Back in the kitchen, a smaller family, the Black family prepares the food. They also serve at the table, and clean up when the meal is over.
The years pass, and eventually the Black Family is given a table in the corner of the dining room--kind of like the kid's table if you will. They still do most of meal prep and clean up work, and most of the serving at the White Table, but they also have a table of their own where they enjoy the food that is leftover after the White Family is served.
More years pass, and eventually there is only one Table, and members of the Black Family are allowed to sit at there. Both family members are involved in the service, meal prep, and clean up (though still more of the Black Family even though there are fewer of them). It seems more fair. The Black Family sits at the same table, eats the same food, shares in the same communal gratitude.
But.
It's still the White Family's table. The White Family still decides the menu and determines the background music that plays. They dominate the conversation topics. It's one thing to be able to sit at the table. It's quite another for the table to belong to you. The way things are now, everybody is comfortable (or so it is assumed). But the White family would be uncomfortable if the Black family started picking the menu. They would feel very uncomfortable if they became outnumbered by the Black family, if the Black family started insisting on telling a lot of the stories and choosing the music. The Blacks are more than welcome. . .as long the Whites still call the shots.
He who has ears, let him hear.
I originally wanted to call this post: "What the White Supremacists Get Right." But that title was just too inflammatory and I didn't have the guts. But the thing is, that tiny minority of out-and-out, loud and proud racists understands something that most white people sidestep: The White family is losing control of the table. Most white people just pretend not to notice that they hold the reigns of American society, hoping that they can keep that grip without admitting they have it. But the KKK types speak aloud what this country has long believed: This is our table. If you sit at it, you sit as our guests (and frankly, they would have preferred that those that are not members of the family not sit at the table, because they correctly guessed that sooner or later they're going to want to change up the menu). They understand that this nation wasn't created for anyone else but them. Black people were brought here as slaves and if they aren't going to serve in that capacity then they shouldn't be here.
It's pretty awful. It's repugnant to even write it. But, if you take a hard-nosed look you have to concede that the intention of the founding fathers was not to create a nation of different races all equal to each other.
But. .. thank God, that's not what the founders said. Blinded by their own prejudice it never occurred to them to specify what they meant when they said "All Men are Created Equal." They didn't articulate who exactly "We the People of these United States" were. They thought it was well, self-evident. Without intending to, they stumbled on to a deeper self-evident truth--one that others in this nation: women and people of color would soon latch on to. That a black man is a Man. That Men can mean women too. And ever since then, this country has been waged in an epic struggle to realize the truer, transcendent meaning of those words, to claim the promise of America as their own. The idea of America, not so much the actual place, captured the imagination of the world. I'll just say it: America the nation is kind of a mess. America the idea is amazing (I will unpack this dichotomy further in my next post)
Of course that means sharing the table. The white supremacists don't want that. Their mentality is tribal, zero sum. They believe our gain must be their loss. That's where they are wrong--deeply wrong. They believe that loss of control of the table, the inability to dictate the flavors and the stories that get passed around will be a catastrophe. A table where others call the shots, must surely be worse. They picture the dining room in shambles, food on the wall and what's on the plate, unpalatable. They fear a table where you can't be sure who is Black and who is White. The way things are--the way things were back then, is better they believe. (Forgetting whose been making that food all along whose been keeping the table organized, who originally wrote some of that background music). But they are wrong. In time (and it's still a ways off I think--white people still make up more than 60% of the U.S. population) the United States will no longer be a "white country." And we'll be okay. We'll learn to like new foods, new music, and we will learn new stories.
Oh, and for those who say, yeah, when we all get to heaven. Isn't it interesting that we just kind of assume whose table that will look like?
Are we sure about that? What if heaven looked more like this:
Would you still want to eat at that Welcome Table? I hope so.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
--Langston Hughes, "I, Too"
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