A Seat At The Table

People are always talking about getting a seat at the table.  It is a phrase that denotes that one wants to be invited to participate in decisions of power, whether it be in the corporate world, political world or in society in general.  But we need to think about what that phrase really means “A seat at the table.”  Let me ask you one very important question.  Whose table is it that you want a seat at?  When you talk about getting a seat at the table you are automatically acknowledging that you have no power, you have to be invited by those who have the power to participate in decisions that affect how you live your life.  When that is the nature of things, you have already lost your opportunity to affect change because the power is still in the hands of those who allowed your presence.  Think about what I said.  You came as a supplicant to ask for something, you were “allowed” to take a seat at the table by those in power, you did not come to the table as an equal.  By virtue of the fact that those in power responded to your demand to be at the table, they exerted their power and influence over you.  

So now I am going to explain why we can no longer ask for a seat at the table.  We can not ask for a seat at the table because that table has been built on the backs of enslaved Africans with wood that those same African slaves carried, with nails that the white slave masters asked small African slave boys to fetch.  That table is the table of White power that has continued to exist from the days of slavery, through the Black Codes, Jim Crow, Segragation, Redlining, and all the systemic vestiges of racism ingrained in the wood of that table.  So don’t talk to me about a seat at your table, I do not want to sit at that table built with the blood, sweat, and tears of my ancestors.  No that is not what I want. If you truly are interested in my equality with you and having the opportunities that you as a white American have by virtue of your skin tone, then you will help me demolish that table and build a new one;  A table where we can both sit as equals in the shared power of our new creation.  I don’t want a seat at “YOUR” table, I want you to help me build “OUR” table where you and I can sit as equal partners and create the future together.   

It is natural to react in fear when we hear slogans like “Defund The Police” because as human beings we are agents of control.  We seek to control our environment, to control our circumstances, to eliminate those things that threaten us and to arrange our lives to our benefit.  But we are living in an age that is challenging that control.  We are living in an age that demands we relinquish some of that control and seek new ways to exist so that all of us can share in the bounties that some of us have always had but others are still looking to claim.  America is a great country, it is unique in the world.  We have existed as a republican form of democracy for 244 years.  America is the longest living democracy in the world.  But when the people formed this “more perfect union” Africans were enslaved on these very shores. Many of those signing that pivotal document owned enslaved people.  Many of the founders built their “table” without ever envisioning that African Americans would ever be allowed to sit there.  Oh some of us will get close to the table, those of us who were lighter-skinned and attractive enough to be trained to serve that table, to pass the sumptuous dishes of which the honored guests would partake.  But most of us would never see that table, we would be relegated to the back-breaking labor of the fields with no hope of improving our situation and challenged to be content with the scraps that the masters of the table chose to provide.  It would be another 89 years before African Americans would be freed from the fields and the service of the “Table”  but even in our freedom, we were not granted a place at that table.  We were not embraced and brought in, we were freed and cast out.  In the sweetness of freedom, like the small book in Revelations which was sweet in the mouth but soured in the stomach, we found the bitterness of being abandoned to make our own way in a world that did not see our equality and sometimes not even our humanity.  

The event of the civil war in America was unique in the annals of modern history.  Civil wars usually turned one part of a country against another and its conclusion usually resulted in either a change in the state of the country (if the challenging side won) or a return to the state of the country that existed before the war.  America did not follow this pattern, we departed from the historical norm.  In our civil war, we did not break the status quo or return to it.  We did both. But the one thing that makes this war unique is that the people whose future and well-being was the impetus and reason for this war were not the victors.  The civil war freed the slaves but it did not overthrow an oppressive government or place an oppressed populace in power.  Instead, it preserved the established government and repaired the cracks in the “table”  that the war had made.  

For a period of time after the war, things did change.  During the occupation of the South by the  Northern armies,  the freed slaves began to participate fully in their self-determination.  They were elected to the United States Congress, served in state legislatures, and held local office.  In 1877 a compromise was reached to settle the disputed presidential election of 1876. Southern Democrats agreed to give the Presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes in return for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the granting of home rule.  The force that guaranteed the rights of freed African Americans to participate fully in their future would leave once the Southern states rewrote their Constitutions to recognize the citizenship and voting rights of African American men.  The Southern states fervently agreed to this compromise handing the presidency to Hayes in return for the right to rule without interference.  They pledged to recognize the civil and political equality of blacks in order to get out from under the weight of the Union Armies, a pledge they had no intentions of honoring once the troops had left.  In fact, they did just the opposite and established the Black Codes and ultimately Jim Crow Segregation across the South and so ended a period of political self-determination for freed African Americans. 

History missed its opportunity to move in a new direction in 1877, political expediency won out over justice, and the fledgling equality that would have shaped a new America died.  And so history marched on leaving African Americans behind.  The white population of the south continued to progress and gain wealth while the freed slaves continued as second-class citizens to be exploited by white landowners in an economy that treated them as slaves without the shackles.  Sharecropping and tenant farming allowed white landowners to take advantage of black labor while receiving the lion's share of the production.  Black codes which restricted the activities of Blacks and criminalized trivial offenses and imposed incarceration allowed the southern states to re-enslave blacks through the prisons creating an entirely new slave population. 

We could continue to talk about the additional actions that continued to hold people of color back from the economic promises of the American dream, the black codes, segregation, redlining, the school-to-prison pipeline, the disparity of the legal system against citizens of color as opposed to white citizens, the wealth gap between citizens of color and white citizens and many more things that I am sure could be enumerated.  But the point of this writing is to explore the premise of “The Table” and where we should wish to sit.  I put it to you that we as people of color can not sit at the table we have, the table that is stained with our blood, sweat, and tears.  That table is built with the wood of suffering and the nails of pain that are the embodiment of our American past. This is the table that must be smashed into kindling and thrown into the fire.  We must build a new table using the hands of people of all colors, built of the wood of Peace, held together with the glue of Unity, strengthened with the nails of integrity and compassion, using the hammer of Justice.  It must be a table with room for all peoples so that we may share in the bounty and the promise of America that our forefathers envisioned, the America that Frederick Douglas spoke about, an America that Martin Luther King Jr. saw where his children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.   

We stand at the crossroad of what we can be, we can take a moment as human beings created by God to look into the face of what we have been, the mistakes we have made, and the sins of our past, to seek forgiveness and reconciliation and then turn towards our future.  To turn together as a nation and a people towards the true promise of America embodied in our Declaration of Independence and this time understanding that those words promising life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all created equal in the eyes of our Creator truly mean everyone regardless of color, sexual identity, orientation, religion or national origin.