By Kevin Cosby
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:1-8
I still remember the disappointment my sister and I felt when our parents said, “It’s time to go home.” We had just watched two movies of the triple feature showing at the West Louisville Drive-in Theatre. A popular source of family entertainment when we were children in the 1960s, patrons would drive onto a gravel road, pay the admission fare at the gate, and then pull into a parking space beside other waiting cars. You would then roll down your window half way and hang a silver speaker on your car window so that everyone inside could hear the movie. I don’t remember the two movies we saw that night, but I will never forget the movie we didn’t get to see that night—Planet of the Apes.
It was a science fiction movie about a future world turned upside down. Astronauts somehow had transcended chronos and landed on a strange planet where the social order that they knew on earth had been inverted. On this new planet, humans held the status and privilege of apes, while apes had the status and privilege of humans. Apes were the dominant species while humans were oppressed and enslaved. It was the feature movie playing that night and I desperately wanted to see it. But, unfortunately, my mother was not into unrealistic science fiction. Despite my urgent protest, my mother was firm. “It’s time to go.” But as we were leaving the drive-in theatre, my mother sought to console me by assuring me that the movie would end with the zookeeper capturing all the apes and taking them back to the zoo.
Years later, when I finally watched the movie, I realized that Planet of the Apes was more than a movie about a strange future world where apes ruled. It also was a movie about what happens when history is covered up. The movie was centered on an area of the planet called the “Forbidden Zone,” a restricted region in which both apes and humans were forbidden to enter.
All sectors of society from civil to religious cautioned against entering the Forbidden Zone. At the end of the movie a curious character played by Charlton Heston, and his intellectually undeveloped female companion, dare to enter the Forbidden Zone. And when one of the primate leaders was asked by another ape, “What will he find?” He replied, “He will find his destiny.”
The most poignant scene in the movie occurs when Astronaut Taylor sees the Statue of Liberty protruding from the ground. It is then that Taylor realizes the true history of the planet. This was not the planet of the apes, but rather the planet of the humans that had come under the possession of the apes after a nuclear explosion. The nuclear fallout inverted the order of things, placing the apes in a hegemonic role above humans. The Forbidden Zone was dangerous because the truths it held exploded the myth of ape supremacy and human inferiority.
The movie addresses many of the major themes of the turbulent 1960s. The danger of nuclear weapon proliferation and Cold War politics were important themes of the day. However, the primary theme of the movie was the issue of racial hierarchy and human ignorance regarding how these racial grades came to exist. The movie was not the unrealistic science fiction work that my mother imagined. It was an allegorical commentary of how America’s racial history has been covered up.
When it comes to our racial history, most Americans live in the “Forbidden Zone.” What makes the Forbidden Zone prohibited is that discovering America’s true racial history will explode the myths of white supremacy in all its forms and establish for black American descendants of slavery a unique justice claim with the United States government and society.
Just like the humans on the planet of the apes, in every social and economic measurement, blacks are on the bottom. Whites are 60 percent of the population; yet they control 90 percent of the wealth. Blacks who can trace their lineage back to American slavery are 13 percent of the population, yet control only 2.7 percent of the land. According to research conducted by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies, by the year 2053, the median level of black wealth will equal zero. White family median wealth is now $133,000, while black family median income, minus depreciating assets, is $1700. Blacks have almost no wealth upon which to draw in times of crisis or emergency. Blacks are worse off financially today than they were in 2000. The median income for black households at the new millennium was $41,363. Today the median is $39,490.
Despite the successes of the Civil Rights Movement and the US having had its first black president, African Americans are in worse condition today than we were 50 years ago. In 1968, unemployment for blacks was 6.7 percent. In 2017, it was at 7.5 percent. These numbers are, in fact, much higher when one factors in blacks who are incarcerated. Black home ownership in the 1960s was at 41 percent; today it is at 40 percent. Meanwhile, black incarceration has tripled between 1968 and 2019.
Most whites never think about how these conditions came to be for blacks. Part of the privilege that whites have in America includes playing the colorblind card, which wipes their mental memory clean of centuries of racism. The new racism in America is colorblind racism. Colorblind racism seeks to downplay the importance of race as though it doesn’t matter. Yet, amazingly, most whites tend to be very color-conscious when it comes to whom they marry, the neighborhoods in which they live, the churches they join, and the friends they have.
The myth of a colorblind society is further reinforced by a racial virtual reality on television. The racial harmony depicted in advertisements and mass media are not representative of the real-life experiences of the great majority of Americans. Three-quarters of most whites in America have not one friend from another race. Even if the virtual integration we see in media existed in the real world, that would not solve the problem of fundamental racism in America—the racial wealth gap. The reason why racial strife seems so unsolvable is because we have not accurately defined what it is and how it impacts both blacks and whites.
In the minds of most Americans, eliminating racism means simply whites liking blacks. If that is what ending racism truly means, then in a sense we are indeed post-racial. If ending racism is defined as a matter of liking one another, then the words of author Nancy DiTomaso in The American Non-Dilemma, are true: “Most whites conceive of racism as a people who harbor ill will toward nonwhites doing bad things to them” (Pg7). By relying on this definition, whites can absolve themselves of being considered racists because they can say, “I harbor no ill will toward blacks, neither have I done any bad things toward blacks.” In fact, they might say, “I detest any white person who does.”
In light of this narrow definition of racism, there’s disturbing data about blacks being the lowest caste due to perceptions of black inferiority, laziness and debased culture. The problem with most Americans, however, is not that we are colorblind; it’s that we are history-blind. Being history-blind means we also are justice-blind. In the words of Gore Vidal, we are living in the “United States of Amnesia.”
Ending racism is not a matter of whites beginning to like or accept blacks, but rather whites lifting blacks from the dungeon to which white America consigned blacks beginning with slavery. We will never fix racism until we have the courage to cross over into the forbidden zone of American history and see the brutalities and blocked opportunities that have prevented blacks from enjoying citizenship as full Americans with all rights and privileges.
Racism is a power dynamic that whites have with blacks. Racism is the white control of a disproportionate amount of wealth, power and resources gained through historic injustices against blacks. The dilemma for blacks is that it is a history that white America has taken to the forbidden zone. Not only is it a history about which whites are woefully ignorant, it is a history about which whites are willfully ignorant. William Faulkner once said, “What we don’t have the courage to fix we simply ignore.”
America’s ignorance of race is willful. Immediately after the end of Reconstruction, a group emerged called the Daughters of the Confederacy. Essentially, their goal was to rewrite racial history in America. They had three objectives:
1. To prove that the Civil War was not about slavery, but rather, about state sovereignty. This they sought to establish in spite of the fact that every Confederate state wrote in its statement of secession that the maintenance of slavery was their primary consideration. Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy, said in his Cornerstone speech, March 21, 1861: “Our new government…rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.”
2. To prove that slavery was a benign institution in which blacks were treated humanely. Frederick Douglass gave an accurate depiction of the brutality of slavery in his July 5, 1852 speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Douglass posited, “What, am I to argue it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with iron, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong?”
The following is an actual advertisement for a runaway slave:
“Twenty dollars reward, ran away from the subscriber, on the 14th instant, a negro girl named Molly. She is 16 or 17 years of age, slim made, lately branded on her left cheek, thus, “R”, and a piece is taken off her left ear on the same side; the same letter is branded on the inside of both her legs.”
Amber Ross, Fairfield District, S.C.
3. To prove that Confederate soldiers were heroic and honorable people. They were a people who fought courageously against overwhelming odds for a just cause. They erected 700 monuments to honor men who engaged in what the United Nations would classify as crimes against humanity. Going to American history’s forbidden zone will show that the leaders of the Confederacy were not heroic; but rather, in the words of James Baldwin, were “moral monsters” who were engaged in acts of treason against the United States.
The tragedy of Daughters of the Confederacy is how they were able to spread this disinformation into the curriculum of schools systems across the America. When one factors in 246 years of slavery, along with another 100-plus years of slavery, black descendants of slavery have a unique justice claim.
The Justice Claim can be broken down as:
J-im Crow
U-rban renewal
S-lavery
T-errorism (lynching)
I-ncarceration (mass)
C-ourts and cops
E-conomic exclusion
Justice, according to Walter Brueggemann, is represented by two words in the ancient Hebrew language: Mishpat is concerned with fair distribution so that all members of the community have access to resources and goods for the sake of a viable dignity. The second word for justice, tsedaquah, is concerned with active intervention on behalf of victims of injustice in order to correct and repair those who have been disadvantaged.
For the past 30 years there has been a bill in Congress called HR40. It was introduced by Michigan Congressman John Conyers in 1989. The bill did not call for reparations; it called for the study of slavery in America. For 30 years, the bill has not been able to get out of committee. To do so would mean going to America’s Forbidden Zone. Going to the Forbidden Zone would mean rejecting the myth of white exceptionalism as well as the myth that black suffering is the result of inherent laziness and inferiority.
South African theologian Allen Boesak observed, “It is absolutely imperative for the oppressor to preserve their innocence, just as it is imperative for the oppressed to destroy it.” Whites will do everything to avoid the forbidden zone of American history. Those who venture there are accused of living in the past or stirring up racial hostility. We are being accused of being an angry black man or woman. We are being ostracized and excluded from opportunities and jobs.
A good model for lovers of racial justice is the unnamed woman in Luke 18:1-8. An unscrupulous person of power, perhaps a minister (Luke 20:45-47), exploited her powerlessness and stole her property. Her dilemma was that she was powerless—socially as a woman, economically as a widow, and politically because she had no legal standing. She sought justice from the circuit judge who had made his routine visit to her village.
Because the judge “feared neither God nor mortals,” he denied the woman’s justice and went on to the next village. To his surprise and consternation, however, the woman followed him to the next village, demanding justice. Wherever the judge went, she showed up to demand justice. Jesus says that although the judge was unjust, he gave her justice because she would not stop pursuing it. Power, in the words of Frederick Douglass, “concedes nothing without a demand.”
If you are trying to get our nation to the Forbidden Zone, expect in the words of Robin Deangilo: “silence, defensiveness, argumentation, certitude, and other forms of pushback.” No white person gets to Forbidden Zone without intentionally deciding to go. Nothing in white space will ever create an awareness of a Forbidden Zone. But for those who dare to venture into this unchartered space of American history, I suggest a few books, movies and documentaries.
Books
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward Baptist. Basic Books, 2014
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, by Carol Anderson. Bloomsbury USA, 2016
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, by Ira Katznelson. WW Norton & Co Inc., 2005
The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, by Nancy DiTomaso. Russell Sage Foundation, 2013
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. The New Press 16, 2012
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David Blight. Simon & Schuster, 2018
Southern Baptists and Southern Slavery: The Forgotten Crime Against Humanity, by Alvin Carpenter. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2013
Periodicals, Articles and Research Reports
“The Case for Reparations”, Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Atlantic, June 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
“The Case for Funding Black Led Social Change” Susan Taylor Batten. Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE), 2017 http://www.blacksocialchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BSCFN-Case-Statement.pdf
“Foreclosed” Ryan Cooper and Mat Bruenig. The People’s Policy Project, 2017 https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Foreclosed.pdf
“Dreams Deferred”, Chuck Collins, et al. Institute for Policy Studies, 2019. https://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/IPS_RWD-Report_FINAL-1.15.19.pdf
“Billionaire Bonanza”, Chuck Collins, et al. Institute for Policy Studies, 2017, https://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Billionaire-Bonanza-2018-Report-October-2018.pdf
“The Road to Zero Wealth”, Emanuel Nieves, et al. Prosperity Now, 2017, https://prosperitynow.org/resources/road-zero-wealth
“What We Get Wrong about Closing the Racial Wealth Gap”, William Darity, et al. Duke University, 2018 https://socialequity.duke.edu/sites/socialequity.duke.edu/files/site-images/FINAL%20COMPLETE%20REPORT_.pdf
Movies and Documentaries
Twelve Years a Slave
Reconstruction (PBS/Henry Louis Gates)
Slavery by Another Name (Based on the book by Douglas A. Blackmon), PBS
Eyes on the Prize: PBS
13th, Ava DuVernay (Netflix)
If you immerse yourself in this material it will help you discover what is in the Forbidden Zone of America’s racial divide. It will expand your perspective, create much needed empathy for America’s racial victims, and move you toward asking yourself the three critical questions essential to change:
Why?
Why are things the way they are?
Why do I live in white space while blacks live in poor space?
Why do blacks have only a fraction of the wealth that whites have?
Why are so many black men in jail and so few blacks in STEM careers?
Without going to the Forbidden Zone of American history, we are left to conclude that the defect is intrinsic to blacks themselves and not how society has been structured to pick the winners and losers solely on the basis of race.
Why not?
Why not commit ourselves to fixing America’s 400-year-old race problem?
Why not move beyond the superficialities of kumbaya relationship to true justice, repair and equity in the distribution of opportunity and resources?
Why not empower all people to exercise self-determination in order that they might realize their full potential?
Why not me?
Why not allow God to use you to begin the process? The woman in Jesus’ parable was greatly disadvantaged in her pursuit of justice. She was a widow confronting structural and systemic apathy along with pushback against her justice claims. But she did not lose heart that a just outcome was possible in spite of the evidence to the contrary. She exercised what the Bible calls faith. She possessed the faith to pursue justice in a society committed to injustice. Faith is what the early abolitionists in the 19th century exercised when the elimination of slavery seemed impossible in this country.
To be the “Why not me?” that God uses does not demand that you be powerful or credentialed. Instead, it requires that you be passionately burdened by the plight of the disinherited and that you join God in the pursuit of justice for ADOS (American Descendants Of Slaves.)
The primate leader in the Planet of the Apes knew that George Taylor would find his destiny in the planet’s Forbidden Zone. We too shall find our destiny as we embark on the chartered path of our country’s Forbidden Zone of history!
— Dr. Kevin Cosby is the Senior Pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky with satellite campuses in Hardin County, Kentucky and Jeffersonville, Indiana. He is a nationally-recognized author, preacher, and black intellectual. More importantly, he is the President of Simmons College of Kentucky, a Historic Black College and University (HBCU) in Louisville.
Nancy DiTomaso. The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015, p. 7. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/
Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Speech to the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York.
Alexander Milton Ross. Memoirs of a Reformer, 1832-1892, Toronto: Hunter Rose & Company, 1893
Allan Boesak and Len Hansen, editors. Globalisation: The Politics of Empire, Justice, and the Life of Faith. Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2009, p. 69 https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/4398
Robin J. DiAngelo. White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018. p. 8.
