The end of #6, Part 1 of “For Racial Healing” described the interchanges that caused the fourth and final lunch and discussion between Dr. James H. Cone and me during the summer of 2013 to conclude unsatisfactorily. Over time, I came to believe that Cone was speaking not just to me, but to a broader audience; however, at lunch, I simply couldn’t and didn’t recognize that process, which I have decided was my shortcoming. Relatedly, this attempt at a one-to-one relationship to address racial healing had crumbled before me as a result of my own defensiveness and lack of understanding, flexibility, and perspective. It would take several months before I tried again to reach racial healing with Sheila Walker, consistent with the context and protocol I have suggested in this series of “For Racial Healing”.
Cone’s words seemed to be framed with anger and often targeted at me personally, and afterwards, the moment had proved baffling. Before that episode, I had been encouraged by the nature and quality of our discussions. After all, there was much we shared: two men from south Arkansas, for example, who made New York City our home for most of our adult lives. We both also committed ourselves to racial matters with my participation only partially as significant as his life’s work, highly celebrated in many parts of the theological and racial liberation worlds. Cone’s contributions had been one continuous testimony for Black liberation, supported by polymathic knowledge of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, as observed through the lens of this expert who believed that much of the Christian message had been seized by European and American white values and attitudes that facilitated racism and Black subjugation.
Here was a man, true to his word, as demonstrated not by his writings alone, but also by his time and dedication to students regarding a number of subjects we examined over the summer of 2013. I believe our goodwill about the issue of race passed a test soon after we met for the first time. Still, he may have had questions about how I scored. One could suspect that Dr. Cone may have asked himself a question or two: how deep did the commitment by this Johnson fellow run to the racial struggle? Or is Johnson just interested in getting more information for another article? Maybe, these or other possible concerns crossed Dr. Cone’s mind.
I would later characterize the luncheon conversations with Dr. Cone as advances we took together into our own version of authentic passion. Notwithstanding the unanswered questions he may have posed to himself about my motivations, I think he trusted me. His favorable views about my long article I provided to him on the Elaine Race Massacre, published by a national literary journal, and my biography which he additionally and verbally extracted were probably reassuring to Dr. Cone to stymie any lingering concerns about my credibility.
After a long time ruminating over that rapid dissolution of our fourth and final luncheon, I concluded that he showed more faith in the depth and durability of our exploration into authentic passion, one-to-one, than I had demonstrated. Although Cone bluntly pursued, at our final lunch, his views about whites, as frequently applicable through me, which I incorrectly took to be individual recriminations, I had, in my own way, betrayed the goodwill that had previously developed between us. One person, who had read the History News Network article I wrote about the lunches, which I described earlier in Part 1 of #6 of this “For Racial Healing” series, emailed a message to me with special attention to my response toward Cone’s criticisms:
“How unfortunate that your final conversation was cut short at such a critical moment. If only there could have been another opportunity to re-engage in that difficult conversation, to go even deeper than you both had (especially Dr. Cone who seemed to have come to that final lunch ready to be more real than ever with you). I’m sorry that you didn’t have the opportunity to learn directly from him, what he had gained from your conversations.”
This current piece has been written, in part, as a warning to whites who enter into racial healing relationships committed to authentic passion for discovering fundamental connections between Blacks and whites to understand, empathize, heal, love, and co-inhere. By a warning, I mean that whites should be wary of accepting or overestimating their own abilities to trust the relationship as much as their Black partners will. There is something in whites that can cause us to become immediately defensive when the Black partner begins to speak with an honesty, if not anger, about her or his feelings or ideas regarding the perceived indifference, travesty, insensibilities, and arrogance that whites have carried with impunity and self-indulgence. Dr. Cone had been open and honest for a purpose at our fourth lunch, and I unfortunately took offense. I retreated into a defensive world that could protect me from the unhidden and unabashed that are, without question, part of the authentic passion exercise. My reaction to Dr. Cone was the automatic shield of white behavior where we are too often limited in our capacity to trust as fully as we think we can.
Indeed, I withdrew from the faith and trust Cone placed in me. I felt a surge of an inherent, age-old arrogance of power, when challenged, which did not take the seemingly combative and often direct language well as an opportunity for discovery but took it as an attack on my state of mind. He said that whites, more generally, and I needed to read more Malcolm X to understand the attitude of the Black person. (I had read Malcolm X). He also said that whites and I needed to fathom the lives of American Blacks to grasp the anger and hate felt by most Blacks toward whites in this country. He said that if whites and I heard honest voices from the Black community talk about their real feelings toward the lack of empathy by whites, we whites would never let those Black voices appear on a stage or on television again.
I abhor the thought that my disagreement with Dr. Cone’s propositions had anything to do with an historical Black-white dissonance, but can I deny it? My response had become virtually an animal instinct I couldn’t resist until I learned to recognize it as possibly being my attempt to retain my whiteness, which evades the other, the new and unfamiliar that could change us in order for Cone and me together ultimately to see beyond the moment to understand, empathize, heal, love, and co-inhere.
A germane question then becomes: what had Dr. Cone expected my answer to be to his accusations (personal and more general)? Looking back on the moment, considering that our verbal exchange was meant to be an attempt to reach and continue a relationship, supported by authentic passion, what had he anticipated my answers to be as a result of his words? If he thought I would react as I did, as though his words were solely an intentional, personal attack, then I’m disappointed that his view of me would have been so questionable. Of course, what I should have done was simply hear from him completely without interruption. His comments – now, I believe – were devised to be historical in nature. Surely, he was not attempting to occlude me with hostility. After all, he participated in arrangements from one lunch to the next; I do not believe he wished for me to leave on account of his words, not after the other, long sessions and lunches that brought him from the upper westside of Manhattan.
In so many ways, I can conclude that I may have been merely a conduit for his thoughts and enunciated message at that time. Perhaps, a silent reaction would have been inconsequential to Dr. Cone, consistent with a goodwill attempt at abiding by authentic passion and allyship. Why else would silence then have been my best choice? For it would have left our options open, available as the two of us wished to pursue at will. Defensively, I shut down access to continue our search. In turn, he had reason to think we had arrived at the terminus of possibilities for further discovery. I revealed how far I could go before I would cease pursuit in allyship. Where could we go from there? Notwithstanding his courteous and thoughtful manners concerning my need to attend to my wife at the hospital, he also realized that I had, unwittingly or by lack of empathy or by my own sheer stupidity, stopped the quest. Otherwise, I believe I would have heard from him later. Knowing the obvious, I did not attempt to contact Dr. Cone again.
So, why additionally have I spent these words on my failure to move the authentic passion exercise by Dr. Cone and me deeper and more thoroughly into a relationship? For one reason, I believe that for every Black-white, one-to-one dialogue with the goal being an affirmation of authentic passion, demonstrated by an enhanced bond we may call love and full allyship, the challenge of a termination to the quest, similar to the one I described with Dr. Cone, may occur, and I am certainly recommending a different tack than the one I took. Second, even if one fails experientially with one partner in the pursuit of an allyship, it does not mean that future relationships, Black-white, one-to-one, cannot be available.
I learned much from my time and attempts with Dr. Cone, and soon thereafter – only months later – I met Sheila Walker, and we immediately began work that ultimately guided us to a remarkable Black-white allyship through authentic passion. I simply did much better with Sheila for reasons that are not quite clear. For example, she could criticize me as Dr. Cone had done – in her instance, for my inability to forgive Lonnie fully. Yet, I did not retreat into a defensive chamber and shroud. Sheila and I pursued our various, answered and unanswered questions that could impact our Black-white attempts (and often, successful attempts) to break through to full allyship. Unfortunately, I never had the chance again to accomplish the same degree of breakthrough with James H. Cone that Sheila and I attained.
Next Time: Sheila Lorraine Walker: Lesson in “Authentic Passion”