Sweet Potato Pie and I'll Shut My Mouth

Back in October I baked two fabulous sweet potato pies and took them to a dinner as part of a Race, Religion, and BBQ series of conversations coordinated by our pastor.  The pies were excellent, perhaps the best I have ever baked.  (Our pastor walked outside to where I was eating that night to inform me that he didn't like pumpkin pie, and that was the best pumpkin pie he'd ever eaten, someone else raved about the on Facebook the next day, and the Mister liked them better than all of the [very tasty] pecan and chocolate pies baked with students a few weeks later).

The whole time I was baking them, I had a line from Alabama Song of the South stuck in my head: "Song, song, of the South, sweet potato pie and I'll shut my mouth" and all fall I thought I was going to eloquently write about race and racism; and about sweet potato pie, misplaced pride, and shutting up. 

Today I met with some of the same people from the discussions to march in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Oklahoma City.  We intended to march with the Black Lives Matter organization, but ended up with representatives of several churches with Black Lives Matters signs.  It was bitterly cold with a north wind and the too-long parade route was not lined with people waving at the floats and the bands-- mostly just participants who had already marched the distance and were returning to the start.  I still don't have the right words to say about racism.  I hope that being there, that taking Aster and Dianthus and talking about the legacy of King, in itself says something, and that something is hopeful.

I will tell my students, all my students, from families from all over the world, that they are valued in my classroom tomorrow.

I will let you know that not all are being silent-- from the expected (you can listen to David Wheeler's pre-MLK Day sermon here, and more from "badass preacher lady" Elizabeth Hagan here), to the less so (my friend J, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, in the midst of chemo-induced anemia, posting how about the great people she's worked with-- abroad and as immigrants: my friend D has had to speak up in support of her students learning and teaching each other ecology in Haiti [some older blog posts here]).

Let us not be silent in the face of oppression. Yet if our words might further injustice, why, perhaps we should just take that pie and shut our mouths.