Why doesn't God do something?
Not just about terrorism and the capacity of human beings to destroy each other, but why doesn't God do something about the fact that it seems that only some lives matter when it comes to having compassion for those who suffer?
When the terrorists struck Boston, and all those people were injured and killed, there was an indignation, righteous indignation, that was justified. When terrorists hit Paris, there again was indignation and a surge of empathy and sympathy for the victims. Current GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have been on the warpath since the San Bernadino attacks, and now, since the attack in Brussels
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But on March 14, there was a terrorist attack in Ankara, Turkey, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people. Two Americans were among the dead who died in a terrorist attack in Istanbul, Turkey on March 19, and in January, Boko Haram attacked a village in Nigeria, killing at least 65 people, burning some of them alive. In April, 2014, a terrorist group killed 142 people in Kenya, mostly students.
Why don't the tears of people of color, and the pain of the people of color, earn as much attention, care, concern and outrage as do the tears of white people?
The international community wailed in horror after 12 employees of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, were murdered by terrorists. The whole world stood in solidarity with the French people, but for the Nigerian students, or for the people in Turkey and Kenya and Istanbul, there was nothing, no such solidarity.
Why doesn't the international community care about people of color? Why can't it feel the pain of little black and brown children, orphaned and stripped of security as their parents have been ripped out of their lives? Why is the salt of the tears and the blood of the wounds of people of color ...just not all that important?
I have not ever heard a politician or anyone, for that matter, call on law enforcement o patrol more heavily the neighborhoods of white people who have committed acts of terror against people of color. Remember Dylann Roof, the white teen who shot and killed black people at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in South Carolina, who was peacefully apprehended by police after his horrendous act and was even taken to a Burger King by police to get something to eat as he was being taken to the police station to be booked ...for multiple murders?
Or recall how the armed resisters in Oregon, refusing to get off federal property, were accommodated and waited upon by law enforcement officers to ...come to their senses? They were treated as humans; their pain and concern were treated as worthy of respect.
But when it comes to people of color, there is no such capacity to understand and appreciate their humanity. One woman, when I asked about the lack of concern about terrorist acts committed in African nations, said to me, acidly, "We can understand the French. Their lives are like ours. We don't relate to people in those other countries."
Her statement made me pause.
And then it made me go to God. "Why," I asked God, "did you create people of color, along with white people, demanding that we all love each other, when so many white people don't even have the desire to have compassion for the suffering and conditions of people of color?"
I got no answer.
Since the beginning of 2016, 241 cases of terrorism have been recorded, from all over the world, many in places where there live people of color. Our media, and the world media, have only given extensive coverage to places where the victims were primarily white people.
Many black people have wondered where God is in this whole sordid experience called racism, but some white people have wondered as well. Matt Tittle, a white Universal Universalist minister, wrote a sermon entitled, "Is God a White Racist?" (http://blog.chron.com/keepthefaith/files/legacy/Is_God_a_White_Racist.pdf) And the question was dealt with, of course, by the late William Jones in his book, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology.
Some people would say, categorically, that God is not a white racist; I have heard in some interviews of white supremacists, on the other hand, that God certainly is a God for white people, that God wants this world to be white.
There is the seed of the problem, it seems. We serve an almighty God...who seems to be if not powerless, then ambivalent, about the worth of the races He/She created.
If we have no real assurance that God cares about people of color, what do we do?
One thing is sure: the plight and suffering of people of color ...will continue to be tossed aside and forgotten.
And that is a problem.