March A Chance To Make Amends

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear there were two Million Man Marches taking place in Washington on Oct. 16.

The first, dreaded by many whites, Jews and older African Americans, is a rally of undetermined purpose irrevocably sullied by its association with the despicable anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan.

The second, embraced by younger African Americans, is a grasp at redemption. Louis Farrakhan’s relationship to that march is exactly the same as that of the match to the brush fire.

He was the spark. The fire burns independently on.

This march, he says, is a way for black men to “atone to God for the way we have mistreated our women and girls.”

It occurs to me that many of those who fear this march either didn’t hear, or “chose” not to hear that statement. “We must atone.” That’s what transfigures imagination. That’s the spark that lit the fire.

“Louis Farrakhan is an (anal orifice),” Richard, a black man from Chicago, told me bluntly. It’s an assessment many men I’ve spoken with recently would echo. Farrakhan is decidedly not the reason Richard and my brother-in-law Al are going to Washington, while my friend Herschel is considering it. Rather, they are responding to the call for atonement.

If you knew them, you’d be surprised. These men have nothing to atone for.

They’re good, career-oriented men. Richard and Al are married with children.

But in the bizarre calculus that defines black men’s lives, each individual is answerable to the lowest common denominator. I often get asked to explain black murderers. Nobody asks white guys to explain Ted Bundy. It’s not fair, but somewhere along the way, we’ve accepted it.

Hence, the notion of the shamed atoning for the shameless is a powerful lure. Because the damning truth is, no group in America gets worse press than black men, no group has done less to earn it … and no group has done more.

Meaning, even though white arrogance, oppression and cupidity are the genesis of our problems, weren’t we once a hell of a lot more energetic and resolved about “solving” them? Didn’t our faith require us to challenge and change what we could? These last bitter years, it seems, have beaten that out of us. Now we are defeated, not defiant. Raging, not righteous. And we make more excuses than progress.

So we must all atone, because some of us absented ourselves.

From daughters who needed our wisdom and love.

From sons left stumbling alone on the rugged road to manhood.

From women left fending for themselves in a hostile world.

From mothers left arranging our funerals and tending our graves.

From caretaking Martin’s dream and Malcolm’s love.

We must all atone because some of us fled.

From knowledge into ignorance.

From freedom into prison chains.

From harmony into fear.

From caring arms into the cold embrace of city streets.

From churches and mosques into the embrace of a false, white powdered god and his 40-ounce henchmen.

And we must all atone because some of us have given aid, comfort and confirmation to pandering politicians and racist bastards.

But you know something? For all that, black women love us anyway. It’s a fact that humbles. And ennobles. The tough-minded brown women watch us now with eyes that still believe there is magnificence in us somewhere.

Seeing those eyes, you might understand why a million black men or any fraction thereof would assemble in Washington. Why even those who have no love for Louis Farrakhan are impelled to answer his call. Why men who have nothing to atone for will atone anyway.

Or maybe not. I read a pundit the other day who said he had no idea what black men hope to accomplish on Oct. 16.

But there’s no mystery here. We hope to call home the men who absented, fled and ran. We hope to validate the things black women still believe with their eyes. And we hope to turn America’s calculus back on itself.

We hope. Do you know what a miracle that is?

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Leonard Pitts, Jr. Knight-Ridder