“Of Two Minds”
Rev. Stephen Milton
Lawrence Park Community Church
February 23rd, 2025
Luke 6: 27-38.
Today’s Gospel reading is part of the Sermon on the Plain, which we heard from last week. Jesus has blessed the poor, and expressed woe for the rich, turning the normal values of His time upside down. Today’s words go much further. Jesus urges us to love our enemies, probably the hardest instruction in all of scripture. It is easy to love the people we know since we often pick who we associate with. It is usually easy to love our family, since we are instinctually drawn to care for each other. But to love our enemies? People who want to do us harm? People who disagree with our values? How can that be counted as love? And where do we find the strength in ourselves to do that?
This is a question which Black people have struggled with for centuries. The history of struggle for their rights is a story of how to deal with an enemy that has often told them they were not even human, and deserved no rights. Today is the birthday of one of the heroes of Black History. I’d like to take some time to explore the question of how to love our enemies by exploring one of his ideas.
DuBois
On this day in 1868, William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born.
He grew up in a town in Massachusetts with very few Black families.
His parents were free Blacks.[1] They sent their son to the local school to be taught alongside white children from the neighbourhood. DuBois says that it was here that he became aware that being Black meant being treated different from the other children. One day, the children had been given greeting cards to hand out to each other.
The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card – refused it preemptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.[2]
Dubois was not discouraged, however. He was the first Black student to graduate from his high school[3]. He was the first Black person to receive a PhD. from Harvard University. Dubois was the first African American sociologist. He focused his early work on a period of history known as the Reconstruction. It was a brief period following the American Civil War when the American federal government bent over backwards to help formerly enslaved African Americans transition to freedom.
Freedmen’s School
The feds set up new schools in the South to teach adults and children how to read. It created a court system so Blacks could be treated fairly.
Freedmen’s Village
It sought to give land from abandoned plantations to former Black slaves. Federal troops were stationed in each state to insure Black rights were defended.
It created laws and rules so that Blacks in the South could earn fair wages and get the vote. [4] This was Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on steroids.
But this government support of Black rights did not last.
1876 election
In 1876, there was a presidential election when both sides claimed they won, with one side claiming fraudulent voting in some states.
The deal
After many months, the white male politicians reached a deal. The Republican candidate would become president.
However, in exchange, the Democrats demanded that all federal troops be removed from the South, the same troops which had been present to protect Black rights. The troops left, and the southern states moved quickly to dismantle all the gains of the Reconstruction. Former slaves lost all their rights. Segregation and Jim Crow laws were put in place. The honeymoon was over. Blacks were once again second class citizens in their own country. [5]
DuBois studied this terrible turn of events. He chronicled its effect on Black people whose hopes were dashed. He argued that Black people bear the burden of inequality not just in how they live, but also in how they think and feel. He suggested that Black people of his time experienced “double consciousness.”
Double Consciousness 1
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
Double Consciousness 2
Whenever feels his twoness, – an American, I Negro; two souls two thoughts two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, who’s dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”[6]
DuBois argued Blacks were mentally always looking over their shoulder. To survive, they couldn’t just be themselves, they had to consider how whites saw them. Would A Black person’s behaviour upset the whites around them? How would this white police officer react? This teacher? This bartender? This was double consciousness.
Blacks debated how to resolve this tension. One answer was to simply get away from white people. That led some Blacks to dream of moving to Africa. Others thought that the answer was to move to Canada. Whole communities of farmers raised money to settle in Western Canada where land was cheap. However, they found themselves facing racism in places like Alberta, and obstruction at the border from Canadian customs officials who had been told to keep them out.[7] Canada would not be their escape. So, most stayed in the United States, stuck.
This double consciousness was what drove the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. African Americans knew that many whites refused not see Blacks as full citizens, worthy of good jobs and the right to vote. But, if white people were the enemy, then what could be done? Should Blacks gather arms and guns and fight for their freedom? That seemed to be a recipe for disaster.
As we know, the American Civil Rights movement elected to use non-violent acts of civil disobedience to fight for their rights. Many in the movement were Christians. They knew very well what Jesus had said in today’s scripture. That Christians are called to love their enemies, not go out and kill them. Leaders like Rev Dr Martin Luther King argued that the command to love our enemies meant that African Americans were called to love white people, even as they saw them as their enemies. In his sermons, King told his congregants that there was good in every person, even our enemies. All are made in the image of God. Since no person is purely evil, the true enemy was not individuals, but laws and traditions that held people down:
“ Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love and it’s great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”[8]
King argued that we should love our enemies as people, but hate and fight against the systems that caused oppression.
But we should also note that the Civil Rights movement was not just inspired by the theory in Christ’s words, but also by its tactics. Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek when struck by an enemy. This meant to keep looking the aggressor in the eye, to not back away in defeat. Civil Rights protesters were given the same instructions. They met in Southern churches to learn how to resist the urge to yell or hit back when they were attacked. They used role playing games to develop their ability to stay silent, and to accept the punches and blows they would encounter.[9] This training paid off. When Black students deliberately sat at white-only lunch counters in places like Nashville, they did not react when they were yelled at and beaten. Jesus’ instruction to turn the other cheek was turned into a successful tactic for showing the injustice of the beatings they received.
March on Washingon
The Non-violent resistance of the Civil Rights movement was successful. On August 28th, 1963, one million people descended on Washington D.C. to demand equal rights for Black people on the United States.
MLK I have a Dream
Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Junior gave his famous “I have a Dream speech.”
Old W.E.B. Dubois.
Just one day before, Dubois died. He did not live to see the passage of the Civil Rights act, granting people of all races the right to vote and have equal access to employment. DuBois was in Ghana, Africa. He had become skeptical that America could ever change. He was working on an encyclopedia of African peoples.
But his concept of double consciousness lives on. Despite all the legal changes that have followed over the years, in the United States and Canada, Blacks are still suffering from racism. Here in Canada, Blacks are over represented in jails[10], among the homeless[11], in expulsions from school.[12] They over represented among children’s aid cases. [13] Indeed, just this year, a report by the city of Toronto’s ombudsman cited systemic racism as the reason African refugees were locked out of the city’s shelter system last year[14]. That report was rejected by the shelter system[15]. It was then rejected by City Council. [16]This was the first time this had ever happened. Racism continues to exist here. And so does double consciousness.
White Canadians like to deny how much racism persists in our country. We often hear people say “ I don’t see colour.” That phrase is often used in a well meaning way. It expresses the desire to disregard skin colour, and treat everyone the same. But as I have tried to explain today, we’re not at the point culturally where that is possible. Black skin still matters very much to police officers and welfare officers. To city shelter policies. To schools and prisons. People notice the colour of Black skin, and it makes a huge difference in their lives. Black people still have to think twice around some white people and systems; double consciousness lives on. To claim that we don’t see colour means that the complexity of being a Black person is being swept aside and declared irrelevant. And that makes it even harder to address.
And we should also know that Black people are also not ashamed of the colour of their skin. In novels written by Black people, they often remark on the beauty of Black skin. They delight in all its shades , from cinnamon to caramel, from blue black to pale skin with freckles. Why shouldn’t a Black person being able to look at their skin and love it? Why should it be invisible?
Jesus asks us to love our enemies, people we know we disagree with. That’s hard. But Jesus tells us that if we only love our friends and family, then we are only doing what comes naturally. Anyone can do that. Instead, Jesus suggests that we love as God loves. That means to love everyone. Racism makes life difficult. It imposes a complex way of living and being for those it targets. As Christians, let us love our friends and strangers, acknowledging that often their experience of life may be complicated and not the same as your own. If we can love our enemies, then let us be as flexible in loving people who are not our enemies. Amen.
SOURCES:
[1] “W. E. B. Du Bois,” Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University,
https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois
[2] W.E. DuBois, “Of our Spiritual Strivings,” in The Souls of Black Folks, (1903), p.8.
[3] “W. E. B. Du Bois,” Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University,
https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois
[4] W.E. DuBois, “Of the Dawn of Liberty” in The Souls of Black Folks, (1903)
[6] W.E. DuBois, “Of our Spiritual Strivings,” in The Souls of Black Folks, (1903), p.9.
[7] Sarah-Jane Mathieu, North of the Color Line, (University of North CarolinaPress: Chapel Hill, 2010), p.29-31.
[8] Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, “ Loving Your Enemies,” in The Knock at Midnight, eds. Calyborne Carson and Peter Holloran, (New York, 2000) 47.
[9] https://readthespirit.com/interfaith-peacemakers/james-lawson/
[10] https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/obpccjs-spnsjpc/index.html
[16] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-ombudsman-report-refugee-shelters-council-1.7414425
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