When I was a kid, I was taught to always color inside the lines. I must confess that I wasn’t always good at it. Coloring was always a bit difficult for me anyway. Being colorblind, I often colored the bird the wrong color, or the tree came out red! This became even more frustrating when Crayola started adding colors. I had a hard time with the basic 8 but add to that “carnation pink” and “red violet” and you can only imagine what that was like! It was confusing!
When the Kindergarten teacher showed the children’s works of art to the class, there were often a few snickers when mine were presented. That frustrated me! One day in class I was so frustrated I decided to not only paint everything “the wrong” color, but also to break every rule in the book. In a fury I took every color I had and proceeded to boldly go where I hadn’t dared to go…outside the lines! When I was done, I felt liberated and emboldened. Unfortunately, it only lasted a day or two. At the next “showing” the teacher saved mine for last and had added a dreaded “Sad face”, with tears added for emphasis!
Today I want to write about a different kind of coloring project. As many of you know the “color line” was and is still a real thing. If you go into the history of any city in the USA, Seattle included, you will find in our histories, laws set up that exclude people of color, mainly Black citizens, from living in certain areas of the city. If you take a look at your mortgage, some of you still might have a clause written in your contract that might spell this out. (If you find these they can be removed) Most of these laws are gone now, but the color line persists.
When I was serving a church near Tyler, Texas in the late 80’s the superintendent of schools in Tyler noted that there were two high schools in Tyler. One for the whites and one for the blacks. He noted that the initial reason for setting up two high schools was cited as the size. Tyler was too big for one school. But the underlying reason was racism. And so, he proposed uniting the high schools. Using one building for all freshman and sophomores, and one building for all juniors and seniors.
That next year the little communities around Tyler were bulging at the seams as “white flight” became real! People used other excuses, but that “color line” was moving and they weren’t about to let those folks play in their children's sandbox!
This kind of thing continues to happen. Maybe in more subtle ways than it did before, but it’s there. When I was in Sioux Falls, SD a realtor once told me that there was a certain street that divided Sioux Falls. If he had a person of color as a client every realtor pretty much understood that they weren’t to show any properties south of a certain street to that client. And on and on it goes!
When you walk the streets of Woodinville you might notice that there aren’t very many Black folk in our neighborhoods! I looked up how many Black-owned businesses we have, and I found two: The Seattle Cinnamon Roll Company, and the Métier Brewing Company. Now you may say that the reason for this is not racially based, but I can venture that if you go back into the history of Woodinville and you dig deep enough you will begin to realize that Woodinville, in many ways, is intentionally designed this way. We don’t have signs that say “no Blacks allowed”, but we have subtle and not so subtle ways of making Black folks feel uncomfortable.
Just a couple of personal stories. A couple of years ago I put a Black Lives Matter sign up in front of the church. Two days later it was gone. I found it in the bushes. I put it back up. Two days later it was gone. I found it again and put it up…this happened 6 times! And finally it was damaged. The Universalist church up the road from us has had a Black Lives Matter sign up for years and has had it vandalized countless times!
Like it or not, there are still “signs” of racism in our “nice little village”.
One of the ways, I think we need to combat this is by what Fernell Miller, founder of “The Root of Us”, calls learning to play outside our sandbox! We can’t wait for Black folks to come play in our sandbox, we need to learn to get out of our comfort zone and play in theirs. Find out where their watering holes are and go and eat and drink there! If there is a Black Lives Matter march, show up and be a part!
This Sunday, I have decided to start up my Brews with Brook again! On Sunday afternoon at 4 pm I am inviting all of you to join me at The Métier Brewing Company, Woodinville’s first Black-owned brewery! I hope you can join me! And if you do, bring your crayons…let’s have some fun creating outside the lines together!
I hope to see you Sunday!
Your friend and pastor, never quite fitting inside this world’s lines and colors, Brook