“Early in the morning, as they were passing by, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. Then Peter remembered and said to him , ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed is withered.’  Jesus replied to them, ‘Have faith in God.’  I assure you: If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.  Therefore, I tell you, all the things you pray for and ask for– believe that you have received them and you will have them.’ ” ~Mark 11.20-24

In 1926, Langston Hughes published “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” in The Nation, a weekly periodical begun in 1865 that focuses on politics and culture.  Hughes opens the essay with a conversation with a young man who doesn’t want to be a Negro poet but just a poet. Hughes surmises that the boy means ‘I want to write like a white poet’; meaning subconsciously, ‘I would like to be a white poet’; meaning behind that ‘I would like to be white’.”

Being white is the quest of this “Negro” and others like him.  Described by Hughes as those who “go to white theaters and white movies… they have at least two cars and a house ‘like white folks.’ Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any) and an Episcopal heaven.”  This is the racial mountain to be climbed by the Negro artist.

Being white, striving for the aesthetic and social appearance of whiteness is the mountain that many persons of various cultures climb each day though their rucksacks are loaded down with stereotypes.  We desire to be a part of the myth of the American Dream whose gods and goddesses are all socially colored white and whose lives are bathed in the social light. Hughes would argue that we remain in the social valley of our distinct cultures, that we support the beauty of our faces and lives as he does not describe the “Negro’s” heritage as a pinnacle or zenith of its own.

Being white is the ontological quest to be what one cannot be. It is a mountain that I refuse to climb as an artist and as a believer in Jesus Christ.  My Teacher has assured me that “If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.  Therefore, I tell you, all the things you pray for and ask for– believe that you have received them and you will have them.’ “

This morning, I speak to the racial mountain with no doubt in my heart and believing that it will happen, “Be cast into sea.” Amen.