Contextualizing the Lowery prayer

Via Michelle Malkin:

The full paragraph:

“We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right,” Lowery said.

A reader points to this old civil rights chant that adds context to Lowery’s remarks — but makes the jab against whites all the more egregious:

Big Bill Broonzy Black, Brown And White lyrics

This little song that i’m singin’ about,
People you know it’s true
If you’re black and gotta work for a living,
This is what they will say to you,
They says, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But as you’s black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”
I was in a place one night
They was all having fun
They was all buyin’ beer and wine,
But they would not sell me none
They said, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But if you black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”
Me and a man was workin’ side by side
This is what it meant
They was paying him a dollar an hour,
And they was paying me fifty cent
They said, “if you was white, ‘t should be all right,
If you was brown, could stick around,
But as you black, hmm boy, get back, get back, get back”
I went to an employment office,
Got a number ‘n’ i got in line
They called everybody’s number,
But they never did call mine
They said, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, could stick around,
But as you black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”
I hope when sweet victory,
With my plough and hoe
Now i want you to tell me brother,
What you gonna do about the old jim crow?
Now if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, could stick around,
But if you black, whoa brother, get back, get back, get back

Of course, if anyone takes umbrage with the Lowry prayer, they're the ones with the problem:

Those who take offense at this wonderful prayer of benediction must spend their every waking moment looking to take offense at something or someone. How sad for them.

How sad that the voices we hear so often clamoring for racism to end are the same voices that engage in keeping it going.

Seriously sad.

Comments

[Tim Chesterton]

What did you think of the res of the prayer, Rick?

[Tim Chesterton]

By the way, I believe his name is spelled 'Lowery'.

[Locutisprime]

Go easy on the old man, he was just having a Johnny Cochran moment.

[Rick]

Spelling corrected, thanks Tim... and I thought Warren's prayer was more inspiring... but that's me...

What did you think of his prayer?

[tim aka The Godless Heathen]

“How sad that the voices we hear so often clamoring for racism to end are the same voices that engage in keeping it going.”

Exactly, why did race even have to be brought up in the first place? I thought we were now post racial now that the Chosen One is in office.

Expect more of this.

[Mommynator]

When was the last time ANYONE pushed anyone else to the back of the bus?

How many white people have chosen to try to do what's right by people?

I'm sick and tired of this stupidity.

[Tim Chesterton]

Rick, I was quite inspired by the Warren prayer too. I especially liked the way he acknowledged that not everyone in the audience would be praying in the name of Jesus, but he made it quite clear that he was. He did this by using 'we' language throughout, until the end when he said, 'I pray this in the name of the one who changed my life'. He also managed to be consistently Christian while giving a tip of the hat to the Q'uran (with his phrase 'the compassionate and merciful one') and of course the Torah with the 'Hear O Israel'.

I think Locutisprime is right - Joseph Lowery has spent his life fighting injustice, and apparently this last phrase is a sort of mantra that he has used many times in the past. I'm sad that so many people have fixated on the last sentence of his prayer without paying any attention to his wonderful use of biblical imagery and the sentiments he expresses in the rest of the prayer.

Also, speaking for myself, I'm happy to embrace the challenge for 'white to do right'.

[Mike]

Lowery's use of the Civil Rights chant was nothing more than an analogy indirectly pointing out how far we have come as a country. I find it odd that many people who have never seen, much less personally experienced, the injustices Lowry witnessed...never had their property confiscated for being black; never been firehosed, threatened, beaten, or denied the most basic of human dignities... would somehow feel "inconvenienced" by Lowery's inclusion of a few brief historic lines of poetry. This was, after all, a historic election; and we did, after all, have laws in place as early as 50 years ago that encouraged discrimination against black people. Lowery's prayer simply reinforced how far we have come and should be celebrated, not attacked.

Unfortunately, some folks just can't help themselves.

[Rick]

I find it interesting how quickly the left plays the race card but more interesting is how quick they are to deny playing it themselves.

Utter. Hypocrisy.

[tim aka The Godless Heathen]

Oppression comes in many forms; living in the past prevents people from realizing their future.

[Louie Crew]

Lowery counterstated a vicious and threatening poem that overseers and owners said during slavery.

Black,
go back.
Brown,
stick around.

These lines were known by almost every one of my African American students when I taught for nine years of the 1970s in black higher education in Georgia and in South Carolina.

The slave overseer invited "brown" to "stick around" because of visual
evidence that another overseer had his way sexually earlier with brown's mother or grandmother. The poem is a lurid sexual overture by a white predator.

Lowery's prayer recalled this legacy of slavery and lanced some of the poison -- straight from Lowery's lips to God's ear, and to the ears of anyone who has ears to hear!

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/rel.html