Blog of Q's

New Orleans: The Light Ahead
by Gerald L. Campbell

Watching Hurricane Katrina inflict savagery on the City of New Orleans — seeing images of Black Americans and the Forgotten Poor unable to escape the mounting tragedy — it has become all too clear that the spiritual energy nurtured amidst the cruelty of our nation’s beginning must once again become the fountainhead of inspiration for the building of a new America. From that abundant spiritual source — linked as it is to a profound human tragedy — a new generation of ‘hearts and minds’ must be nurtured. They must become inspired by a revolutionary insight, namely, that the material poverty of the poor and the spiritual poverty of the wealthy are causally and dialectically interrelated.

Spiritual indifference — no matter its origins — lies at the core of all forms of poverty. Spiritual indifference must be healed if poverty — whether material or spiritual — is to be alleviated.

This simple insight is troubling — albeit more to some than to others. It implicates each of us without distinction. Its range transcends race, and social and material status. It strikes a chord of transcendent truth. But it reveals an uncomfortable truth that implicates us all. And, it sounds a warning that a great human drama is about to begin in America.

There should be no doubt: America stands face to face with a time of reckoning. Katrina has forced upon the American people the need for momentous decisions. Collectively, we have seen beneath the thin veneer of civilization. Spiritual energies are being unleashed. Like it or not, we are about to become engaged in an heroic struggle. And out of these labors destiny is calling us to forge a new birth of freedom, made more secure in the warm embrace of mercy and reconciliation.

Economic freedom is inadequate. Economic freedom must be weaved into a common fabric and made whole by the spiritual sinews of solidarity. Americans must come to realize that individuals can only be free when all are free. They must realize that economic freedom and personal freedom are not identical. Only as dignity and freedom radiates through the spiritual life of each individual can America be true to its promise. Only then can America truly become, as John Quincy Adams said, the “beacon on the summit of the mountain to which all the inhabitants of the Earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light – a light of admonition to the rulers of men, and a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed.”

In 1963, on the one hundred anniversary of the publication of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew. It was entitled My Dungeon Shook.

When I first read this letter, many, many years ago, I reacted with a jolt that continues to inspire even today. It set in motion what was to become for me a long evolving reassessment of America. I began to question the assumptions of my upbringing on an Indian reservation. I began to inquire more deeply the course and purpose of my life. And slowly, I began to question the nature of that spiritual imprint America would leave on the future of freedom and the dignity of the human person. Above all, it shaped in me an ongoing concern whether America was doing all it could to realize the promise of freedom and dignity for all. Such concern has shaped my adult life.

Over the years, I’ve had occasion to mentor many young black males. Each was engaged in some phrase of struggle with the myriad of issues young black males face in America. One such person was twenty three years old when we met. An unmarried father of three, he’d taken many shortcuts in life and paid a high price. But he was also a sensitive young man who wanted to be a writer and make a difference to others.

I offered to help him with a reading/writing program. My guess was he’d discover creativity to be a powerful antidote to spiritual alienation. The first piece I asked him to read and discuss was Baldwin’s letter to his nephew.

Immediately upon receiving the letter, he sat down. I watched as he began to read, sentence by inspiring sentence. It was easy to see that each description, each metaphor, each subtly of logic was a link to his own past. He kept shaking his head, nodding in approval, radiating intensity, displaying sadness, sometimes laughing. Every once in awhile he would raise his eyebrows and mutter: “That’s deep!”

The question this letter posed nearly a half century ago remains relevant and unresolved today. Should the process of integration in America be predicated on the white man’s materialism (power, wealth, and reputation) or the spirituality that was nurtured by the black man in the crucible of slavery? The choice, as Baldwin posed it, is about contradictions. The choice we make will determine whether America is free or not.

A half century later, Baldwin’s words ring more loudly than ever. Baldwin saw that the white man in America was not free. He was imprisoned in a history he fails to understand. Until he is set free from his worldly assumptions, the black man can never become free. At most, he will become a parody of the white man. And so, Baldwin cautioned the black community that it is their fate to love the white man. Only through the healing power of love can the white man be released from his bondage. Only then — when the white man becomes spiritually free — will the black man become spiritually liberated and freed from material poverty. The black man remains enslaved in poverty today because the white man is not yet spiritually free. Poverty is a measure of spiritual alienation.

These words could not be more poignant. Nor could they be more instructive for our times. The forces of materialism — and its attendant quests for power, wealth, and reputation — shape our daily lives, leaving in its wake the soul-destroying tyranny of spiritual emptiness and alienation. Only as there is unleashed a profound spiritual reconciliation between the white man and the black man will America acquire the requisite spiritual energy to become what America can be.

Conversely, the white man’s only hope for true freedom lies in the love of the black man for him. America is the stage on which this awe-inspiring drama is being played. Amidst the mysteries and healing power of love and mercy, the destinies of the white man and the black, the poor and the wealthy, are intertwined. It is a drama inspired by the Gospel’s call to “love thy neighbor.” Thus, freedom in America hangs in the balance. The question of “whose foundation for integration” remains a viable question. Without love and mercy, individual freedom will perish. Without the spirituality of the black man, mercy and the rewards of the spirit will not prevail in America.

I believe My Dungeon Shook is one of the most profound pieces of literature for our times. I feel a deep sorrow knowing that its spiritual relevance has not been substantially diminished this past half century. If anything, life in America is now more difficult for the black man than it was yesterday. The insidious intent that too often lurks behind the smiles of well-wishers — the fixation on the idea of equality and freedom, not its existential reality; the concern with standards of living not the quality of human relationships — these dynamics lead to a profound spiritual alienation that destroys rather than reconciles and uplifts human lives.

As for the white man, Baldwin would say he remains imprisoned as ever before. He remains insensitive to his own need for spirituality. Yet his pursuit of material gain and power is responsible for an enormous and ongoing human tragedy. Nonetheless, Baldwin would caution the black man to love the white man. He must do so in order to transform the white man and free him of his obsession with materialism. Freedom predicated on materialism is an illusion rooted in a contradiction. If the white man does not become free of his materialism, the black man will never become free. Both will remain enslaved. That is the nature of our common bond in America today. The dignity and freedom of the human person must blossom, but it can only do so through mercy and reconciliation. To reconcile America’s hidden wound is the greatest challenge that confronts the future of freedom.

It is my profound conviction that if we lose the black man — if the black man becomes just another variant of the white man, an economic success story — we will lose both freedom and the promise of America. The fate of the white man, of America, and of freedom itself is suffused with the fate of the black man. Should the spiritual energies of the black man not emerge incarnate in our national life — should we continue to waste away in boundless utilitarian and hedonistic excess — America will slowly join the ranks of those many hapless nations that have gone before. Having squandered its destiny for “a better fate”, America will soon become trivial and inconsequential before history, freedom, and God.