From Pastor Bernice

   What makes me angry is...

arrogance or mean-spiritedness or abuse of power.  And when I look at the delay in the confirmation of Loretta Lynch to be our next Attorney General, it makes me angry.  Because I see all three of those traits which make me angry rolled into one.  

And why do I care, some might ask.  Or what does that have to do with our church.  Well, in the words of Dr. King, an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.  

And as a church whose core values include being multi-racial and multi-cultural I think we all should care.  Because Loretta Lynch is eminently qualified to be the Attorney General.  Because Loretta Lynch has done everything that our nation said one should do in order to succeed.  She went to the best schools and studied hard.  She worked hard for decades.   She chose a career of public service over a private law practice which would have made her wealthy.  She did not allow the fact that she was a woman, an African American woman, to deter her.  By all accounts, Loretta Lynch has lived an exemplary life both professionally and personally. There is not a single valid question about Loretta Lynch’s qualifications for the job of the nation’s highest attorney. So what happened?

Well, the official version is that the Senate could not confirm her until it finished working on an anti-human trafficking bill.  Huh?  The United States Senate can only do one thing at a time?  The members of the nation’s greatest deliberative body can only take on one task at a time? That’s like saying I can’t do hospital visits or HOPE meetings or Church Council Committee meetings because I am working on a sermon. Senate committees have multiple staff members devoted just to the business of the committee and then each Senator has staff persons.  All these great minds can only do one bill at a time?  I am sorry but I just don’t believe that.

When  think about the fact that the nominee for Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter, sailed through the Senate, I begin to wonder. When I heard that the length of the nomination process for Ms. Lynch is the same as the last seven nominees for Attorney General put together, then I have to think this is arrogance mean-spiritedness and abuse of power. 

During the hearings on Ms. Lynch’s nomination, I remember her being asked multiple times something like “Are you Eric Holder?” How offensive a question is that?  Obviously she is not Eric Holder.  A) she is a woman B) she is her own person by all accounts.  I can’t imagine anyone thinking it would be ok to ask Sen. McConnell if he was Sen. McCain or Sen. Reid.  

Now, we are all aware that there are many in Congress who don’t like President Obama and we might remember Sen. McConnell’s promise to make Mr. Obama's presidency a failure.  But this recalcitrance by the Senate leaders to bring to a vote Ms. Lynch’s nomination is not a failure of the president’s but a failure of Senate leadership.  

And …dare I say it --  it is institutional racism at its worst.  Now I don’t know what is in Senate leadership’s heart.  So I am not accusing them of personal racism.  But I am saying that when the first African American woman ever to be selected as the nation’s top attorney and it takes 55 days + for that person’s nomination to be voted on, then I have to wonder if this is not institutional racism at work, placing unnecessary blocks before her nomination.  And I have to wonder what message that sends to young black children in Ferguson and Staten Island and N. Charleston and Baltimore, and yes, Washington, DC about what happens when they follow all the rules, when they dedicate themselves to working as a public servant, when they attend the best schools and work hard for our nation.  At a time when too many African Americans across this nation are feeling more isolated and alienated from the criminal justice systems of our country, is this really the message we want to send?  That it’s all right to dis-respect an African American leader who has played by all the rules. It’s the wrong message at the wrong time.  

We used to say that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Those might be my words to our Senators.  

In Peace,

Pastor Bernice                                                                  
 
revbpjackson@ucctampabay.org