THE JOURNEY CONTINUES: Guest Column by Paul Buntyn
Editor’s note: This week’s column is a continuation started last week by Pastor Paul Buntyn, founder of the Abundant Life Christian Church in San Marcos, where he served for 27 years as Pastor. Buntyn has educational degrees from Manhattan Bible Institute, Incarnate Word University and Oral Roberts University.
Mr. Lanning would like to thank Mr. Buntyn for the three articles he contributed in this series.
One of the biggest tragedies of being Black in America is how it plays on your mind. Not only do White people view Blacks with a certain superiority mind set, but Blacks, or me, viewed us, as inferior or “not as good as being White.” I witnessed how many Black singing groups would get their hair slicked down to mimic the hair styles of White counterparts.
In Harlem, my neighborhood, we were challenged to get a “process” hair style, or a Marcel, which was the same thing, but you did that at home. It was a home job, that is to straighten our hair, believing we would be more acceptable by getting as close as possible to White people, that would give us the stamp of approval. As long as my hair stay curly, I was not as acceptable to the general public, which basically meant to White folk. When that genre gets in your mind, it travels with you like a cloud you cannot see, but you know it is there. Although, I did well in school, I was always feeling that my success would not be up to par because it was a Black-populated school instead of the nice, well-facilitated school in the suburbs. Even suburban Blacks carried a superiority attitude because of the inequities between the hood rats, which I was, and Black suburbia.
When our schools would play against some of the suburban teams, whether Black or White, we had an extra flow of adrenalin, to prove they were not better than us, so trouncing them mercilessly was a pleasure.
I carried a thought that this was our plight, my rank in station in this world. That is, Whites are better and smarter than Blacks. Then when one of your respected deacons from your church Sunday school informs you that God created it that way by cursing Ham, one of Noah’s sons, that it is a punishment. So no matter how hard I tried to be treated as an equal human, it is now futile. So just take it like a man, God understands. There are church people who still believe that Blacks are a biblically-cursed race.
At 13, I started listening to Dr. MLK, and Minister Malcolm Little, better known as Malcolm X. Both messages of these Black giants influenced my thinking in a positive way. I was challenged to check out the information they were relating to people of color. It was at this point I gravitated to the term, I am a Black Man. Reinforced by famed musician James Brown, singing, “Say it loud, I am Black and I’m proud” cemented the new ideology in my heart. For the first time I truly started feeling like a proud human being who happens to be Black. I carried that notion with me in all areas I found myself. Primarily when I went to college. I could easily recognize the systemic mores of racism and recognize how to better articulate the patterns of systemic racism to both Whites and Blacks. Since I had to learn how to grow up in a system that did not favor me, us, I learned how to navigate through the residuals of the sin of slavery to help bring the minds of God’s Imago Dei, to see others as human, and not subhuman; and to help eradicate the systemic racial tension that was instigated and perpetuated by greedy, and power-hungry White people at the inception of the American experience.
We do need intense, and uncomfortable dialogue. I am open to talk to anyone that is willing to make America live up to its mission. By any means necessary. For life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And the Pledge of Allegiance: “With liberty and justice for all.” People of color have been reciting this pledge for years, living in a nation that has not lived up to its ideals of justice. Perhaps, recited in faith, believing that it will come to pass.
