Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 5c)

Note: Probably, you should go back and read at least parts 5a and 5b before reading this one.

Now, we arrive at the problem.

Everything probably -- okay, not "probably," let's say "might have" -- would have been okay if I had just kept the kids out of sight, but, after youth group, I would open up the gym to the kids and let them play basketball. Or whatever. But, you know, basketball. Because it was always basketball. Sometimes mixed with skating. Don't ask. The gym was directly across from the chapel, which was where the adults met on Wednesday nights (the sanctuary, where Sunday service was held, was in the other building). So, basically, I flaunted my youth group in front of the adults. Not that that was the intent, because the intent was to let the kids have some time having fun.

Let me make one thing clear: At this point, the problem wasn't just the black kids; it was almost all of the kids. 90% of my group were kids from low-income or lower middle class families. They weren't the demographic the church leadership wanted. And it was just the kids, meaning that they didn't bring tithing parents along with them. However, it was the black kids that stood out. And, to make things more complicated, they couldn't tell me they didn't like what I was doing because how would that sound? So the message I was receiving was, repeatedly, "Great job! Keep it up!" And I did, because, well, I was young and naive and trusted them.

All of this took place over a few years, and there were other things going on that affected the eventual outcome, but it's way too much to try to cover, so I'll give you the basics:

1. While I was in high school, we (the church) had begun a Spanish mission church. They met on Sunday mornings in the chapel while the main church happened in the sanctuary. The pastor of the Spanish mission was part of the church staff, and his daughter (one of them) was in youth group with me. What I failed to see as a teenager was that having the Spanish mission kept Hispanics segregated from the main church. There was never any overlap or joint activities between the two groups.

2. During the time I was acting as the youth director (because they wouldn't call me "pastor," but that's another story entirely), the church opted to start -- I don't remember what they called it, but it wasn't "African American" -- another mission a few blocks away, one for blacks. They hired a black pastor with the intent of paying him until the church could stand on its own. This, of course, pulled the black kids I had in my group out of it, and they set up a separate night for the mission to use the gym. I think it was Thursdays, the point being that it was a night when the church was not normally in use by any white people. Effectively, they eliminated any "black element" from Wednesday nights. And, actually, from Sundays, because there had been the occasional black visitors on Sunday mornings as the black population around the church grew. They couldn't legitimately just turn them away, so they gave them somewhere else to go and patted their own backs while doing it.

3. Because the "core" church membership was in such a decline, they began to have talks about what to do about that and how to grow the church. Of course, what they wanted was to return it to the state it had been in in the late 60s/early 70s: 1500 white, middle class members including lots of families with children. They had started trying various tactics meant to spur that kind of growth in the mid to late 80s, including hiring a pastor who was supposed to be an appealing preacher, but, despite their efforts -- because they didn't make any substantive changes -- the membership had continued to dwindle. By the early 90s, they were beginning to worry about sustaining the money as the older, rich members died off and ceased to tithe. It's always about the money.

Which brings us close to the end.

As the leadership saw it [I should point out that I was not considered leadership because I was not, technically, on staff. To be on staff and go to staff meetings, you had to be salaried, and they wouldn't do that with me (again, long unrelated story). However, my mother was on staff (church cook and all), so I got to know everything that went on during these meetings. The other leadership was the deacons: old, rich, white dudes one and all.], at the end of it all, the church had two options:
1. Merge with the church that originally planted my church more than 75 years prior. That this even came up as an option should tell you something, but it did come up as an option, and that church pushed for it, because it, can you guess, wanted our money.
2. Open the church to neighborhood surrounding it, which would include absorbing the black mission that we had planted, at this point, somewhere around two years before. That this was spoken of in those terms should also tell you something. "Open the church to the surrounding neighborhood."

"Open the church to the surrounding neighborhood." This all makes me sick and mad just to think about it. I mean, that this ever even had to be a consideration is... wrong. And the debate, as it came down to it, especially among the deacons, was that they would have to share leadership with "those people." And "those people" couldn't be trusted. And won't we lose all of our members if we let "those people" into our church.

And I wanted to scream, "What members?" At this point, it was normal to have less than 200 in the congregation on Sunday mornings, and 30 of those were my teenagers!

Believe it or not, this all resulted in what can only be called a final showdown. Which I'll tell you all about next week.

Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 4)

Probably, you should go back and read part 3 of this series before going on. The two are somewhat related.

As I said last time, the reason my mother gave me for not allowing me to invite my black friend to church was that "it wasn't a good idea." At the time, I couldn't really figure that out. We were told every Sunday in Sunday school that we should invite our friends to church with us and, the very first time I wanted to do that, I was told it wasn't a good idea.

Needless to say, it was a long time before I ever wanted to invite anyone to church with me again. A really long time.

So let's jump ahead to high school. And I'll try to keep only to the relevant data.

My church employed a number of janitors; they were all black. The building superintendent was white, but all the guys that worked for him were black. Also, my mom was the cook at my church, and all of the help they ever hired for her was... I'll say non-white. I'll also say that, as part of the "paid help," my family, as with the building super, was barely passable, and that's just because we were white. The non-white employees didn't actually attend my church, and the janitors (because we still called them janitors, at the time) were specifically forbidden from entering the sanctuary during services. They could only come in to do the clean-up afterward.

I didn't know about all of this until later, but it all has to do with why it wasn't a "good idea" for me to invite my friend.

One morning, I was walking with the guy who was in charge of the bus ministry. He was helping a little, old lady from the "gym side" of the church to the "sanctuary side" of the church. When I say "little, old," I mean it, too. She was at least in her 80s, unable to walk without assistance, and what you would call wizened. Without any of the wisdom that came with it. As we entered the connecting hallway (the church was laid out in a large U), one of the janitors was leaning against the wall near the intersection. He was supposed to be doing this. They were stationed at what were considered the rear doors so they could open them for people (and to keep out "undesirables" (seriously)).

I liked this guy, and I wish I could remember his name. He was taller than me (not surprising), in his early 20s, had a big smile, and laughed easily. By this point, I was already working at my church, so, sometimes, when I was doing work in the gym area and he was around, we would joke and stuff. Plus, he played basketball with my brother who was only in the 10-12 year old range, at the time, and he treated him like a person, not a kid.

So... there he was, leaning against the wall, as the three of us came out of the other hallway. I went to say hi, the bus guy went to say hi, the old lady... She didn't let us say hi, because she -- pardon the language, but there's really no other way to say this with the same meaning -- lost her shit. Right there. She started screaming that there was a "nigger in the church!" She had a cane, and she, this lady who could barely walk, raised it and tried to go after him screaming about the "nigger" the whole time.

I think my brain froze up, because I just stood there not knowing what to do or how to respond. Evidently, the bus guy had dealt with this kind of thing before, because he just guided the old lady around the corner and off down the hallway while looking back over his shoulder and mouthing an apology. In what I'm sure she thought was a whisper, the old lady was saying, "Did you see that? There's a black person in my church!"

And the janitor? He just shrugged and waved it off. He even chuckled about it. But I stood there, mortified. I hadn't done anything, but I went over and apologized. It was the first time I felt, well, shame at being who I was. Because I was white. I felt soiled just from having walked down the hall with the old lady, not to mention that I had helped her off the bus and into the building. I wanted to go wash my hands. But he said it wasn't a big deal and not to worry about it. It wasn't me, and she was old, and it didn't matter.

To some extent, he was right. I mean, it wasn't me and she was old, but I couldn't get behind the part where it didn't matter. I thought it did matter. I mean, we were in church! What kind of person acts like that to begin with, but what kind of person acts like that at church? Which made me wonder what she'd been like when she was younger and that kind of behavior and been acceptable. And not just acceptable but expected. And I got all sick feeling again and ashamed of being white.

And that's when I understood why my mother had told me that it wouldn't be a good idea for me to bring my friend to church. I never came to a conclusion, though, as to whether it wasn't a good idea because she was concerned for my friend or if she was concerned about any potential labels that might have gotten attached to me or our family over it. After all, "nigger lover" was still a pretty common term in those days.