Time to Relax

Recently our brother Don Imus, in responding to people who were offended by racist comments he and a colleague recently made on his radio show, counsels that they “relax.”

I completely agree with him. We should all relax. Especially those people of color who take offense at apparently racist comments directed towards them. They should give the European American the benefit of the doubt. Why act so impulsively, with a knee-jerk reaction every time someone calls you, or your wives, or your daughters ,“nappy-headed hos”? Relax. That’s what the doctor says whenever an unpleasant procedure is about to begin. Now this won’t hurt a bit. Just relax.

This blog is called Redwood Forest because it is the best place to share thoughts about difficult subjects like race. In the forest we are surrounded by powerful, ancient living beings that remind us, in their musky perfume, in the shadows they cast from heights beyond the arched ceilings of any cathedral or mosque, of the spiritual reality within everything. We are reminded of the Native Americans who have populated these forests and who follow a deeply spiritual path. Here we breathe, and we relax.

Wouldn’t Don Imus love to do his show from the midst of the redwoods? Wouldn’t that change his show? But then perhaps he would lose listeners, customers, revenue. In which case his sponsors and business managers would become all too nervous. They couldn’t relax. And then comes the knock-out argument, the checkmate: “If I stand against racism I may lose listeners. And if I lose listeners I may lose the show and it will be given to someone else. So if I don’t do this racism, someone else will. Might as well get used to it. Relax.”

Sounds like the accusers of witches: If I don’t accuse Martha Higgenbotham of consorting with the devil, someone else will, and her property will fall to him and not me.

The witch hunts are over. Time for a new kind of radio show, a new culture. Women are rising. Native Americans are rising. African Americans are rising. Funny thing about people rising in this day and age: they bring everybody up with them. So why get upset about it?

Relax, Don.