trish hermanson - Home

Racial Wisdom from 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for Today

6/4/2020

That’s me at the Monroe, Alabama, courthouse that served as the inspiration for the setting of an appalling scene in the book and movie “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s where white lawyer Atticus Finch defended an innocent black man in 1930s Alabama. In that prejudiced culture, the man was found guilty of rape.
     As we search our hearts about race these days, I’m drawn back to the wisdom of Atticus. When his young daughter wrestled with discrimination, he said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
     That fits with the recent advice of African American pastor Marcus Doe from Providence Bible Church in Denver, Colorado. He says that the solution to eradicating systemic injustice is not found in gathering more voters in either major political party. “These avenues will NOT solve racism and systems of injustice in America. Political leaders are way too dull a scalpel to cut out systemic racism from the American body.”
     It takes something much harder, Doe says. “Let me urge you to find friendships with African Americans.… I urge you to pursue knowledge through reading. Read authors who are black, both male and female.”
  That’s a challenge. No matter what our race, our we willing to reach beyond our cultural comfort zone into someone else’s? As Atticus Finch said, are we willing to “climb inside of his skin and walk around in it?”

Are We the 'Fractured' States of America?

6/1/2020

What a checkered history I discovered at Fort Morgan on the shores of Alabama. I’m proud of some events that occurred here through the years, from soldiers protecting Americans from the British during the War of 1812, to their surveilling German U-boats during World War II.
     But at this same fort, the U.S. government forced more than 200 enslaved African American men, women, and children to build the citadel I’m leaning against. Then this fort became the stopping point during the relocation of 3,500 Native Americans to Oklahoma. And during the Civil War, Americans fought against Americans here.
     This outpost is a microcosm of our nation. We unite when outside forces threaten us. Yet we strip human rights from those among us and sometimes war against each other.
     No longer united, we are the “Fractured” States of America.
     What will it take to become “United” States again?
     Abraham Lincoln, quoting Jesus Christ, said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Lincoln was speaking about slavery, but the principle applies to the mutant gene of racism in our national DNA. Let’s be honest, prejudice infects all of us. I’m racist whenever I stereotype someone. Whenever I consider my race or ethnicity superior to another’s. Whenever I forget we are all made in the image of God, which is the basis for true equality.
     To root out the weed of bigotry in our country, we must first lament, then repent, then consent to God cultivating a crop of love in our souls.
     Am I willing to lament, repent, and consent?

Cudjoe "Kazoola" Is My Hero

5/29/2020

The last known survivor from the last slave ship to enter America is my hero.
     At age nineteen, Kazoola and other tribe members were captured by fellow Africans and sold to white slave traders for transport to Alabama even though the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been illegal for fifty-two years. Kazoola became Cudjoe Lewis.
     For five years, Cudjoe and his fellow Africans labored, even rebuilding Mobile’s fortifications during the Civil War. Then one day, Union forces entered the city. The Africans celebrated to the beat of a drum - they were free. But they had no way to return home.
  Cudjoe asked his former slave master for reparations of land. He refused angrily. So the former slaves pooled their resources, bought land, and established a self-governing hamlet, African Town. They were safe there from the outside world that called them “savages” and “monkeys.” They built a school. Adjacent to Cudjoe’s property and facing east toward Africa, they established Old Baptist Church.
     I’m standing by a commemorative bust of Cudjoe outside that church, where congregants still meet and where descendants of the former slaves still live in the community. A plaque encourages “all citizens of humanity” to be like the former slaves and “choose perseverance and hope in the face of tremendous adversity.”
     That’s what we need today, isn’t it? As racism rears its ugly head again and tempers boil over, can we choose perseverance and hope?
     For the sake of Cudjoe, I hope so.

How Do I Choose My Battles?

5/26/2020

Look closely, and you’ll spot me hiding in the roots of an oak tree where Confederate soldiers sought shelter after Yankees captured Fort Blakeley in Alabama. Unbeknownst to the Rebels, General Robert E. Lee had already surrendered. The Civil War was over. But because they didn’t know this, about 225 men from both sides died and 650 were injured.
     It was senseless, which is how some of the battles I engage in tend to be. Verbal battles to make sure my voice is heard. Or to get my point across. Or just to vent.
     At this last major skirmish of the Civil War, Union Brigadier General Christopher Columbus Andrews described the conflict as “picturesque and grand.” Yet it was pointless. And now as I viewed this field where soldiers died, folks in t-shirts and shorts walked dogs and pedaled bikes. Where Confederates hid in tree roots, visitors snapped photos. A bloody battleground had turned into a placid park.
     That’s something for me to keep in mind: to choose my battles carefully; to determine whether something is worth fighting over; and to consider whether I can preemptively turn a field of conflict into a pastoral setting.
  Because some battles aren’t worth fighting.

I Gave My Daughter the Predisposition for Cancer - And She Got It!

5/21/2020

I gave my daughter the predisposition for cancer - and she got it.    This is not the legacy I wanted to leave.
     Ashley was diagnosed with cancer at age thirty-seven just before the birth of her second child. My husband Duane and I ran some genetic testing to see where this propensity came from, and I learned I’m the one who passed a mutant gene on to her. So I’m the mutant, but not a ninja.
     I felt wretched and apologized to Ashley for what she is experiencing - chemo sickness, hair loss, and all the uncertainty of the future. But she graciously reminded me it wasn’t my fault. This weakness was genetically passed on to me, too.
     It’s true. We inherit our chromosomes from our ancestors, getting things like our hair and eye color.
     However, sometimes we receive crummy-zomes. It’s part of the brokenness of this world, a shattering that occurred when our first ancestors turned their backs on Goodness in the Garden of Eden, saying they wanted more.
     But there’s hope. In the first century, Paul of Tarsus wrote that this whole world - from ecology to biology - yearns to be remastered. Don’t you feel that longing in your soul for things to be made right? The great news is that the Creator has inaugurated the re-creation of everything, and we can join him in that process. Jazz great Nina Simone captured this vision in “There’s a New World Coming,” and I invite you to listen to it.