Faithful Citizenship H arold D ean T r u lear
From Fire to Frying Pan The door to the parsonage closed behind me with a heavy thud. Startled, I asked the host pastor about the sound. “We reinforced the door with steel,” he explained, “because of the drug trafficking in the neighborhood. We don’t want bullets coming through the door.” He had a good relationship with members of the “underground economy” in his community, he said, but someone might shoot at his house by mistake. Not that he’s intimidated — compared to the violence of the civil conflicts back in his native country in Central America, American drug dealers aren’t so tough. I heard similar sentiments from a street youth worker in a major American city, who came to the US from his native Israel. He had been trained in the Israeli military and had faced mortal combat in the Middle East. He found the taunts of urban thug life to be a pale comparison. Both of these adults had survived a level of community violence that relativized what they saw here. I admire their ability not only to survive that kind of violence but also to emerge from it with such a mature and courageous attitude toward bettering the neighborhoods which are home to their ministries. Their ability to turn trauma to triumph has escaped another set of immigrants who have struggled with life in their new American neighborhood. Liberian youth began coming to Southwest Philadelphia with their families in the 1990s.Those families came fleeing the terror of a civil war that displaced, maimed, and killed countless numbers of people. Southwest Philadelphia promised a better life for these families, and their numbers grew exponentially. The upheaval of a transplant would
be stressful in and of itself for young people, but many Liberian youth came with their spiritual suitcases overflowing with the trauma they’d experienced prior to their move. America offered a promise of hope and change.The results, however, added insult to injury. Interviews with Liberian American youth and their advocates in Southwest Philadelphia reveal tough treatment from those already dwelling there.The neighborhood itself had begun changing from white to African American in the ’70s and ’80s. Black families from extremely poor neighborhoods saw moving to Southwest Philly as a “step up,” and lenders were only too happy to capitalize on white flight and profit from those moving in, even if mortgages were barely affordable. Large numbers of African American youth from these families mixed with growing numbers of Liberian American youth, and the volatility of the neighborhood increased. African Americans had already experienced a tense landing in the neighborhood, including the introduction of something called “Kill a N****r Day” in the summer of 1978 (thankfully both black and white churches stepped up to defuse much of the potential for violence). Now they settled in to try to build new community, but there wasn’t much time for that when people had to work two or three jobs to afford to live there. Consequently, folks retained stronger ties with their old neighborhoods than they created in the new one. So the Liberians entered into an already tense situation. In the schools, these Liberian youth heard taunts about their dark color and their funny accents. Fights between African American and Liberian youths became a daily occurrence. Teachers found themselves unprepared for the tensions and unequipped to provide proper context and instruction for the new immigrants. Fortunately, two sets of developments PRISM 2009
39
emerged that began to lower the levels of conflict. First, organizations such as the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center and the African Cultural Alliance of North America began intentional work in the community. The former provided additional training, including conflict resolution and cultural sensitivity, for teachers and other professionals working in the neighborhood. The latter developed programs for Liberian immigrant youth, providing both a safe space and supplemental activities for them. Pastors of local churches serving the Liberian communities began providing counseling, mediation, and support. The second development has been challenging. Sensing that adults could not guarantee their safety, Liberian American youth formed their own “protection” group: Liberians in Blood (LIB). Some call it a street gang; others deem it a legitimate society ensuring that Liberian youth won’t have to add the tension and violence of their new neighborhood to the historic trauma of their old nation. The jury is still out. The jury is also out on a proper faithbased response to the situations that exist in neighborhoods like Southwest Philadelphia, where the racial tensions of the ’60s have given way to ethnic battles in the last 20 years. There have been heroic church interventions throughout the years, but too few. Clear to this observer is the complicated life of a neighborhood that regularly appears on the nightly news. What would justice look like — for Liberian immigrants, African American working families who survived the neighborhood’s transition, seniors and merchants still in the mix, and for Southwest Philadelphia as a community? n Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC, and a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Faith and Families Portfolio.