What's for Lunch?

   More than twenty years ago, I found myself in a Pizza Hut at lunch time.  Ordinarily, I would not choose Pizza Hut for lunch, but, waiting for LensCrafters to finish my new glasses, I had first tried a Subway where several people stood at the counter while the sole worker complained loudly into a telephone that he was alone in the store, and there was no way he could do a special order. He was still complaining into the phone when I gave up and left. I was tired, hot and pregnant, and so hungry and dehydrated, I dragged myself to the first available alternative. Like a good Presbyterian, I figure there is a reason for everything, and I think I was driven to that Pizza Hut to observe a remarkable scene.

     Over my enormous pebbly plastic tumbler of ice water, I watched as two women entered the store and sat down together. They wore smart outfits which suggested they must work in an office, maybe an insurance broker’s, or a bank. The waitress who greeted them and took their orders was rather a raw-boned creature with bleached-blonde hair pulled back a little too tight from an angular face. She gave the ladies their drinks and brought their lunches. The two ate and headed back, I suppose, to the office.

     So what? Well, one of the office workers was white, and the other was black. The waitress looked the part of a redneck. And it was all perfectly ordinary. That was the remarkable part to me. Remarkable, because I was born in 1950, grew up in Florida and remember the lunch counter sit-ins of the Sixties. Black students, dedicated to non-violence and human dignity, sat at “white only” lunch counters in “five and dimes” in several cities and asked to be served. Occasionally, they were, but sometimes they sat all day.

     In 1963 came a low point of cruelty, a high point of courage, and a turning point in the movement. A mixed group of black and white sat at the lunch counter of the Jackson, Mississippi, Woolworth’s. Refused service, they stayed and waited. This group was soon pressed by a mob of young white yahoos with rolled sleeves and cigarettes. Not content with screaming insults, the young men began to anoint the sitters’ heads with sugar, ketchup, salt, mustard. This made the news. There’s a well-known photograph of the young heroes and their tormentors. I think this image made many people see the inhumanity of racism and the nobility of the movement inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. It had that effect on me. Thirty years later, I compared that tension to the ordinariness of the lunch scene in front of me. I called down a blessing on the brave pioneers and on these three women. How ordinary. And how splendid.

All God's Children Got Dancing Shoes

     People of different races can’t possibly understand each other’s lives, I’ve been told of late in discussions surrounding the George Zimmerman trial. You’re a racist! You’re illogical! How can we possibly be friends? Perhaps by being brothers and sisters.

     It’s thirteen years ago now, but our church held a hoedown in the sanctuary, disguised for the evening as a barn with pumpkins and hay bales. A professional caller taught us square-dance moves, line-dance steps and traditional reels. (I myself am hopeless at line dancing and get dizzy when swung.) Beaded belts and boots, silver collar tips and gingham dresses whirled about the floor.

     My friend Mariela, who comes from Colombia, had decorated her straw hat with bright flowers. I told her it reminded me of Minnie Pearl. Crystal, from Taiwan, got thumbs up for her plaid shirt and jeans. Claudio, a transplant from Chile, got teased for hailing from western South America. Rose, a tall, dark, elegant African in a denim shirt, danced with her French husband. He knew minimal English and didn’t understand the caller, so they often wound up in the wrong place, but always with big smiles on their faces.

     A teenage boy picked up one of the bandanna- bedecked toddlers and danced with her. During a reel, each pair of dancers raised their hands in an arch for the rest of the dancers to pass under. When two tiny girls took their turn, one of the big men got down on hands and knees to crawl through.

     The caller, the real thing in his tall hat and assertive belt buckle, took a break from explaining steps and teasing the square that somehow wound up with three sides to tell us a story. “Once upon a time, a bunch of wonderful people came to Pine Ridge Church. That’s it,” he said. We cheered.

     Later, I said to Rose, “You’ve experienced some real American culture tonight.”

     She replied, “I love it. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

     Soon I realized how much we both had said. Until the multiculturalists hacked America into hostile, competing groups, each asserting that our oppression is worse than your oppression, the United States was a place where everyone could share an ideal of constitutional government and equality before the law. We’ve had plenty of missteps and failures, sure, but most of us could be nudged toward fairness by an appeal to the ideal. That’s why the civil rights movement succeeded in spite of the dogs and fire hoses.

     The church also offers unity around an ideal. Our pastor points out that people were divided into separate tribes with different languages at Babel. Then they were reunited at Pentecost when the Spirit of God came to live within His people, and those who had come from afar heard the praise of God in their own languages. We’re all cousins, the Bible reminds us, and there is no room for racism in the family. By faith, we gather at the cross of Christ with absolute equality.

     As our society fragments, this message ought to be shouted from the rooftops. Here and there, people are living it. What do you say? Want to dance?

A King, a King, and a King

    So, on the one hand, we have the charming King Samir Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party proclaiming his abiding hatred for white people: “I hate the oppression of white people, I hate the murder and the rape and the torture and the taking away of our names, our culture, our God, our music and damn, I hate this cracker for everything he has done to us.” He tells us we should be glad he and his pals aren’t hanging white folks—“yet.” Thanks, your majesty. I’m sure your activities will make life better for everyone.

     On the other hand, after a demonstration of sign-waving by a cadre of five guys in sheets, people in Reidsville, NC, received invitations to a rally. “Free Admition (sic)-White People Only. No alcohol, drugs, fighting, glass bottles or weapons. Free on site camping-all major motels in area. Souvenirs. Vendors. Food and beverages for Sale. Cross lighting at dusk-a white unity event. Live country band. Security provided by LWK.” Souvenirs? Like, a hood with your name embroidered on it?

     Over the last couple of decades, the KKK became more and more a joke. While they used to hold tremendous power in the South and the Midwest (Really; look it up.), they became an anachronism that most people scorned. At the moment, the NBPP and the KKK may be equals in number and lunacy. I do wonder, though, whether the refusal of the current Justice Department to prosecute the Panthers for little things like voter intimidation might inspire more “white rage.” We had a dozen or so armed-compound, ready-for-the-race-war loons arrested recently near Orlando. Law enforcement has done pretty well at taking out the white crackpots. Not so well on the black crackpots. Oh, Mr. Holder, doesn’t equality mean, you know, holding everyone to the same standard? Just a thought.

     But, meanwhile, out here in everyday life, where people are earning a living, keeping their brains in gear, and not searing their souls to ashes, life is a whole lot better in the race department than it was when I was a kid. A couple weeks ago, I was on my way into an Olive Garden for lunch with the church ladies. On his way out was a tall black man dressed sharply in dark trousers, a vest, white dress shirt and dark tie. He held by the hand a little boy dressed exactly the same. The sight stopped me in my tracks. I put my hand on my chest like the old-fashioned old lady I somehow became without noticing, and I uttered something like “This is so cute, I can hardly stand it.” The proud dad smiled.

     So what’s the big deal? In my younger days, that charming man and his charming son would not have been allowed into Olive Garden. If they could buy food there, it would be through the “colored window.” As a girl, I watched TV news reports of the lunch counter sit-ins. Brave, principled, self-controlled young black people walked into drugstores and sat down at the soda fountain/lunch counter. (Is there such a thing any more?) White clerks quickly set up “lunch counter closed” signs. Sometimes, white yahoos screamed at the sitters from behind, squeezed ketchup onto their heads and dropped cigarette ashes into their hair. Nevertheless, they kept the faith, kept calm and kept coming back. And guess what: they won. Jim Crow laws are gone.

     Another restaurant scene left me happy, relieved and hopeful. In walked two women, one black, one white, together. They were dressed like office workers. After they sat down, the waitress came to take their orders. Pardon my stereotyping, but she looked the part of a redneck—bleached blonde pony tail pulled tight, the face rather pinched looking. A generation ago, women like her screamed at school buses. On this day, she took a black woman’s order without a ripple and brought her the food she asked for. To this one-time observer of “white” and “colored” water fountains, the scene was momentous, precisely because it had become ordinary. The Klan couldn’t prevent it, and the Panthers can’t take any credit for it. Thank Martin Luther King, Jr., and all sorts of people of good will who listened when called to uphold the principles of our founding. And thank the God who endows all with inalienable rights. That is the way.