Recently I learned about “sloinneadh” (pronounced SLO-ny-ug), the ancient Celtic practice of naming ancestors before battle. According to Alistair Moffat’s The Highland Clans, as the warriors stood in formation with weapons in hand, waiting for the enemy, they would recite their genealogies—I am Ian, son of Donald, son of Malcom, son of Kenneth, etc. In doing so they remembered that they fought not only for themselves on that day but in the shadow of all who had come before them, without whom they would not exist. The thought of my McAlpine, McMillen, Sinclair, and Sutherland forebears naming 20 generations of their own ancestry inspires me beyond expression.
This inspiration, sadly, was paired with deflation as I read Moffat’s book. I learned that much of what we think of as “Scottish” is more commercialized myth based on Sir Walter Scott novels than actual history. It’s unlikely that highlanders actually wore knee-length kilts or assigned particular tartan patterns to particular clans. The clans rarely got along and only occasionally laid down their violent rivalries to fight the English together. The history is a mixed bag. There is treachery and tragedy; noble causes and narcissistic power struggles. In short, they were imperfect people living imperfectly toward one another. Learning the fuller story deromanticized the vision of Scotland I had inhaled growing up in the American South.
It can feel threatening to have your narrative challenged, to reckon with the messier, less glamorous version of history. I grew up with a certain narrative about my paternal grandfather, a successful CPA. Pop learned how to go without during the Depression, fought in World War II to push back the Nazi tide, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting on the GI Bill, worked two jobs and saved every penny he made, then built an idyllic family life in the suburbs of Savannah, GA. But as a young adult I learned that, had he been black instead of white, the story would have gone in a different direction. Because of redlining laws, he would not have been able to purchase the property in that neighborhood. Laws on the books for 20-25 years following the end of the war would have stymied his opportunity to build wealth.
None of this detracts from my grandfather’s thrift and commitment to hard work and integrity. I still use his desk in my church study and keep his CPA placard on my bookshelf because I draw inspiration from his example. But coming to terms with the racial realities of the 50s and 60s has deflated some of my romantic notions of the “Greatest Generation” and added layers of complexity to his success story. I would like to think that every American had the same opportunity that my grandfather did, just as I would like to think that my Highlander ancestors spent their days dancing to bagpipe music in their kilts and tossing cabers. But the reality is that my Scottish kin were probably trying to kill each other and a black GI returning from the Pacific or European front had little access to the post-war financial boom.
We enter Black History Month in a climate that few of us could have anticipated only a handful of years ago, where heated debates over Critical Race Theory have cast a pall over the study of black history in general. I am not interested in defending or opposing Critical Race Theory. But as a father of black children and a pastor of black Christians, I am interested in knowing the fuller story. And that means intentionally learning about the experiences of those who don’t share my skin color or ethnic background, to hear voices that weren’t amplified in the community in which I was raised.
I am starting simply: by reading extensively from one black thinker this February. I have chosen Frederick Douglass and am starting with his 1852 speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” It is not comfortable to read, any more that I imagine it was comfortable for the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society to hear. But my hope is that, in hearing this perspective about our most patriotic day, I might find myself enriched rather than threatened, expanded rather than made small.
Let me invite you to explore the thought of at least one black thinker during Black History Month. Move beyond the sanitized MLK quotes and step into the perspective and heartbeat of another. If you are not black (and perhaps even if you are), allow your assumptions to be challenged, your narrative to be corrected, and your heart to be softened to the experiences of others. Let us posture ourselves as learners of our neighbors’ backstories that we might not only grasp the fuller story but better love one another as God has loved us.
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