White polos - Hmm.
Remember when it became common for companies to go 'casual'? At first it meant just on Fridays. Then, for a number of companies, it moved on right through the week. Most often it meant that men could wear polo shirts rather than ties and suit coats. Since I'm not a woman, I'm not sure what women were allowed to wear. For this blog though, I'm caught up with the image of white polos - informal wear - acceptable wear - everyday wear. Some weeks ago, I read a piece on the new clothing of the white supremacists - the KKK moving to everyday-wear - the Nativists attempting to fit into the mainstream. Hmm. I thought it was a timely move.
It is, according to blogs and Facebook pages I read, just fine to be and out and out white supremacist and yet hide it under the white-polo-shirt lives that seem to love the revival of the Klanish voices and actions that are alive and well among us. When I hear those voices, I wonder if these folks either suffer from amnesia or they love the power one feels when they can blame people of color for all that is wrong in their world. I might even add that some do not even suffer from amnesia. It is worse - they were never taught nor did not pay attention to the layers of history that were part of the oppressive foundation of our country. Even worse, in my estimation, are those who now will not listen to the stories beneath the lives they are so quick to critique and even condemn. It is as though the only stories that matter are the ones of white-polo-shirt folks who somehow have convinced themselves that they are the victims within our society because of what those folks have done.
I'm in the midst of a book about how those wonderful folks of the blossoming Nazi party in Germany turned to the United States to get their ideas straight about how to divide and conquer - which eventually led to divide and destroy - which eventually led to deaf ears to the power of death under the Reich. Yes, German lawyers found it helpful to investigate how the USA was able and willing to build such a powerful wall of us v them. The impact of Jim Crow laws were of keen interest. Yet, the way we implemented those laws were considered too harsh. Yes, I just wrote too harsh. How in the world could blossoming Nazis think Jim Crow as too harsh!? Yet, the holocaust hucksters - the mainline oven-stokers - decided they could not follow our lead to the letter of the law. What would people think if such laws were put in place???
White polo shirts are a sign of how the repulsiveness of Jim Crow - a repulsiveness that even the Nazis would not consider - is becoming more and more a part of the voice of bitterness in the USA. Remember, that many of those southern statues that white folks are crowing avert are from the Jim Crow years well after the civil war (I wonder why). But more and more today that voice is covered up by everyday, acceptable wear. It is covered up by the lives of those (sometimes even those voices very close to us) who have somehow taken themselves to be victims of hardships because of those people unlike us. It is covered up by folks who claim to know or work or live near them - even - many of them. Just listen to what is said or written whenever there are stories about urban crime or action by Black Lives Matter or taking a knee during the National Anthem. The spirit of Jim Crow can be seen flying around in the sky above us - like a stealth bird. The words of blame resound like an approaching and frightening storm. Calls for the rule of law abound - but only as they apply to the acts and words of those folk. Ah, white polo shirts start showing up trying to say they need to make America Great Again.
Don't buy it. That Again simply means live in accordance to a world that consists of the utter separation and condemnation of those who are not as white as our polo shirts. That separation - negation - denigration has become so ordinary among so many of us in the USA that we seem to wear it like a metaphorical pin that reads: Making America Proud Again. But proud means??? It cannot be referring to America -the land of the free and the home of the brave. I don't want to be proud of a de facto apartheid system that simply puts on a fresh polo shirt in an attempt to allow separate but equal stealthily fly beneath the radar. I don't want to be a part of the sacred violence of a culture that will not - or cannot - acknowledge the cruelty of our historic and prevailing actions and attitudes. Or a culture that makes endless excuses for our white polo shirt lives that will make our attacks on people of color somehow sound valid. Oh, it is amazing how we like to make our involvement in our cultural sacred violence valid. It is as though we must build walls or else they will somehow outnumber us. Oh my.
Finally, this all hits me so hard because too often white supremacist is white polo shirts are the voices and actions of 'good' Christians who us the name of Jesus just like those white polo shirts. It is used to cover up the insidious fear that betrays the word of the cross - the solidarity with all people - even unto death. I wonder if those blossoming Nazi lawyers - looking for a way to rid themselves of the Jews - were looking for a Christian way to do what they wanted to do (they were, you know, good Lutherans and Catholics). And, they found a possible answer in a place that re-branded Christianity as the power to separate and eliminate. Remember, the KKK does not burn crosses. They say they light those crosses so that the light of Christ will shine. As threatening as those burning crosses became to black Americans - the normalcy of white polo shirts continues to be a part of the clear and present danger to Americans of color - all Americans. There is no light within the darkness of white supremacy - for the Christ - the truly human one - does not cry about being a victim. Therefore, we do not cry in our beer. Instead, we stand with and live with and walk with and cry with and bleed with the victims of the violence of clean-cut white polo shirt folks who are all around us.
One daily practice - some might call it daily prayer - may be to hold up a white polo shirt (or its gender equivalent) and purposefully put it aside as a reminder of what we will not become. That devotional refusal to take part in the sacred violence of the culture may help us begin to become a part of the real light of the Christ - now and forever.
TRRR
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