I want to be sure my readers don't miss this essay by Rev. Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D., the Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. This is the Blackest Church in Memphis and Shelby County. He’s also the founder of #UPTheVote901, a nonpartisan voter empowerment initiative committed to producing political power and increasing voter turnout in Memphis and Shelby County.
His essay begins:
This is not about crime. This is about control.
The proposed deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis is not a response to public safety. It’s a political stunt engineered by a twice-impeached, multi-indicted president exploiting Black suffering and white fear to reclaim political relevance.
It’s a charade rooted in fearmongering, cloaked in the rhetoric of “law and order” but animated by the same authoritarian impulse that called troops to Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. and cages to the border for immigrants. And Memphis, yet again, finds itself on the night shift of American injustice.
I found the following to be a powerful and compelling message under the heading “We’ve been here before:”
In my sermon this past Sunday, I reminded my congregation that some of the most liberating work has always been done during the night shift. My mother — Claudia Mae Fisher — worked the literal night shift for decades on a bridge in Michigan. And in the spiritual and political sense, we are on the night shift right now. Just like Jesus encountering the man born blind in John 9, we are being asked who is to blame. But I contend the better question is: What is God trying to reveal through this misfortune?
As I said in that sermon, we are not called to applaud political stunts or submit to scare tactics. We are called to do the work of liberation—day or night, with or without military presence.
We are not blind. We see what’s happening.
This is the comment I posted:
The chart below is (from the official (now Dept. of War website, though still shown as Defense Department). It shows the ethnicity of National Guard members (click to enlarge).
I don’t know how many members of the Tennessee National Guard aren’t White. It is likely that the national average approximates the percentage. This hardly matters. We can assume that the figure is somewhere near a third. It is possible that for economic reasons more non-Whites join than the national average but this is just speculation. Again, this hardly matters.
Whether or not RawStory decided to use the photo they did is also open to speculation. They are a progressive publication so I wouldn’t be surprised it they decided to highlight the presence of Black soldiers in the photo. It was taken in Los Angeles. They chose it from all the other photos of Naitonal Guard in L.A. and in D.C.
Of course it is likely that some minority group soldiers approve of their assignment. I do not want to single out members of minority groups as being the only ones either appalled over what they are being ordered to do, or having less intense negative feelings about it.. I am sure many White soldiers also think they are being ordered to do something that goes against their beliefs and values.
This is from the website “The Root:”
It is true that the actual Confederate Army did have a few Black soldiers. This is from
The myth of black Confederates is arguably the most controversial subject of the Civil War. Over the past four years, the debate over whether or not blacks fought for the Confederacy has been the most discussed topic on Civil War Memory, a popular website attracting teachers and scholars from around the world, and the Atlantic Monthly and The Root have devoted several articles to it.
You can read more essays by Rev. Fisher here.
…
