By Sr. Margaret Magee, OSF
Sr. Margaret Magee is a member of FAN’s Board of Directors. The following is her contribution to a series of reflections submitted by Sisters in conjunction with St. Bonaventure University/BonaResponds Brothers and Sisters to All project.
How do we remain attentive to the ongoing need for racial justice and continue to educate ourselves and work to change our cultural attitudes of white privilege? The protests sparked by police violence have died down. The voices crying out that Black Lives Matter have become quiet. This happens too often. The outrage and cries of racial disparity become dimmed until the next painful injury or death. Are we addressing the painful silence of oppression and the collective memories that continue to hold a large portion of our American citizens in fear of racial stereotyping which leads to unjust treatment and death, as well as in conditions of poverty?
Yes, too often after violence periods everything calms down and life seems to return to “normal”. However, more and more there is a growing awareness that change must come. We must hear the voices that history has silenced. We must hear the stories of people enslaved, oppressed and made subservient in a country that proclaimed and still proclaims freedom, liberty and justice for all. If we refuse to hear these voices we become deaf and blind to the other forms of slavery, oppression, inequity and the abuse of human trafficking that continues today.
“Today, as in the past, slavery is rooted in a notion of the human person that allows him or her to be treated as an object… Whether by coercion, or deception, or by physical or psychological duress, human persons created in the image and likeness of God are deprived of their freedom, sold and reduced to being the property of others.” (Fratelli Tutti, 24)
Some months ago, CBS 60 Minutes aired a segment on the Clotilda Slave Ship which brought hundreds of enslaved Africans, human beings to be sold as merchandise and subjected to inhumane treatment. Let us listen and learn of the untold stories of American oppression and racism. Let our listening move us to work for an end to the injustice of racism and proclaim liberty and justice for all!