Last night I watched Freedom Summer on Amazon Prime. I heard the newsman from 1961 describe SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) as a ‘militant group’ again and again, ever so causally. If you’ve studied your history you know SNCC was the absolutely opposite of militant. I remember the stories Bob told us (in addition to what he talks about in his book) and how they got beat, bruised and burned.
What dawned on me is how the current day rhetoric is applied the same way. Back then white supremacist citizens needed to hear SNCC called a ‘militant group.’ They needed to confirm their ideological bias, uphold their *preferred*to way of life. They needed an enemy to which they could aim their scorn and against whom they could take action. Since they couldn’t make *every* Black citizen an enemy outright, they could make SNCC one. So the local media that shared their ideological bias obliged. What happened then, happens today.
For those of us constantly crying out how media leans into a bias, yo, it’s always been this way. Not because media is the devil, but because we are the devils and we run the media too. We want our ideology affirmed and confirmed. We want someone else on our side to justify our enemy-making ways. We want to uphold our deepest beliefs and biases at work so that our preferred way of life is upheld.
We need to see the little devils at work inside ourselves. We need to own it. And we need to repent. We need to let go of our enemy-making ways. We need get across tables and into trenches and shut off our TV’s and screens.
If we are Christians, we need to come to Jesus.
*This picture above is of me and Bob from almost 6 years ago. I along with 5 others spent a few days with him and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove learning how to organize for the long haul.
