apercu - noun - (French) - comment of brief reference that makes an illuminating point (Google).
If you consider yourself to be a Christian, this week holds profound significance for you as it marks the savior Jesus's journey from life to death to life again. Easter Sunday motivates believers, particularly Protestants who tend to be remiss, to attend church as it is considered the holiest day of the year. Since I appreciate the institution, I will make an appearance on select Sundays in addition to Easter Sunday. Usually, I roll out of bed at 10 a.m. and make it to my community Presbyterian church by 10:45, with just enough time to take a gander at the congregation and be reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King's apercu regarding segregation, "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, the same hour when many are standing to sing, "In Christ There is No East or West." Why? Because in my church, there isn't a black or chocolate or yellow face in the mix. Ironically in a land that includes "united" in its name, Christian churches and their schools are bastions of separatism. Which is tragic since lack of education and voluntary segregation is at the root of racism, an evil that needs to be eradicated once and for all.
Forget the church for a second. Why do we segregate ourselves on the basis of color? I am sure an edified psychologist could provide pages as to why; but personally, I think we do it because it is safe, comfortable. Simply put, we feel more at ease flocking with birds of the same feather. Former First Lady Michelle Obama in her memoir Becoming admits to having a need for her black friends when she attended Princeton, a predominantly male, white university in the 1980s. Being a student of color there "was jarring and uncomfortable...like being dropped into a strange new terrarium, a habitat that hadn't been built for me" (72). During the same decade when I taught English at a Catholic girls' high school, the minority population of which being at fifty percent, voluntary segregation was blatantly obvious in the cafeteria at lunch. The black girls sat on the left side, whereas the white girls sat on the right. An outsider looking in would unjustly assume the nuns had a role in the division when it was the girls themselves doing the parceling out by race. As someone who has always detested the idea of racism and has found inclusion in diverse groups, I was livid at the discovery and asked one of my classes for an explanation. For lack of a more pertinent reason, they conquered, "We don't like the same kind of music," as if music were a universally accepted, divisive culprit. Needless to say, as a professor singer, that answer further exacerbated the heat of my exasperation. Of course, what the naive neophytes were really saying was that they had little in common and that maybe it would be too much work to find out that they actually did.
Which is essentially the problem. Most of us are too comfortable with comfort. Most of us would rather stay put in our segregated churches and schools because it takes effort (and a bit of courage) to find other institutions that pride themselves on diversity. It takes effort to get to know people of different backgrounds. It takes effort to see that beneath the surface there is sameness, that we are all human beings with similar needs and desires.
Hey, Christians out there. Be an authentic disciple this Holy Week and try to do a bit of reaching out. On Easter Sunday, if you belong to a white church, go to a black church. Or if you attend a black church, go to a white church. Make it a point to integrate voluntarily. You'll find that there is little difference in the religious services conducted because we worship the same God. Okay, maybe the hymns might sound a bit different, but the lyrics will be thematically identical. Or just find a church that includes a patchwork of colors in its congregation, a quilt of unity based on love. For love knows no boundaries and is always the solution. An apercu that MLK Jr. knew for a fact.
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