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A chat with Brother
Washington Muhammad
America has a race problem.
Unarmed black men and women continue to die at the hands of
police throughout the nation. The neo-Nazis plan a rally in
Toledo. Yet, Black Lives Matter, at least to people like
Brother Washington Muhammad. I was privileged to have an
inter-faith dialog with the Toledo activist concerning a
positive social justice response to these and other obvious
issues that confront Toledo’s black community.
Perryman:
You have scheduled an event to coincide with or to counter
the planned neo-Nazi rally by the National Socialist
Movement on April 18. What would you like to communicate to
readers of The Truth?
Muhammad:
What I wanted to communicate was what we call Black Lives
Matter Day 418. And that’s going to take place Saturday,
April 18th at the Frederick Douglass Center in the parking
lot. And it’s awesome the way the young people that I’ve
been working with, how they’re processing social justice in
a different way that myself or some of my elders may have
done it. And I just so much want to sit behind everyone
that’s organizing this, and I thought it would be excellent
to have a conversation between you and myself discussing
this day.
I thought that just the
dynamic that one of our premier reverends, pastors, in the
city and Brother Washington Muhammad having a conversation
about something that’s going to bring peace to our
community. And that itself, I thought, was an awesome idea
in itself.
Perryman:
Yes, two men of faith, but from different perspectives,
coming together to dialogue around peace is awesome. Well,
tell me about #blacklivesmatterday418. And you made a
statement about the way young people today process social
justice in a way that’s different than their elders or the
previous generations. That is powerful. Tell me about how
they do it and the young people you’re talking about.
Muhammad:
At one of our meetings, we were talking about the neo-Nazis
coming to Toledo, and one of the things that I said was,
well - - I was telling them what I think as an older
person. I told them that I think that we shouldn’t say
anything about it. I told them that I think that we should
be indifferent to them coming. And I left it at that, and I
thought that that was a good idea since I was probably the
oldest person in the room.
And another person - -
another young person had a different idea. And he said,
well, why don’t we have a positive community day and call it
Black Lives Matter Day? And he went on to say that if we
have a positive day, a positive event on the same day, then
we don’t have to talk about the Nazis, but we can invite the
Toledo young people to something positive that’s happening.
And a lightning bolt went off
in my head because I was light years from thinking of
something like that. But immediately it made so much sense
that it’s okay to not go there, but also we have a
responsibility to provide something else, the same way we
tell our young people not to join gangs, not to sell drugs,
but we haven’t set up the type of infrastructure that would
allow young people to be involved with anything else. So
they took this approach to it. They ended up putting a hash
tag before the Black Lives Matter Day and having the 418 at
the end, so that whenever it’s talked about in social media
it is almost like a free advertisement, and it gets other
people to talk about it because of the hash tag.
So from there we had a couple
of locations that we wanted to look at. I think we wanted
to look at Scott. We wanted to look at Smith Park. We
wanted to look at Ottawa Park. But we ended up settling on
the Frederick Douglass center, which ended up being the best
location, central city. It’s historic. It’s right in the
middle of our neighborhoods. It’s not close to the Nazi
event downtown.
And from there everyone just
started doing their part, finding out where we can get
T-shirts, finding out if there’s any socially conscious
rappers or artists in the city, finding out who would be
willing to speak at this event. And we’ve just ended up
getting just a great show of support of local talent that’s
willing to stretch their creativity to rap or sing about
social issues.
There’s just been an awesome
growth curve for me to realize the way that I used to
approach social justice was mobilizing people, going to
confront whatever it is, and then after that just go home.
That’s all we’ve seen, so that’s all we do. So we never
thought about including arts and culture. We never talked
about including social media. We never talked about
including the youth in the discussion.
So we were able to do all of
those things, so that the event has the face of a peaceful
activity, the event has the face that it’s a community based
and community organized event, and the event has the fact
that it’s not a particular agency or house of worship that’s
planning this. This is just a group of people coming
together in Toledo making some decisions as a group
democratically to finally put something before the
community. Also, it lets us know that we really don’t have
to wait for Brother Washington or Councilman this or that to
do anything. Everything was in our power to do it
ourselves, to work together ourselves, and I think that from
this, other lay people like myself will get the idea, hold
on. Why should we wait for somebody to do something that we
can do for ourselves?
And I think since the Martin
Luther King Day protest event that has been the call from
all of the young people. If we’re going to do something,
we’re going to do it smart. If we’re going to say
something, we’re going to say it smart. We make sure that
everybody that’s in front is at least 35 or younger.
Everybody in front does not have to be black. Everybody
that’s in front doesn’t have to fit into some type of box of
acceptability that I always think - - in my mind I would
always think, well, the leader’s got to be a black guy.
He’s got to be older. He’s got to be straight. He’s got to
be this. But the reality is our young people don’t see with
the same chip on their shoulder as we do.
But we can still get the work
done. It still gets done, but they don’t have that same
racial chip on their shoulder. They don’t have that same
gender chip, political chip, or religious chip on their
shoulder. I think that’s from us as brothers and sisters.
We can learn a lot from that because if we’re working
together on a particular principle, then all of our titles
really go out the window.
And just by us modeling
working together, some of the young people might say, well,
Reverend or Washington, where do you go to church? Reverend
or Washington, where did you learn that? But I don’t
evangelize or try to convert, but if we unify on some basic
principles that are right and respectful, I think on that we
move things forward.
Perryman:
You bring up some interesting points. One is the barrier to
collaboration that exists, particularly among the leadership
in our community. Some of the baggage that we bring to the
table, as you mentioned, is that we can’t work with
so-and-so because ideologically they believe this or they
believe that, or theologically they believe a certain thing,
and I can’t go for that, we often say.
And then we have - - you
talked about the jealousies or about the titles, and we have
these jealousies. If somebody else is getting the credit,
then I’m not going to be involved in it. You want to
elaborate on that a little more?
Muhammad:
Yes. Unfortunately, I kind of take it back to slave
seasoning and how we were spoiled as men in the way that we
engage in planning and organizing. So we take the model of
divide and conquer. But the sad thing is we’re divided
amongst ourselves. And I think that we’ve even used that
and inserted it into our religious dogma. So that the young
people at our houses of worship have inherited this.
So the young people that are
coming along, whoever I hated or whoever the pastor, imam,
or reverend hated, then the young people in the churches and
houses of worship, they grow up to hate this person also.
And from there you’ll get these like, well, I’m not going to
work with Reverend Perryman because of him being a
Christian. We only work with Muslims or vice versa. But in
reality it should be based on the capacity. Do we have a
capacity to organize? Who’s the best organizer? Who’s the
best at social media? Who can we put out there as the
spokesperson? Can he talk? Is he attractive? Everybody
knowing their part, and those are the things that move us
forward.
And I’ll give a good
example. Every year they’ll either have the Jamie Farr or
the U.S. Senior Open at Inverness. That’s all on Dorr
Street. This is an awesome event. It’s a national,
international event. But the thing is that the hundreds of
volunteers are volunteers from all walks of life, from all
stations. But they come together each and every year to put
on this grand spectacle that has never ceased to amaze or
fail. Every year this happens.
And everybody that’s involved
does not attend the same church. They don’t attend - - not
the same politics, not the same club, or race or anything
like that. We can do the same. But, I’m a firm believer
that us in religion, we’ve taken on the attitude that it’s a
competitive business now. It has nothing to do with saving
souls. It has everything to do with marketing and one
upsmanship. And that pits us against each other.
Perryman:
Well, the competitiveness of churches and houses of worship
is an intriguing topic. And this comes particularly at a
time when more and more people are not affiliated with any
religious institution, so that makes the competition even
that much fierce. And at the same time, there’s been a
distancing between the poor and the black church because of
that cultural and generational disconnect that you talked
about earlier, where today’s young people don’t feel
comfortable because of a conflict in the cultural norms
between young folk and previous generations. And also the
inner city is changing demographically as far as race.
Muhammad:
That’s correct.
Perryman:
In addition, the inner city is becoming more ethnically
diverse than it has been in the past. So you make an
excellent point as how do - - we instead of cannibalizing
one another, how do we go out and bring in those others who
are either poor and overlooked or who are unchurched?
Muhammad:
I think one of the things that we have to do is each church
or mosque has to have a product that they have the capacity
to deliver. For 27 or so years, we’ve had a youth program
called SETT, Self Expression Teen Theater. Our minister has
founded the program, and for years it wouldn’t be a Nation
of Islam program, but it was a program that a lot of us in
the mosques that were certified and had the capacity to
offer the community at little to no cost, and we were known
for that. We have a vehicle.
So regardless if the people
joined the mosque or not, at least they knew that we were
serving young people and their family. And in order to
reach out to the unchurched, we have to provide something to
them that they can use. Otherwise, we’ll be within the four
walls of our mosques and our church, and we’ll be talking
about this. We’ll be saying, well, they know where we are.
It’s up to them. No. It’s us that have been enlightened.
It’s us that have been saved. We’re able to go out there
with something, not just with Jesus, not just with Muhammad,
going out with - - and I tell this to the guys in the
barbershop.
Sometimes we do ourselves a
disservice by walking into the barbershop, telling somebody
that they need Muhammad. I don’t know anything about them.
I don’t know their family. I don’t know their name. I
don’t know their family makeup or anything about them, but
I’m telling them that they need something. That’s like
going to a doctor, and before you even talk to him, he
writes you out a prescription.
Perryman:
You’ve got a diagnosis and a prognosis without even
examining them.
Muhammad:
Right. And it’s arrogance on our part to do that without
even knowing, and it’s a turn-off to everybody that we
engage, and I’ve sold myself in there because I’ve learned
that that doesn’t work. And all it does is it feeds my ego
because I can talk about my God. I can talk about my Lord.
And I recognize that they may not know about my Lord and my
God, but I leave out of there feeling good because I
seemingly have taught somebody, I may have even insulted
them or told them where they’re going to go after they’re
dead. But we end up leaving the people even broken, more
broken. We end up leaving the people more discouraged and
more unlikely to join a church. But you got to have
something to offer them that they can relate to, a product
that can be simple but culturally specific and something
that is sustainable by the church.
Perryman:
Well, provide me with some program details for
#blacklivesmatter418. Who’s going to be there? What young
people are going to be there? And who is the makeup of your
group? Are they university students, community residents?
Muhammad:
Well, it started out as for the Community Solidarity
Response Network of Toledo. It started out as a group of
college students. However, some of the professors and some
of the colleges learned about what they were doing, and they
joined on. Some of the friends of the professors that
noticed what we were doing have joined on. Some blacks in
Toledo that have always been socially conscious but never
had the right vehicle to participate in ongoing activities,
they found out. So we ended up having a group of people
that really don’t look like activists of years past.
When you think about Black
Lives Matter, what automatically should come up in my head
is a group of angry black people, and that’s what comes up.
Right. And I still have to fight against that, the gravity
of stupidity. I still have to do that, so I’m not too far
from that. But what ended up happening is because of the -
- I think that it’s also a spiritual thing because of whom
it attracts when you say Black Lives Matter. And more
people want to help. They don’t want to lead, so maybe some
of the whites want to help. They don’t want to lead. Some
of the whites who would love to be with us in our prayer
meeting, that’s fine, but they don’t want to lead, and
that’s okay. But it’s just an interesting collective of
concerned people.
On that day, of course, I
will be speaking and a lot of our cultural community,
artistic community, is going to be well represented there.
But we’re taking a different approach, too, when we talk
about Black Lives Matter because it normally centers around
police brutality. But I was talking with the young people.
When you talk about black lives, we have so many - - there’s
so many institutions that affect us, so we’re going to be
speaking not only on law enforcement, but on education.
That’s an important component to the black community.
Economics, that’s very
important. Health - - that’s important in our youth. Those
things are very important. So when you say Black Lives
Matter, that just doesn’t mean stick it to the cops. No.
There are many other things that are in play in the lives of
black people in many different domains, for those of us that
work, for those of us that are in school, those of us that
are just active in the community, those of us within the
church structure. Those are all different domains that we
either play or socialize in that make up who we are, and all
those institutions and systems affect what we do. So we
just can’t say Black Lives Matter just leave it at speaking
about the police.
So we end up taking a
different spin on that to make it our own rather than
looking at what’s happening in Ferguson and imitating what
they do. That’s fine for them, but Toledo is a different
animal all itself. We’re not going to be blocking traffic
here. We’re not going to be walking into the police station
here. We’re not going to be occupying city council here.
We don’t have a history of doing that, so we’re not going to
get in front of ourselves with things that we know will not
work for Toledo, and it will end up being aggressive.
You don’t want to be the
aggressor. You always want to be the person that’s saying
things that are built on principle. Just us showing up
together is a threat enough. So you don’t have to sell any
wolf tickets. The fact that we’re showing up in unity is
enough. I don’t have to say those extra things that I end
up having to come back and apologize for.
Perryman:
Thank you.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org |
