I am optimistic because great strides have been made. Following the murder of Martin Luther King much has been done in the area of desegregation and the blatant violence of lynching. The overt racism of the past has subsided.
I remember going as a volunteer with Reverend Abernathy to Resurrection City in Washington at the time of the Poor Peoples' March after the death of Dr. King. A huge tent went up next to the Lincoln Monument. I lived there in those tents for a couple of days. It rained and it rained. I thought we would have to build an ark. Children were sick. There was not enough food. It was awful. I kept losing my sandals in the mud. It was like a swamp. We put down boards and they sunk into the mud, but I learned why God made mud. At night a group of men (who, we were told, were off duty police) taunted us, shouted obscenities, and threw canisters of tear gas. The tear gas cans were devoured by the mud. When I asked them to stop using bad language in front of the women and children "“ one of them said: "Priest, why aren't you with your own kind?" – I replied, "but I am." And I feel like that today. I am with brothers and sisters who hope for a better world where people will love and respect each other "“ a world where racism will be replaced by solidarity, and where Dr. King's dream will be a dream no longer, but a reality.
I believe that we truly love God only when we truly love our neighbor, made in His image and likeness. In Catholic social teaching, the antidote for racism is solidarity. Solidarity is an expression of the great commandment of love that invites us to form a community among people that will enable us to overcome the structures of sin and oppression. John Paul II insists that solidarity is not sentimentality, or a vague compassion or empathy for the suffering of so many. Rather, solidarity is a firm determination to commit oneself to the common good, that is, to say the good of all and of each individual "because we are all really responsible for all."
The virtue of solidarity is not only an antidote to racial tensions in our own country, but points the way to a program of development and world peace based on a "new model of the unity of the human race." In his message for World Peace Day, January 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II states: ""we can set forth one certain principle: There will be peace only to the extent that humanity as a whole rediscovers its fundamental call to be one family, a family in which the dignity and rights of individuals – whatever their status, race, or religion – are accepted as prior and superior to any kind of difference or distinction."
May God bless all of you for your work on behalf of social justice and racial harmony. [Part 4 of 4]
