By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
“History is what people make of the forever-gone past, out of surviving documents and artifacts, human recall, and such items as photographs, films, and sound recordings. Indeed, history is created by the application of human thought and imagination to what’s left behind,” per the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Most recently, President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14151, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” was signed on the first day of his second term. Two months later, National Public Radio’s Sandhya Dirks, a national correspondent at their race and identity desk filed the report – “Scholars say Trump administration is trying to erase America’s non-white history.” Her guests spoke about things like painting over Washington D.C.’s Black Lives Matter mural to temporarily scrubbing the stories of Navajo Code Talkers in World War II from federal websites. “Scholars and activists say stories of nonwhite history, even recent history, are being erased at rapid speed.”
She shared, “The Department of Defense, for example, has been scrubbing websites for images and articles they equate with diversity, equity and inclusion. A page about the military career of baseball great Jackie Robinson was erased and then restored after pushback, as a few others have been.” Another of her guest’s, Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, says “many pages and pictures, like the Arlington National Cemetery’s website, are just gone.” He asks, “If you take away pictures of women, of Black heroes, of Asians, of Native Americans, of Latinos, then who’s left?”
We have seen endless reports over the past several years of state legislatures trying to pass educational gag order bills – Critical Race Theory, DEI, structural racism, and actual book bans. We turned to a local faith leader, pastor of the historic Farish Street Missionary Baptist Church, Reverend Eric D. Williams, for a deeper understanding, perspective, and guidance.
He began by highlighting what is going on now, is nothing new, and that the written history that exists today does not tell the whole story of America, and that the supplemental materials that help tell a more complete story are being outlawed – “an overt push to say certain materials are outlawed. The goal is to delegitimize the truth and rewrite and retell America’s history from a different perspective – leaving certain people out. An honest person will attempt to tell the story from the widest perspective possible. If you are not fair, then you have the deletion of people who should be included.”
He asked how you can possibly tell the history of America without telling of the genocide of Native Americans, or the atrocities that the church visited upon those Native Americans to attempt to Christianize them, or how you can tell a true history of America without telling the story of enslaved African Americans? “If you erase those people or take them out of the story then you have to ask yourself if you have a complete history? What is incumbent upon us as Christians is to tell the whole story.” Citing the monarchy of Israel, “when you read Kings and Chronicles – it tells the same story, from a different perspective, both are there, and in Kings you are going to read some things about King David that you are not going to see in Chronicles. They approach the same history from different perspectives, and both are part of the Biblical text and are relevant.”
He emphasized that what we now see is the deletion of marginalized people or other people within the whole group, thereby only offering one perspective – not the whole story – and the story that remains is juxtaposed with the truth – the realities of peoples lived experiences – and therefore incomplete. “What it also says is that you are placing value on what is important to those people. They are saying ‘I get to tell your story, you don’t get to tell your story.’ Your perspective is not valued.”
And what guidance does he offer in these chaotic times, when some in high positions behave as if they are God, dictating their version of truth upon the masses, is as simple as it is profound: “spend the time telling your children your story and from your perspective – don’t wait for others to tell it. Remember that our faith is in our story.”
“I hope to help people see and discover faith in their story. Ask yourself, what is your ultimate concern? Therein lies your faith. Who is Jesus Christ to us? If Jesus Christ is my model for Christian living, then we need to find out – does Jesus negate the poor? Does Jesus push people to the margins? Would Jesus take away Medicaid? When certain people write history, and they take other people out of the story, that says you have some concerns about your ego – how you think about yourself and even your perception of yourself. Is my perception of myself based on such false narratives that I have to destroy everybody else’s narrative?”
In terms of a charge for the faithful, he makes that simple too. “Spend time telling your children your story, and always remind your children, like my grandmother did for me, this is what God has done for us.” He also suggests a full reading of Chapter 6 of Deuteronomy, with special emphasis on 6:20-21.
Most sources define white nationalism as a belief, theory, or doctrine that white people are inherently superior to people from all other racial and ethnic groups. Let us pray and remain faithful that God will bring us out of these selfish and hate-filled times. Learn more about Farish Street Missionary Baptist Church at https://www.farishstreetbc.org.
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