seconds of being Rhett Butler before heading out to do the chores. But it’s not a fantasy all Americans are going to share. As fantasies go, it’s pretty much limited to folks like us, people who bear at least a skin-deep semblance to Rhett or Scarlet, not folks whose family photo’s may resemble the images on those boxes and bottles – smiling servants, ever so grateful to bring massa breakfast. The folks working in the kitchen, not the folks seated at the table.

And isn’t that what we’re really talking about here? Having a seat at the table?

A place at the table -- to break bread sitting shoulder to shoulder -- is a powerful cultural symbol. For Christians, a place at the table of the Eucharist is the ultimate symbol of our equal value in the eyes of the Lord. It was for good reason that segregated lunch counters and other places of public accommodation were among the first targets in the 1960’s struggles for freedom and equality. To be equal was to be seated at the table. What was leftover, servants ate in the kitchen.

So I think it’s probably fair to say that when when you and I as white folks and when the black family living just down the block look at that syrup bottle we’re likely seeing different things.

And its fair to say that we’ve been seeing a lot of things differently, and for a long time. And there are reasons for that. And it’s past due for us all to take the time and make the effort to begin to see and understand what’s behind all that and to see and understand what we need to do to make some long, long overdue changes.

Maybe starting on the breakfast table.