It felt like years. I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing our “self-cleaning” oven and the task felt endless.
I’ve learned there are at least two kinds of these appliances. There are those you set and forget, returning to a pristine interior when the cycle is complete.
Then there’s the one in our house where “self-cleaning” means, “You, yourself, are going to clean this oven.” And I did.
I longed for the days when I was in Shamrock and we had a committee to clean the self-cleaning oven. It stayed dirty.
This oven, although new to us, is actually nine years old, and we’re its third set of owners. Even with two applications of “Easy-Off” and a wash of Dawn dish soap, some grease had become embedded in the walls. If my effort is any indication, it will be there until the oven is no more.
I learned about metaphors and analogies from Jesus. Preaching, teaching and sharing insights with clients all require the ability to translate complex ideas into understandable terms.
As I worked on my knees, I saw a perfect metaphor for the injustices that linger over time.
Over the years, I’ve sought ways to convey complex ideas in simple terms. Institutional racism, discrimination and inequality are like the gunk that remains no matter how hard you try to scrape it off. The gunk becomes an unfortunate part of the culture.
Racism and exclusion build up over time and can sadly become part of a culture that most people take for granted. This remains true until we begin to ask ourselves, “Who do we see, and who don’t we see?”
Incarceration and Injustice
When I began work at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, the maximum-security men’s prison that houses Death Row, I started asking some probing questions. It was an eye-opening journey that challenged my limited social curiosity.
Driving and walking the streets of the Texas towns where I lived and the churches I served, I saw who was there. But I failed to ask, “Who am I not seeing?”
I found many of those I was not seeing in Polunsky.
In Texas, Black Americans make up about 13% of the state’s population but account for roughly 33% of the state’s prison population. As a mental health manager, I spoke with countless offenders over nearly six years and discovered that many Black offenders were raised by a mother or grandmother with no male figure in the house. I also observed a higher rate of illiteracy not just among Black offenders but across the entire incarcerated population.
I saw a broken criminal justice system that didn’t work the same for everyone. I saw men who, had they not been Black, would not be in prison. And I saw severely mentally ill offenders whose only crime was being mentally ill.
Most good people don’t see racism or their role in it. They often don’t notice who is not in plain sight. They have a naive belief that everyone lives as freely and has as many opportunities as they do. They see the blooms, not the thorns.
The Lingering Stains of the Past
We are still living with the gunk—the stains of enslavement. The disparity in marriage rates provides a good example. While about 50% of white Americans are part of a married couple, that number is closer to 27% for Black Americans.
Why the difference? Research some reasons that stretch back to enslavement, where marriage was often not allowed and families were frequently torn apart.
More recently, research points to poverty, incarceration, discrimination and policies that make it difficult for Black marriages to survive modern-day stresses. What does help, even today, is a deep, relational extended family that provides support and encouragement.
Discrimination is still alive and well, although it is often not as overt as it was when I was growing up.
Recently, in Taylor, Texas, a town hall meeting was held by the City Council to hear concerns from a neighborhood on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that backs up to a predominantly Black neighborhood. A Blueprint Data center is planned to be built next to the homes, and the neighborhood is not happy.
As I read the plans, I couldn’t help but feel that no other neighborhood in Taylor would have tolerated such a center adjacent to their property. The concerns fell on deaf ears, and the project is moving forward. In so many ways, neighborhoods of color are still marginalized without the same protections and voice as other communities.
The Harsh Truth
I still remember the last student I spoke to as a therapist. It was a Zoom call to the juvenile lockup where he was being held. He had struck his mother, and she called the police. He was already on probation and wearing an ankle monitor.
It was the most challenging conversation I’ve ever had. He obviously didn’t want to talk to me, but I persisted.
“I look like the whitest guy you’ve ever seen,” I said, “but I ran a mental health prison in the second-worst prison in the United States. I’m going to share some uncomfortable truths you may not want to hear. If you continue to do what you are doing, you will stay in the juvenile justice system until you move to prison. Prison will not be kind to you, and the justice system does not care about you or value you. You will never be represented by a good attorney but by someone who is just going through the motions, and your judge will choose harsher penalties because you are not white.
I’m telling you this because this is the reality of your situation. You can change the direction you’re headed. You are not so far in that you can’t make better choices.”
The justice system is an unequal system in an unequal society. It has still not conquered the scourge of racism.
No matter what you call it or how long it has gone on, it is past time to erase the embedded stains and crud that still make life difficult for so many women, men, and children in this country.
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A private practice counselor working with veterans and survivors of trauma. Previously, Chancellor served four churches in Texas for 33 years, then ran a Mental Health Department of Alan B. Polunsky Maximum Security prison which houses death row.
