 Welcome everyone to the special event during Mission Week 2021 here at Marquette University. It's really wonderful to have everyone here on our campus and in our community, everyone who has been able to join us for a very, what I believe will be a very, very special event. It is my honor to welcome you to this particular event and to get things going. One of the things I want to remind all of you, and this is just a technical matter, and that is to encourage you to like this event and share this video whenever and where you can. While we're on and afterwards, come back and share the video with your friends because we are in for a special treat tonight. I want to acknowledge everyone who's worked very hard on this. We have a committee of people that I've had the pleasure of working with Dean Janice Welburn at the library who chairs an event that brings together the campus community for a celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And we typically try to couple that with a talk given by a distinguished person from our world who understands and knows Dr. King and the civil rights movement and frankly the whole black freedom movement in this country. And so we've been very fortunate over the years to have a number of wonderful people. So I'd like to thank that group. I'd like to thank Mission and Ministry and in particular Bridget Alba for all the work that they have done here. And I'd like to encourage, hold on, and I'd like to encourage all of you to get in the frame of mind around what we are doing tonight. And I think the way I'd like to do that is to just open with a moment for you to think and reflect on this evening and the way to do that. The way I want to encourage you to do it is that we're all very fortunate to be in a home somewhere to be somewhere in a warm place on a very cold night Milwaukee. We're fortunate to be in a place to watch this event and be a part of it. We also know that there are people in our own city who don't have those places to be who struggle, not only with homelessness but with eviction, with not having enough of the basic essentials of human life. And it's for those people I encourage all of us to just take a moment to reflect on just 10 seconds and just think about them. Toward the end of a poem, and I offer this as a prayer, that Pauli Murray wrote called Prophecy. She said this, I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness. I have been slain, but live on in the rivers of history. I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge. I seek only discovery of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being. And now I'd like to turn this evening over to Keisha Martin. Keisha Martin is a doctoral student in the philosophy department here at Marquette, and she will introduce our evening's guest. Thank you. Good evening everyone. This evening I have the pleasure of introducing Professor Brian Massingill. So Father Massingill is regarded as one of the world's leading Catholic social ethicists and scholars of African American theology ethics, racial justice and liberation theology. He's currently the James and Nancy Botman Professor of Theological Social Ethics at Fordham University. Prior to his appointment for them, he was here at Marquette University in the Department of Theology. He's a past convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium and a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of North America. He's a member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics, and he serves on the editorial board of the Theological Studies. He has also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Moral Theology and the Journal of Society of Christian Ethics. He's a member and a past contributor of the North American Regional Committee of the Catholic Theological Ethics in World Church Project. Dr. Massingill is the recipient of four honorary doctorates, and he has held the Bernard Jane Hanley Chair at Santa Clara University. While he was here at Marquette, he received the university's highest award for teaching excellence in 2009. He's a noted authority on issues of social and racial justice, having written over 80 articles, books and book reviews. He's the author of two books, a charge where Black Lives Matter and racial justice and the Catholic Church. We're very honored to have him here tonight. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Keisha, for that wonderful introduction and thank you, Dr. Welburn, for the invitation to be here with the Marquette community tonight. It's good to be with you. It's good to be back home. I'm a priest of Milwaukee. I'm a Marquette alum class of 79. I've taught at Marquette for 10 years from 2006 to 2016. Shout out to all of my former colleagues in theology and in African-American studies. Marquette has a very special place in my heart, and so it's good to be back home. And it's good to be with you as you celebrate Mission Week and with its theme of being open to hope. And we see with a logo, this kind of vision for a new creation, a new society, this openness to hope. I want to talk about this openness to hope tonight, especially from the African-American experience. And so I've chosen for the theme, redeeming the soul of America, hope or delusion. It's inspired by a classic poem by Langston Hughes called Harlem, or better known from its first line, A Dream Deferred. He asked the haunting question, what happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore and then run? Think like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Or maybe it just sags like a heavy load? Or does it explode? Dreams deferred, postponed, denied, delayed, frustrated. Langston Hughes raises the haunting question, what does it mean to hope in an elusive dream? How does one hold out hope when hope is frustrated, when hope is denied? We gather in the midst of an unprecedented movement and reckoning for racial justice. But is this a dream deferred? And how does one hold hope in the midst of our agitation, our dreaming, our visioning, our longing, our yearning for a more just world? Those are the questions I want to explore, but I know that there are people who are here, especially students who are here, kind of under the bribe of you get extra credit if you write a reflection on Father Massingale's talk. So if you're in that category, this is your slide, okay? This is the beginning, the middle, the end. This is the outline for your reflection paper. And you can put it in the chat. Thank you, Father, for doing this. Okay. So what I want to do is I want to first talk about Martin Luther King and what he meant by this phrase of redeeming the soul of America. And then I want to look at the ambivalent soul of America and look at some recent events that show the haunting ambivalence that America has had when it comes to the pursuit or commitment to racial justice. Then I want to look at King's vision for justice work, a vision that can inform our justice work when he spoke of the great world house and being a citizen of the world. And then I want to turn to the Catholic tradition and raise how might we heal racial divisions and what do we mean by healing? And they conclude with an invitation and a challenge to hope. So I realize that some of us are Zoom weary, which is the reason why that wonderful cartoon is there, but also for those of who need to know there's a beginning and middle and end. Here's the outline I want to talk about. Make these five points in your paper and I guarantee you get extra credit in your course. So with that now, let's move on. The soul of a nation to redeem the soul of America. We often tell the story of the civil rights movement and the King story in a very truncated way. We describe the story as the effort to overturn the visible badges of racial segregation and forced separation and humiliation that stained the nation during the Jim Crow era, an era that lasted over 91 years from 1877 till 1968. The story of King's work to overturn that kind of racial regime of humiliation in the south. Notice how we always say it's in the south where things were bad. It's a very comfortable story of where the obvious good got with obvious good guys and obvious bad guys. And it's a good feel good story because in this case the good good guys win. And that humiliation becomes triumphant. As it turns the page on a very tragic racial story. But that's not what King's vision was all about. King's vision was a much deeper than dealing with the external badges of racial humiliation and racial superiority. The signature model of his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference adopted the model to redeem the soul of America. King saw the civil rights movement as being more concerned with just dealing with the external institutions and laws and customs and policies of racial humiliation and racial superiority. Such laws were merely the external signs of a much deeper reality and malady that needed to be addressed for the source for the sake of social transformation. King wanted to deal with the soul of a society. That set of meanings and values that informs a people's way of life. A Catholic philosopher named Bernard Lonergan said that culture is to society as the soul is to the body. And so King realized that unless we interrogated the soul of a society, then what we can exchange we can change all the external institutions laws and customs, but they would simply get new expression, because the underlying soul that animated the previous ones was left unchallenged and unchained. King's insight was that just as persons have souls, so do human communities. By the soul of a nation, King meant the animating essence or center of a group or person. The soul was not primarily a way of acting but a way of being. It describes what affects a person or groups decisions or behaviors, what motivates their understandings of law and literature and time and art. The soul is more than simply the externals of a society. So reform refers to the set of fundamental meanings and values that informs that people's way of life. And King's insight was that without deep soul change without what he called a revolution of values. The underlying soul would simply find expression in new laws and new social customs. So redeem the soul of America. The deepest import of the civil rights movement was not simply social transformation, but soul transformation is fundamentally transform and to interrogate and challenge the fundamental values that gave rise to unjust social practices. With this understanding what it means to redeem the soul of America and note that King said to redeem the soul of America far long before Joe Biden made it a part of his campaign slogan to heal the soul of America. With that understanding of redeeming the soul, let's then look at America's soul. Let's try to uncover the fundamental system of meanings and values that gives expression to our external divisions. I want to call to mind several events of simply the past year that give evidence of an inner soul distress and inner soul sickness in our society. First, COVID. We were talking before we went live among the organizers that next month will mark a year of us living with the scourge of this pandemic. But from the very beginning of this pandemic, COVID was not an equalizer but an exacerbator. In other words, while all human communities are vulnerable, we are not equally vulnerable in Milwaukee, Chicago, Michigan, Louisiana throughout the United States from the very beginning. We saw persons of color and especially African Americans being vastly disproportionately infected and affected by this disease affected most severely by overrepresentation in those who have died. Similar reports were from Native reservations. And yet this is an incomplete picture because many localities don't even record the race or ethnicity of those who are infected and affected by this pandemic. And even now, even as we rejoice that there are vaccines that are now becoming available, we also know that that vaccine is not being equally or equity distributed. And that persons of color continue to be adversely impacted even by the disease, even by the measures that can be used to attenuate the disease, the diseases course. We've also seen our undocumented farm workers, the least among us, the least paid, the least prestigious, the least respected are now considered essential, and yet they are also most at risk. But it also exacerbated racial tensions among us as Asian hate crimes have spiked in our country, build on by irresponsible politicians who continue to insist despite all the evidence of silence of science by calling this disease the Chinese or Wuhan virus. Here is also seen a reckoning with with the with the scourge of racial injustice in our society through high profile deaths. The deaths of people such as armored Arbery, who was killed while jogging stopped by three men, one with a law enforcement background were only arrested after public protest and 74 days after his murder. In particular, an EMT first responder killed by police when they arrived at the wrong address to serve a no knock arrest warrant. Christian Cooper, with something that was dear to my heart since I live only two blocks from Central City, who was reported to 911 by a white woman who took offense merely because he politely asked her to comply with Post-it Park regulations to and he threatened, she threatened, I'm going to call the police and say that a black man is threatening me and carrying carried out that threat, knowing full well what it would mean for a black man reported to the police for stalking a white woman. The murder of George Floyd an event that many of us saw over and over again it was played out over on our screens, killed by a police officer who knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, despite the desperate pleas upon workers and his own anguish cries. I can't breathe. Omar Jimenez, who was arrested in Minneapolis on air a CNN black Latino CNN reporter arrested on air or reported on the book to protest in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd, while a white CNN reporter doing the same thing at the same time in the same neighborhood was treated as consummate politeness. Even his white colleagues on air and CNN struggled with with not saying the obvious and that is the only difference between the two reporters was the color of their skin. Another to home in Milwaukee, Jacob Blake being shot by the police seven times in the back in front of his three sons ages three five and seven on one of their birthday. He was released from the waist down, interviewed in the hospital with words, it hurts to breathe. These and many other such events in our society where African Americans have had their breath taken from them have led to new levels of white acceptance for the black lives matter One of the hallmarks of the summer's protest was that in contrast to similar protests in years, years past, these were multi racial monkey ethnic protests. The black lives matter movement received over a 60% approval rating from white Americans as high as that it's ever been. There were also new levels of anti white backlash and violence, where black lives matter protesters were violently interrupted by people driving vehicles on into the protests, or when black lives matter, matter decals are in logos and streets were defaced by by by whites. All of this division and violence and tension comes to a head when we get into the election of 2020. No other event points out how deeply divided we are the stark reality of our divisions as seen in the in the reactions to the outcome of the election, where one group of Americans held the outcome with relief and jubilation. While another greeted the outcome with dismay and outrage. But even here, the political divide is a racial divide. When we look at those who voted for Biden and Harris, we see that they're composed of 87% of black voters, the support of over 66% of Latinx voters of 63% of Asian voters, which is almost the mirror image of what we see on the other side. Where Trump and Pence received over 68% of the white Christian vote, 80% of white evangelicals, the support of 57% of white Catholics, which was an increase of 3 percentage points over the 2016 election. In other words, the country is divided, but white Americans are not. We see that we see not only the support of the majority of white Americans for the Trump pens ticket, but these are super majorities that Trump's base is what is always been a white Christian base. And we need to be clear about this, that the support for the former president was not motivated by his supposed stances on abortion or religious liberty. When we look at his closing arguments that he made for reelection and his rallies, he didn't talk about abortion, he didn't talk about religious liberty, he didn't talk about his response to COVID. He basically talked about illegals and the need to protect our suburbs from violent urban menace. In other words, the core of Trump's support has always rested in an open appeal to nativism, racism, and white racial grievance and fear. White fears motivated by the by unease over the changing face of America. That America's complexion is browning. And that we're no longer an indisputably white Christian nation. And many white Christians are nervous, anxious, upset, and angry. Given this, the events of January 6 are not only unsurprising, but indeed they are inevitable, even inexorable. One of the iconic images from January 6 was of the Confederate flag being paraded through the halls of the US Capitol, an event that didn't even take place during the Civil War. But that Confederate flag was not there by accident. The Confederate flag was also a prominent fixture in during the former president's campaign rally, as well as the undercurrent of violence that was that was there. And as the invoke told people to invoke their second invoke second amendment solutions and told proud boy gangs to stand by. What we see is something that the political philosopher cordy alva stated in 1992, and that I quoted in my 2010 book on racial justice in the Catholic church. That racism is a powerful threat to our democracy. He wrote, my biggest fear as this nation moves into an inevitable browning is that there will be a very powerful minority overwhelmingly composed of Euro Americans, who will see themselves in danger as a consequence of how democracy works. They will never take all. And they will begin to renege on some of the basic principles that created the United States and made it what it is. Those words are prescient. And now we see them coming to coming into play in ways that are violently starkly clear. Why this reneging. Why this ambivalent response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Why the stark disparity in the impact of the COVID pandemic. King says that this is due to the deep ambivalence in America's soul. That the country has never made a commitment to racial equality. Writing in 1967 in his final book where do we go from here. He said, I quote here, Negro and white have a fundamentally different definition of equality. For most whites, equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically prepared to close the gap between white and black and persons of color. Essentially, it seeks only to make that gap less painful and less obvious, but in most respects to retain it. And the big ambivalence is that the country has never been committed to racial equality. It's been committed to simply racial improvement. Making the gap, less painful, less obvious, but never committed committing itself to eradicating it. He says then describing the soul sickness of the country. He says the great majority of Americans are suspended between opposing attitudes. Most Americans are not actively racist. They're also not actively anti racist. They are as he says, uneasy with injustice. But unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it. This is the reason why the dream of racial justice has been a dream deferred in American life. Because of the deep and racial ambivalence in America soul. Torn between being actively racist and actively anti racist. Torn between being uneasy with injustice. But unwilling to pay a significant price to eradicate it. If that price is too costly, either materially, or spiritually. He says then clarifies that our ambivalence has a deep cost. He says, and this is a little noted speech from 1967 that he gave and held the three evils of society. Paranthetically, this is why we need to study Martin Luther King. We can't stop in 1963 with the I've ever dreamed speech. We need to read the later King as well as the later King talks speaks to crises and issues that we've still have unresolved in our society. We're talking about the reasons for the decline and fall of past civilizations and how the decline and fall past civilizations wasn't caused by external invasion, but by internal decay. This is concluded. If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism. Some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died, because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all. If we are not serious about redeeming the soul of America. If we are not serious about addressing the fundamental racial ambivalence that's deep in the American soul. King warns that our civilization will die and the events of January 6 show that this is not a rhetorical flourish. Nor is it the simple idealistic murmurings of a spiritual Baptist preacher. So what vision can we offer for healing a fractured society. King at the end of his life offered a vision. A vision that he would say that if adopted any American soul would lead it beyond the impasse of constant improvement substituting for genuine equality. He called that vision, the great world house. He said in this last book 1967 where we go from here chaos or community. He said, we have inherited we the human race have inherited a large house, a great world house in which we have to live together. Black and white, Easterner and westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant Muslim and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, cultures and interests, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace. This image of the great world house, a world where people are different but differences aren't a cause of division or suspicion. This was the vision that King offered toward the end of his ministry that the nation and indeed the world had to adopt, if indeed was going to survive. He spoke that of being a great world house means that we have to become a citizen of the world. In his address, and one of his final addresses, he said if we're going to have peace on earth, our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation. We must develop a world perspective. We cannot simply be loyal to our race or our tribal or class divisions or our class identities rather and expect to live in peace. And then King was explicit about how we actualize this great world house, how do we become a citizen of the world. But in order to actualize that vision, we have to, we have to have an internal struggle, a compromising commitment to overcome what he called the triplets of evil, racial injustice, economic exploitation or poverty, and war and militarism. We saw these evils as so interrelated and so intertwined that to have an effective struggle against any single one of them meant that one had to simultaneously engage the others as well. It is only by having a simultaneous engage deep soul down commitment to overcoming racial injustice, economic exploitation and war. We can then be moved to actualizing this vision of this great world house, being a citizen of the world, creating human beings, whose loyalties transcend the boundaries of race and tribe and class and nation. And he was insistent that this dream is not simply an idealistic pie in a skydream actualizing this vision was essential for the survival of the human race. As he often said in words that we treat with a total rhetorical flourish, but it really are deeply profoundly realistic. He said, we must learn to live together as sisters and brothers, or we will perish together as fools. That's easy to say, but how do we do this? How do we heal the racial divisions? What can be a way forward in toward healing the American soul? How do we address the deep divisions that we see played out in our politics in our society, divisions that at their core reflect unresolved racial divisions. We hear a lot of talk today about unity and healing and coming together. But we have to understand this, there can be no genuine reconciliation without a commitment to justice. Without that, healing becomes simply another word for let's move on. Let's bury the issue. Let's settle for calm instead of deep change. Without a commitment to justice, then we simply paper over our divisions. But we do not fundamentally address them. And then we dare to act surprised when they explode again in our faces. And then can we do, what process can we offer for this kind of genuine reconciliation? Well, since I'm a Catholic priest, and since Marquette is a Jesuit Catholic university, I decided to put this in Catholic language by talking about the sacrament of penance, the sacrament of reconciliation. But at the structure of that sacrament, it gives us a powerful blueprint for how we can move forward in addressing the nation's nation's racial divisions. The first step in the sacrament is that begins with an examination of conscience. It's a moment of honest truth telling. We have to have a searching, thorough examination of where we have failed. As we say in our in the Catholic right by what we have done and by what we have failed to do. We have to name where we've been responsible by commission and omission, how we have allowed racial divisions to fester. And it's not enough to say, well, I didn't do it. We also sin by our failing to act. What haven't we done, what haven't we said, that's contributed to our racial divide. The second step that is genuine contrition. We have to be sorrowful and remorse. We have to, we have to be, we have to be have to be sit in sorrow and lament, and in regret. One of the reasons why the country has never had a sincere commitment to racial justice is that it's never human genuinely sorry over what's happened. We move too quickly to, let's get it over with let's get behind us, rather than sitting in the discomfort of genuine contrition and sorrow. The next step in the sacrament of penance is confession. It's a public acknowledgement and ownership of responsibility and complicity. People often say the Catholic Catholic often say well, why can't I just you know confess my sense the God why to go to an intermediary. And that's a good question in one sense, but I think there's a great wisdom in saying that we really never move beyond our, our faults, unless we have to publicly acknowledge them. And where public offense has been given public acknowledgement of that offense is necessary for healing. The next step in the sacrament of reconciliation of penance is the act of penance and purpose of amendment. One takes concrete actions to heal the harm that has been done. One needs to be a purpose of amendment. One needs to have a resolve to amend one's life, and that purpose of amendment is seen in concrete acts by which you heal the harm that's been done. The Catholics of a given age such as myself when we were, you know, when preparing for first confession, we were told that if you stole something that absolution was contingent upon making restitution returning what was stolen. We were told that we lied and harm someone's name, harm someone's good name that record that reconciliation or absolution was contingent upon, you know, telling the truth, and upon doing once best to write the harm that one did by one's lies. In other words, the wisdom of the sacrament and I quote here from the writer penance itself it says that quote true conversion is completed by amendment of conduct and by the reparation of injury. How does one demonstrate true conversion by taking concrete action to heal the harm that's been done, or as the US Bishop say in their document economic justice, social harm calls for social relief. And that then leads to the final step where there's a proclamation of praise, which is a resolution for a new beginning and walking together that follows after this searching honest truth telling genuine contrition, public acknowledgement of responsibility and complicity concrete action to repair the harm that's been done. And then one can speak of genuine reconciliation and a new beginning. What do we take away from all of this healing is possible. Healing is possible, but it requires an intentional commitment to engage the racial division and to engage its causes. Healing is not about let's move on let's forgive and forget, don't make me feel bad. No. And what the tradition is that genuine reconciliation requires sitting in the discomfort of contrition and remorse, and requires honest acceptance of responsibility, complicity, and a firm commitment to do better. I often ask me when I give talks like this. Well, how can I talk about this in my institution in my classroom with my students and not make people feel bad. And I say, well, let's be honest here you don't want to make white people feel bad. We don't want to interrogate that because when we when we say that then what we're saying is that we want to discount discount the discomfort, the real pain the real fear the real terror, the people of color experience by living in a racist society. But unless we're willing to say and name uncomfortable truths, then we will never heal our racial divisions. The original wisdom of the Catholic tradition is profoundly relevant for our cause and our need today. Honest truth telling sincere contrition public acknowledgement. And then concrete action of reparation and repair. But now that leads me back to my beginning. It's really a dream deferred. Where is the hope. If I were giving this in the varsity theater, I would have everyone turn to each other and say, it ain't going to be easy. It ain't going to be easy difficulties and struggles are part of life in the spirit. The future we need to go, it will not be painless. It will take struggle, and we need to have hope. But let's be clear what we mean by hope. The mission week this year is being open to hope. What exactly is hope. The basic concept of hope is that there is something that lies between an undesired present on one hand, and a desired future. And on the roll to the desired future here being an end to racism, there are formidable obstacles and challenges to the realization of that future. Hope comes into play when we long for a desired future, but we long for that future in the face of formidable obstacles and challenges. This is the class of the classic way of expressing this is the is the phrasing that hope is that what sustains us in the pursuit of an arduous good. Meaning that there are formidable obstacles and challenges to its realization. A definition of hope that I find compelling is the one given by Baclav Havel, the Czech poet and playwright who was the first president of the Czech Republic, where he says that hope is that orientation of the human spirit that sustains one in the quest for a non guaranteed future in the face of formidable obstacles. The key word being a non guaranteed future. If the future is a certain realization you don't have to hope for it. If our university theater right now I dropped this pen to the ground, and I would say, look, I don't have to hope that if I drop the pen it'll fall to the ground. I know it's going to happen. There's no need to hope. Hope comes into play when we have to work for a non guaranteed future. What sustains us in a quest for a future that we long for with which not having any with this not guaranteed of certain realization. I think it's important to understand that hope is not optimism. He continues and he says that hope is not it's definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but it's the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. One way I try to explain the difference is that optimism is an American virtue. One believes that good always triumphs over evil and sooner rather than later. It's the belief in quick solutions and easy victories and tiny and tidy endings. Hope is what one sees when one turns on the TV and one looks at comedies such as blackish, which as I told the organizers I'm giving up so I can talk to you tonight. Hope is what one sees when one watches a Spider-Man movie. You know that no matter how bad things seem at the end of the movie, everything is going to be resolved. Good will always win. Hope is very different. Hope believes that good ultimately, but not always triumphs over evil. And often at a terrible cost. I understand hope as a Christian as being a Christian virtue. Good Friday was real. Jesus died. The evildoers won. Good was defeated. Hope understands that tragedy, failure, defeat and loss are real. But they are not the final words. They're not the ultimate reality. Hope is very different from optimism. Because you understand that you don't always win. And when you do it's often at a terrible cost. One way of putting it comes from a black Catholic activist of the 1960s who worked in Chicago. And he was asked once, Arthur Falls, he was asked, what sustains you? Where do you find hope in a struggle for justice? And he responded, well, when you work for justice, you don't always lose. When you work for justice, you don't always lose. That's hope. Hope is a tense reality. It's a fragile reality. It can't be proved. We can only be inspired to hope. Inspired by story, by poetry, by example. Hope is always fragile. But without hope, then where can be no real genuine struggle for justice? In the African American tradition, we say that hope is a blues hope. It's a sort of disillusionment without defeat. It's a clear uncompromising look at reality. But it's a refusal to let reality be the last word. James Baldwin, the noted African American essayist and author, toward the end of his life, he summarized hope this way. He said, I believe, I really do believe in the new Jerusalem, that celestial vision of a racially just community. I really do believe that we can all be better than we are. I know we can. But he said the price is enormous, and we are not yet willing to pay it. Not yet willing. That's the tense hope that's at the core of the African American experience. A refusal to have the door to the future be absolutely closed. Not at life realistically, but always holding out hope that good is ultimately victorious. In the African American experience, hope is seen precisely in struggle for justice. Struggle and tension in a strange way are signs of hope. Martin Luther King said that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. In such a worldview, then, when we see struggle and tension and action for justice, that actually is a sign of hope. Because it means that privilege, unjust privilege is being challenged. And that social change is being enacted. Struggle and tension is actually a sign of hope. Or as Frederick Douglass would put it, if there is no struggle, there is no progress. The struggle may be physical or moral, maybe moral and physical, but struggle is essential for progress. Social conflict, then, is ironically a sign of hope. I understand hope as being a relay race. When you run a relay race, it's not up to you to be the one that breaks the tape at the end or you cross the finish line. Rather, each runner in the race runs his or her best race for the sake of those who ran the race ahead of her, and for the sake of those who will come and run behind her. In the Black experience, hope is transgenerational. It's not what's in it for me, but what will happen someday because of me. I realized this in my own life when I realized that my ancestors, those who worked for justice before me, didn't know that I would be one day be a priest wearing a collar, speaking to an audience at Marquette. But I know that I will not be doing what I'm doing now if it weren't for the struggle and the work and the activism and the hope of those who went before me. And I do what I do now for the sake of those who come after me. We call this being sustained by the communion of saints or surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. A letter to the Hebrews in the 12th chapter. Now that we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses who've gone before us, let us press on and run the race that is before us. People like James Reeve, and by all of Lousio, and a civil rights movement. And black Catholic pioneers of justice like Sister Antona evil and Sister Thea Bowman. And we do to honor those who've gone before. And for the sake of those who come after hope is a transgenerational reality. Hope is being open to the eternal surprise that happens when people put themselves with the service of a vision which is bigger than they are. One way of issuing the invitation is to recall something I learned in that market in physics five and six it was called physics for non science majors or we called physics for dummies. The only thing I remember from that course was that bodies at rest remain at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force, why that principle of inertia made in my mind, I don't understand. But I have learned in my life that the best way to predict the future is to help create it. The invitation I offer to you and market is to be the unless that force that moves bodies at rest to be a co creator of God's just future of God's dream of God's vision for a world that is just where people of all colors and races and ethnicities live together in peace. You cannot prove hope. You can only be inspired. And therefore it's carried off and invest by poetry. I end with words of hope and challenge that were issued by Amanda Gorman. Last month, when she gave the inaugural poem at the president's inauguration. Her poem called to build as we climb talks about our deep divisions, but it ends on this note of hope and challenge. A hope and challenge I pray we all embrace. She writes, we will rebuild reconcile and recover and every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country. Our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it for there is always light. If only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it. If I were in the varsity theater, I would say, let the church say amen to which we would all respond. Amen. Father Madison, thank you so much for your words this evening. I feel like I just read an entire book, you know, and with some, you know, supernatural speed, because there was so much in there that it would otherwise take me a long time to read. I really, really enjoyed what you had to say, and I just wanted to kind of open things up there. There are a number of questions that I could ask. But I really wanted you to expand a little bit more on the fragility of hope. And this idea that of hope as being non guarantee, because that was really kind of enlightening. I mean, I think we do tend to think of hope and optimism as one. And so if we look at the civil rights movement, for example, we're often thinking of it in terms of the failure of the civil rights movement is the failure of hope. Can you talk a little bit about that? What you might, what your thoughts are on that? Okay. Yeah, I think that hope is a very fragile thing because it's something that cannot be proven, but hope is also that thing which is intangible yet real. And it's something that sustains people, even when we talk about the failure of the civil rights movement. Well, failure in what way? Okay. Martin Luther King himself said that the greatest victory of the civil rights movement wasn't something external but something internal. He said it was the belief in the oppressed and the belief in black people in their own dignity, in their own worth, in their own value. And he said that an oppressed people that learn to straighten up, straighten their backs and to walk upright. And that a man can't ride you when you're walking upright. And I think that that's something that is something which is really important to understand. I mean, I'm a child of the 1960s and I remember being alive when the slogan black is beautiful was controversial, even in the black community. And yet now we can say that and it's un, it's unremarkable. We take it for granted. That was an achievement of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement wasn't just simply about exchanging changing external laws remember the black arts movement was also part of the civil rights movement. We had a flowering of black literature and black history, and all of those are ways of cultural production and change. And that in the one sense, we would not have a black lives matter movement, if it weren't for the civil rights movement, that all of these movements, the value black lives have been constant in our history, and they're carried precisely by hope. And hope refuses to accept the present reality as being a final reality. It accepts it is real but it's accepted but it accepts that reality is saying, but this is not the way I have this is not the reality I'm going to work to change things. Angela Davis is quoted saying that rather than praying for the grace to accept the things I cannot change. I'm praying for the grace to change the things I cannot accept. That to me is what hope is about and it is fragile. And that's why it's carried in community. I think we as Americans want to think that we have to be lone rangers in our pursuit of hope. Hope is always carried in community because the community lifts me up when I do feel hopeless. I mean there's always the struggle against despair. It's also real in communities of the oppressed. And that's why the community needs to be the carrier of hope to metaphor and dream and poetry and song. Okay, so here's my question right I'm fascinated by cases like the Central Park case and barbecue Becky, because those cases to me are more germane to the question of racism. So when, when the police shoot someone we blame the structure right, we talk about structural racism, but I think racism at its core is personal. Right. And so here's my question. Does harping on this notion of structural racism, allow us in some way to advocate or personal moral responsibility that we have to each other. And how do we change that narrative. Okay, I think we have to understand what we mean by structural racism. I think your questions are very good when I'm glad you brought the Central Park case because I'm fascinated by that case to. And in fact I wrote an article and actually have to report her this last major essay talking about the assumptions of whiteness. And what I pointed out was that Amy Cooper the white woman in that episode. She was by all, you know, accounts, a good person. Okay, they pointed out that she voted for Hillary Clinton that you know that she was, she was a good person but yet in a moment where she was confronted by a black person. She reverted and had, you know, words that could have been written by the KKK. I think what's important to understand is not just personal versus structural. It's a matter of the person being formed by the social structure. In other words, she is not an aberration from American society she is formed in American society. And what's the plan when I point out in my in that essay is that she knew what she was doing. And the thing is we all know what she was doing. The views academic language, the situation was totally legible we could all read what was going on there. And why can we all read and understand what was going on there. It's because we know how race works in America, even when we don't want to admit that we know it. So, as I point on that in an essay, she knew how the police would read the situation. She knew that that if it came down to her word versus his that she will be given the benefit of the doubt. She knew all of that. And how did she know that not because someone sat down and gave her, you know, racism 101. She knew that by being formed in the racial ethos of American society. And so she knew that narrative was there, and she admitted she didn't even think about it. She didn't have to think about it. And that's when we're talking about personal accountability I think one of the things that we have to be clear about I think this is something that's very difficult for white Americans to own, and that is, at some deep level, they have been malformed and deformed by the racist ethos of American society. And so it means therefore a personal struggle to own one's own personal malformation and not to run away from it. Or not to say, well, you know, I'm not racist or I never use the N word. Okay, fine, good, I'm happy about that. But that doesn't mean you're anti racist. And that doesn't mean that you've not interrogated what deep racial myths that you have accepted, even if unconsciously. And I said that, you know, authentic reconciliation begins with an honest examination of conscience. So it's a matter of not personal versus structural but seeing how persons are deeply informed by our structure, and we carry that malformed malformed conscience consciousness with us. And we act out of it in very disturbing ways and often under pressure. That's when it all comes rising to the surface. And so, so yeah, so I don't mean to say that structural racism gets the person out of, you know, the integration of personal responsibility. I think it's a way of talking about personal accountability, even if one is not directly causally responsible. I think we have a question in the chat from Grant Silva. Oh, yes. Hi, Grant. Okay. Grant was a colleague of mine. I mean, I loved his. I remember Grant walking past his class is grads with classroom and philosophy where he wrote with liberation is to the Americas is the enlightenment is to Europe. So and I saw you publish that an essay so hi Grant. So what's Grant's question. So his question is, is faith the same as hope. What you're describing strikes me as faith and the possibility of a racially just future and not hope. Hope is another way of asking people to wait for justice is it not. Oh, no, Grant, but thank you for being the philosopher and trying to draw the connection between defining terms and all that all the things that philosophers love to do okay I'm loving that. So hope is not about asking people to wait. Hope is what enables people to exercise agency and changing things. If you don't have hope that things can get better. Then you're not then you're then then you become passive. It's amazing to me and I don't mean to denigrate philosophers that I was a full I was a full I was a philosophy major at Marquette okay. Philosophy and theology major with one course shy was like psych majors of one course shy with triple major. So I have a great respect for philosophy courses and that I love philosophy better than theology when it was at Marquette, but that's another question but what one of the things I want to say though is that every social movement. Activists have to overcome the people's passivity, which is a mark of despair. I think of Harvey milk, who told LGQ Q persons. You've got to have hope you've got to give them hope. I think I'm Jesse Jackson saying you have to keep hope alive. Hope is the faith or the belief that things can get better and that's where hope, faith and hope, you know, our, you know, inseparable partners to each other. But hope is that quality that enables me to actualize what I believe is possible. And so no, I don't see hope as simply telling depressed to simply wait. I see hope is that quality, which enables me to continue to work for that non guaranteed future. Despite formidable odds. If I don't have hope, then I'm, then despair is the only logical option, and then I give up. And this is why James Baldwin would say, you can't tell the children he said the end of his life you can't tell the children that there is no hope. In other words, hope is something that every oppressed and struggling people have got to actualize and keep going and keep alive. If there's to be any possibility of realizing what one dreams of seems like a great place to close but I do have one quick question. You've been very prolific in the past year writing some very, very fascinating work. So is there a book in the future. There is a book in the future you're sounding like my publisher, my editor, who is constantly yelling at me. Like kitchen. Some of your, some of your people in the audience may realize that this past fall I had some number of health challenges was kind of put things to the side. But now that we're that I'm fully back and fully recovered. My goal now is to have a finished manuscript to my book my publisher by May, and my publisher, or this press assures me that if I can get the manuscript to in his hands by May, you can get it published in the fall so look for this coming fall that's, that's that's the next, and it's going to be basically a collection of works and essays but basically trying to answer the question. How does one do ethical reflection in era of black lives matter. Taking the faith community to account. Because I'm, I'm convinced that this is another talk another another conversation, you know, racial injustice in Dites, white Christianity, severely that white supremacy would not be able to have been created or maintained. For idolatrous forms of Christian belief. And what I want to do is to write have this collection of essays unified by naming the struggle against idolatry as being the fundamental feel political struggle of our time and struggle over. versus idolatrous faith versus authentic faith. And what does that mean. So that's the theme of what's coming forth so it's coming it's coming it's coming. It's wonderful. Well thank you I guess we should close out at this point. I don't know, Keisha if you have any last words that you want to bring in at this point. I just wanted to say thank you for that very insightful talk. Thank you for answering my question. That was amazing. Thank you. Well thank you and you're here you're a doctoral student in philosophy. Yes, and grants is my advisor. Okay, I'll tell grant to be good to you because we need more women of color doing philosophy we certainly do and I went through when I was a philosophy major in the 1970s at Marquette. In all 10 of my philosophy courses, I don't think I've read a single woman of color in philosophy. And I took a course on the philosophy of the civil rights movements I knew that there had to be something in that course would say something about a person of color. So, see you it's just an act of, that's a, your sign of hope. So, thank you. Yes, Keisha how many women of color do we have teaching in the philosophy department now. We have three and I'm very happy to say that. Oh, wow. Well, that's three more than what there's three more than we're in the philosophy department when I was a grad 35 years but you know. So, you know, it's there they're they're working on that work that you've been wanting to see. I know. No, that's that's. Well, on behalf of the Marquette community, Father Madison girls great to have you back home. It's great to hear you. You're the fire is always there. And you give us another year's worth of things to think about. I really appreciate the fact. Again, speaking on behalf of the community here. Appreciate the fact that you were willing to take this evening to be with us. And just thank you so much. And, you know, until we can see one another in person hopefully very soon. I just again want to thank you. And I want to thank everybody who tuned in. Again, stay warm. Think about all those who are out there, trying to stay warm, and we will continue to keep this hope in the fire in our belly so that we can continue to move forward. Thank you. And good night. Thank you.