Remembrance candles. Photo by The Pensacola Hippie.
Today the world observes International Holocaust remembrance Day. On this date back in 1945, the death camps were liberated.
The atrocities that took place at Auschwitz are some of the worst crimes that humans have committed against each other.
Seventy-five years later, I wonder if Americans-- and the world-- have learned anything from The Holocaust.
Two decades after " Y2K" and people are still seeking to harm ' the other" Whom this ' other is depends on many factors, such as nationality, race, religion and sexual attraction and/or gender identity. In January of 2021, America-- and the world is reeling from a pandemic.
2021 still carries the remnants of last year's mess. As if a deadly virus was not enough, we still suffer from the effects of the last year of the most divisive American Presidential Administration in my lifetime. ( if not ever}
Yet the MAGA movement, steeped deep in White Supremacy, is a mere symptom of a more pervasive and deadly illness.
I am calling it by its proper name. The disease that will remain in society long after we eradicate COVID-19 is White Supremacy.
As a Christian, I've had to do some deep soul-work to sit with the uncomfortable fact that White American Christians have been and continue to be the power source for the continuing narrative of White Supremacy. All Christian denominations are guilty of benefiting from racism and upholding White Supremacy-- including The Episcopal Church as a whole. Many of us in my parish family are earnestly working to educate ourselves about how to best be anti-racist-- and for me that journey began with a history lesson back in 2018. For me, understanding my own denomination's complacency in the past regarding racism.
On this day, I think of the 6 million Jewish people who were murdered merely for being Jewish. Due to my heritage, Holocaust Remembrance Day isn't merely theoretical.
Y'all, those folx murdered would have had descendants who could have been my people. My ancestors are among the lucky ones--- escaping Eastern Europe before the Nazis imprisoned them for the " crime" of their ethnicity.
On this day, I also think of all the Black people who were starved in the underbelly of a slave ship as they sailed The Middle Passage. My heart aches for those who survived this hellish journey, as their descendants were forced to work for White families and were bought and sold like cattle.
George Floyd's murder brought to the light the dark, sinister reality that is White Supremacy. People, mainly men and boys, still are brutalized by authorities simply because their skin carries more pigment than those of us with European ancestry.
In Pittsburgh, a neo-Nazi gunman murdered eleven people in a synagogue simply for their Jewishness. Is this personal to me? Damn right it is personal: I have family members who worship at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Today is not a " remembrance" for me. It is a stark reminder of the evils that are Nationalism & White Supremacy.
I will not forget.
Sarah McCarren
27 January 2021
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