Seeking Blind Justice

Love Is Blind

by Peter Heide

I must be love because I’m blind.

I must have faith because I’m blind;

And justice should rightfully be my estate

Because I’m blind;

But I, scaly-eyed, seek justice

In blind alleys, around blind turns

That lead to unseen possibilities.

Maybe I’m just batty,

Or Christ’s faithful fool

Following blindly.

Okay, we all know that it’s just a metaphor, but there are times when the reality of being blind and the metaphoric use of the word “blind” get confused—the blind person may get incorporated into the metaphor or the metaphor may become the describer of the blind person. This confusion is often humorous. For instance, I grew up hearing, “God is love. Love is blind. Stevie Wonder is blind; therefore, Stevie Wonder must be God.”

Most of the time I can forgive the inappropriate use of “blind”. Love and justice’s blindness signify impartiality, lack of prejudice, and accentuating the positive. Blind faith imagines absolute trust. These are not bad attributes. Even so, one should question using blindness as a metaphor in these ways.

When the confusion surrounds negativity, the metaphor and the reality of being blind can be painful. When one interprets the Blind Guide (Matt. 15:14) in Scripture as a metaphor in terms of unable to know where one is going, or ignorant of perils surrounding the people, or incompetent, it is especially problematic. Much harm is transferred between the metaphor and the characteristics attributed to those who are blind.

The use of disabilities as adjectives in our everyday language —lame arguments, dumb ideas, and people spazzing out—can be easily understood as micro-aggression. I heard a news analyst recently say that a particular public official had turned a deaf ear to the legitimate complaints of the people. When I hear a statement such as this, I cringe although I may excuse the speaker for being ableist and not knowing any better.

But the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came for me April 5 on MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight. One guest, Maya Wiley, reported on the voting issues in Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina. She spoke of the Supreme Court’s lack of timeliness and the work of some states to deprive Black communities of their democratic voice by “bleaching” their voting districts. Through gerrymandering, the Black vote can then be divided among stronger White districts. At the end of the interview, Ms. Wiley referred to the situation in this way, “Being race blind in this country today means being blind to injustice and refusing to address it. That is not good for democracy, and that’s why we are not going to stop fighting for voting rights.”

I appreciate what Ms. Wiley was trying to say, but I take umbrage at her use of blind in this case. First, since the entire concept of race is a sighted invention and is a means of discrimination sustained by visual cues such as skin color, hair texture, and facial characteristics, therefore, “race blindness” cannot be a factual representation even when race blindness is used by ableist, sighted people. In fact, it is an excuse for being racist. It is a lie that sighted people tell themselves in order to deny the personal identities of Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and Latinos, anyone other than themselves. “I do not see your color as a difference. I think of you as being just like me—White.”

This is not to say that the blind, especially those totally blind, cannot be prejudiced, but their reference points for being “racist” more likely come from sighted slanders repeated rather than any personal observation. “Race blindness” in this context means that there is no category of race which accurately describes the genetic reality of humanity. This blindness allows for cultural and ethnic differences but not for the sighted distinctions which make racism fully possible.

Secondly, injustice is not the result of the actions of the blind! They know all too well what injustice is. As a group, blind people encounter injustice on a daily basis: inaccessible voting platforms, lack of signage in braille and large print, inaccessible menus in restaurants, Uber drivers who won’t let a blind person with a guide dog in their cars, collapsing mass transit service, being able to know the denomination of the currency you are given as change at any place of business, and let’s not talk about packaging that does not let the blind know what they are purchasing. Beyond those inconveniences, have you ever, with your eyes closed, tried to use a kiosk to register for a doctor’s appointment?

Instead, members of the blindness community have and do advocate not only for themselves but for our society as a whole. Jacobus Tenbroek, president of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), worked as legal counsel for Brown vs Education. George Card, a member of the American Council of the Blind (ACB), was part of the legal team for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Currently, blind lawyers are working for prison reform. The Blind were involved in the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and they are involved in the many issues that influence the blindness and greater disability community today including reauthorization of the Older Americans Act.

We cry out not only for accessibility to the physical world in general, but also accessibility to the technology that keeps trying to run away without us. At this time, members of ACB and NFB advocate for accessible web sites, audible pedestrian signals, accessible durable medical devices, and audible description tv programming, movies, and live theater performances.

In the advocacy that we do for our own community, we also work for the many ways we intersect with the marginalized communities around us. We are blind, but we are also Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, 2SLGBTQIA, and all ages and genders. We are neither superheroes nor objects of pity. We struggle with the rest of society, losing our hearing as we get older and using wheelchairs and walkers as we become less mobile.

So be aware: blindness does not lead to injustice. On the contrary, blindness leads to advocating for justice for all people and lifts up all people as being worthy of inclusion. Blind people across the country are speaking out for DEI because we are part of the diversity in our country. We speak for equity because we are trying to get jobs that pay us for equal work in a work force of equal opportunity. We speak for inclusion because we have been standing on the outside, knocking on the door to be let in for many years. We are DEI demanding Accessibility; and we are voters seeking equal representation and justice.

BELLY UP TO THE BAR

THE ANGELUS TRUMPET            POLITICS

The Unexpurgated Source for Alternative Bible Facts

 

BELLY UP TO THE BAR

Dateline: Galilee, February 12, 05:21:37

by Matt Hughes

Josh Kristy, following his sensational statements on fashion last Saturday, turned to politics, proposing radical policies with potentially serious consequences. It appears that Kristy not only endorses some of the most stringent gun laws ever, but he wants to litigate anger, insults, and the use of fool in common parlance. Initial response to this part of Kristy’s proposal has resulted in the cancelation of all re-runs of The A Team until further notice.

Kristy also addressed current societal standards on adultery. He called for eye enucleation and right hand amputations for anyone guilty of objectifying women and other lustful behavior. This should significantly reduce teenage male populations in public or, alternatively, significantly increase the need for prosthetic devices for one-handed half-blind youth. When asked about these new policies, G. Otto Bohner said, “There are worse members to lose.” Kristy also charged that divorce is an agent of adultery and challenges chastity standards.

In another statement, Kristy called on his groupies to jam the legal system by not swearing to the veracity of anything they say in court. This could challenge truth-telling in our time. Asked to comment, Bar Association spokesperson Sue M. Dailey said, “Personally I think it’s great. I can foresee many more billable hours for attorneys across the country, not to mention therapists running anger management groups. Litigation challenging the constitutionality of hate language vs freedom of speech will also raise the standard of living for lawyers and paralegals. Even his stand on mediation settlements without contest will make plea bargaining and plea management a preferred occupation. It is the first really encouraging proposal for lowering prison censuses throughout the land. This could be the biggest thing for lawyers ever because it criminalizes accepted behavior and then decriminalizes the punitive consequences with what could be a very intricate structure of graduated financial penalty. It’s a win-win for litigators everywhere.”

Do Not Be Terrified Luke 21:5-19

I start preparing for worship on Sunday night. That means that I started reading this text last Sunday night. As I read the text, I was thinking about the world at that moment, as the elections were drawing near, of the high feelings, the polarized status, the inflammatory language that had become common place and somehow praise worthy. I wondered how Hilary Clinton was going to heal the rift that had grown between Democrat and Republican. Of course, those thoughts were all based on Sunday. They had nothing to do with Wednesday.

Among my friends, many were positive that Clinton was going to win. They too, were living in a Sunday/Monday world. How upset they were on Wednesday morning. Meeting with pastors on Wednesday morning I heard, “What are we going to preach on Sunday?” In the midst of their psychic pain and confusion, they had no idea. The stones of their sacred structures had tumbled. Their perspective of the world had shifted, and their sense of reality had been challenged.

So I asked if any of them had read the text for this week yet? Most of them had been so involved in the election that they had not taken time to do that. So I said something that I thought was a given. “I’m guessing that we are going to proclaim the Gospel.”

One of my friends said, “But it feels like the world has ended.”

I said, “Have you read the text?”

What an amazing thing that we have been given this text on this day in our lives. Here we are reminded that ends are not always ends. End does not mean that it is over. Ends are the places of new beginnings. There will be wars and insurrections. “Do not be terrified.” The temple will be destroyed. “Do not be terrified.” There will be famines and plagues in parts of the world. “Do not be terrified.” Our political system is changing. “Do not be terrified.”

When we are brought before kings and governors, or the judicial bodies of our world, when your life looks like it is in the dumpster, Luke, reporting Jesus’ words for us, says, “This will be an opportunity for bearing witness, giving testimony, proclaiming God’s justice for the world, of who it is that sustains and supports you in your life. Is it going to be Donald Trump and the American flag? Or, will it be God, revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ and his promise of salvation? Is it going to be a political system that has always been broken? Or, is it going to be a life of striving for God’s justice in the world? This is the time for deciding.”

Yes, you may be betrayed by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. You may be hated by the people around you. In extreme circumstances, you may die, but, in the midst of the turmoil of the day, we find that this is our time—our time as faithful people to stand up and declare who and whose we are.  This is our time to remember God’s commands and Jesus’ ministry of protecting and caring for the widow, the orphans, the strangers, and the poor.  This is our time as faithful people to go out into the world, as Jesus did, to lift up the social dead into new ways of living. This is our time to tell the world in which we live and the government that we have that this is where WE want to go.

So many people have said, “We want change. We don’t even care what kind of change it is. We just want change.” And we find that we are living in a world that is waiting and looking for direction. We, as a faithful, Christian, living community have been given the awesome opportunity to speak, to make our voices heard in the public square, to make our voices heard in all the places of governance that we have—in our municipalities, in our states, and in the halls of Congress with the mouth and wisdom of God that our opponents cannot withstand or contradict. We have been given the opportunity to point out the direction. What an amazing gift!

We know that the stones of the temple will be cast down. Even the people of Luke’s time knew that because, at the time Luke was written, the temple had already been destroyed. This amazing temple building was totally destroyed in 70 C.E., fifteen to twenty years before the time of Luke’s writing.

Yet, if you were into architecture, this was one of the most amazing buildings of its time. It was a major architectural accomplishment of its day. The courtyards were cantilevered over the marketplace below it, and it was raised up above the city walls. From a distance, it looked like the temple was floating in the air over the city. Ancient historians say that it was built of the finest white limestone and crowned with gold. Indeed, when the sun came out and shined on it, it was so brilliant that it hurt the eyes to look at it.

In other Gospel accounts we hear that it had taken forty-three years to build it, so the thought of destroying it is terrifying. Think about it, forty-three years. Yes, it was an architectural marvel, but what is man-made is susceptible to erosion, corrosion, rust and general deterioration. Eventually it falls apart. Even wonders like the Great China wall need continuous maintenance. Without that maintenance it will disappear, it will vanish into the earth. So it is with the other wonders of the ancient world. The colossus of Rhodes? The hanging gardens of Babylon? The library of Alexandria? They are all gone. Only the Great Pyramid continues to be present in our world. All of the other wonders of the world only exist in ruins—and the British museum.

It is time to remember that our salvation does not come in temple buildings, that Jesus is not our personal property redeemer. Jesus has come to save US. It is time to remember, in us, with us, and through us, Christ is made known to the world around us. It is time to remember, by our endurance we will gain our lives. We will gain, not just our own life, but we will gain the lives of those around us, for in remembering the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor, in going out into the world to the social dead and in raising them up into our community of life, we do not only gain our lives, but we gain their relationship with us and their lives and support as well. Let us therefore walk together in the body of Christ, which we have entered through Baptism where we were first lifted up from sin and death in Christ’s living body for the world.

“What are we going to preach?” my colleagues asked, and I had nothing to say because I thought it was all too apparent. In the midst of great change, we preach what we have always preached—the one who comes to walk among us, the one who leads us and teaches us, the one who died to save us, continues to walk with us and among us. That one, the Christ, continues to be with us this day and every day as we endure the trials of this world, that Christ is active and vocal in our midst. Christ continues to give us a mouth with words of wisdom that do not come from the world, but for the world

My brothers and sisters in Christ, as we go out into our lives, into our places of work, may our voices be heard. May we find the ear of those who are in power, that they might listen to us and that they might hear, really hear, the cries of God’s people and do something about it.

Not long ago, we heard the story of the unjust judge and the widow, of our need to pray persistently. So, let us, with the persistently praying widow make, our voices known to those judges, until all those around us are embarrassed to the point of letting us have our way whether or not they respect us, and that our way might be the way of God’s justice for the world. Let our voices be heard by those who are in power and let them act in our favor simply because they will not have us continue to speak against them when it comes to God’s justice in the world.

Whether you voted for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton, much work needs to be done. Let us roll up our sleeves and begin the work that God is giving us.