Louie Crew Clay, founder of Integrity, recently offered this reflection on white privilege
Raised with White Privilege
I was raised with white privilege deep behind the Cotton Curtain long before I knew there is a Cotton Curtain and before I ever looked in the mirror to see Jim Crow, even before I knew that people who loved me dearly could be, as I was, deadly wrong, deadly.
I occasionally have a ghoulish fantasy in which I have slipped into dementia and restored the racist tape implanted in my consciousness by the doctrine of white supremacy. I start using some of the phrases from that tape when the person closest to me in all the world tends me.
My husband is too loving to hold a demented man accountable should it ever happen, but sweet Jesus, please, please don’t ever let that happen!
I have walked many a mile playing “Ella’s Song” on ‘repeat.’ Now that I know it by heart, I invite you to join me and sing along with the performers (Sweet Honey in the Rock) until we are re-energized to reveal to those who do not yet know: Black lives matter. All share the same blood. The Eucharist is not just a symbol: it connects us with the whole company of heaven.
image: Louie Clay and his husband, Ernest