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via The Washington Post: A Virginia incident reflects the reality of being black in America

June 17, 2020No CommentsFrank Schaeffer

By Editorial Board

THE VENOM of American racism is as toxic in major cities as in rural areas, in the North as in the South. African Americans are murdered and brutalized for no good reason; more often they are subjected to uncountable quotidian humiliations.

Last month, it was an African American bird-watcher, Christian Cooper, falsely accused of assault by a white woman in Manhattan’s Central Park; days later, it was a black pastor, Leon K. McCray Sr., arrested in Virginia for the “crime” of defending himself, on his own property, from a rabble of white trespassers.

The Virginia incident took place June 1 in Shenandoah County, an overwhelmingly white area 100 miles west of Washington, where Mr. McCray had confronted two people at an apartment he owns, neither one his tenant, who were dumping a refrigerator on his property. He asked them to leave. One of them returned shortly afterward with three others who he says surrounded, jostled, threatened and taunted him with racist abuse — black lives, they said, don’t matter in Shenandoah County.

Alarmed, Mr. McCray drew his handgun, a weapon he carries legally, keeping them at bay while he called 911. Yet when sheriff’s deputies arrived, it was the black pastor they handcuffed, not his white assailants. “I felt literally like I had been lynched without being killed,” Mr. McCray, who said he had no criminal record, told his congregation in a sermon two Sundays ago at his Lighthouse Church & Marketplace Ministries International in Woodstock, Va.

It is impossible to imagine that scenario playing out in reverse — with the arrest of a lone white man menaced by a throng of hostile black people. With numbing familiarity, it is African Americans who are victimized by the presumption of guilt.

In the case of Mr. McCray, a 24-year Air Force veteran who retired as a master sergeant, and so many others, that presumption is preposterous. He was the one who was surrounded; he was the one who called 911; he was the one standing on his own land. Like Mr. Cooper, who was within his rights to ask that a white woman leash her dog in compliance with Central Park’s rules, Mr. McCray did nothing wrong. Yet both men faced racial hostility and threats.

Mr. Cooper, who recorded the encounter on his phone, was questioned by police but not arrested. Mr. McCray was released after a few hours, but not before being charged with brandishing a weapon. That charge is now being dropped, according to local authorities, and last Friday Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter issued an apology.

At this point, Mr. McCray’s five alleged assailants have been arrested and charged — four with felony abduction and all five with a pair of misdemeanor assaults, including assault in a hate crime. That’s a reasonable step, but why wasn’t it taken at the outset? Sheriff Carter offered assurance that he and his office “care about the [county’s] minority communities, and especially our Black community.” Given what happened to Mr. McCray, how would anyone believe him? What will he do, what will Shenandoah County do, to prevent a recurrence?


How do we make our way back into love, beauty and creation? Discover my book Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption—In the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies, a multi-touch book about art, love and parenting, from the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the prophetic music of Green Day and everything in between. Read the first chapter for free on your kindle fire or iOS device. Available now on Apple Books and Amazon Kindle Fire.
 

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Caught between the beauty of his grandchildren and grief over a friend’s death, Frank Schaeffer finds himself simultaneously believing and not believing in God—an atheist who prays. Schaeffer wrestles with faith and disbelief, sharing his innermost thoughts with a lyricism that only great writers of literary nonfiction achieve. Schaeffer writes as an imperfect son, husband and grandfather whose love for his family, art and life trumps the ugly theologies of an angry God and the atheist vision of a cold, meaningless universe. Schaeffer writes that only when we abandon our hunt for certainty do we become free to create beauty, give love and find peace. Available now at Amazon.
 

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In 1998, Frank Schaeffer was a bohemian novelist living in “Volvo driving, higher-education worshipping” Massachusetts with two children graduated from top universities. Then his youngest child, straight out of high school, joined the United States Marine Corps. Written in alternating voices by eighteen-year-old John and his father, Frank, Keeping Faith takes readers in riveting fashion through a family’s experience of the Marine Corps: from being broken down and built back up on Parris Island (and being the parent of a child undergoing that experience), to the growth of both father and son and their separate reevaluations of what it means to serve. Available now at Amazon.

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Frank Schaeffer
Frank Schaeffer
Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and painter. Click here to buy Frank's Multi-Touch book, "Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption—In the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies" on iBooks.
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