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The Daily Tar Heel

Column: Critique at the junction of grace

Last month, President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy in honor of Clementa Pinckney and in memory of the nine murdered at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

His account of those executed convened around themes of grace, both as a religious concept and as a light those killed found. Obama’s eulogy was easily one of the finest oratorical instances of his presidential career.

Toward the end of his speech, the president did something that surprised myself and many others.

He broke out into song.

“Amazing Grace,” Obama sang. Seconds later the shout chords chimed in, and the crowd stood, singing in concert.

It was arguably one of the Blackest moments in American history.

I remember abruptly jumping out of my seat. Me, an American Muslim. When the organ bellowed, I was up in front of my television proclaiming, “I once was lost!” And from the room over I could hear my father humming in unison.

Christian or not, the Black church has historically served as a central communal space for the Black populace.

The assembly of the church is a countermeasure to systemic violence, an onslaught historically transcending varying religious traditions. 

Anti-Black violence is quotidian, unwavering and a reality incalculably distant from any narrative framing it as aberrant.

Non-Black people are often blind to the racially linked fate African-Americans share and rarely have such an intimate window into how this connection operates. For the president to so widely share a moment with the broader Black community was revolutionary.

Obama’s eulogy spoke to the unrealized truth that even as time presses forward, politics unravel and socio-economic terrains shift, the bond tying Black Americans together is resolute.

My president is Black.

But people of color are still being killed. Barack Obama is not without fault. By way of both policy and individual interaction, he has effectively dismissed LGBTQ liberation movements, furthered the war on “terror” and ignored the network of violence leveled against Muslims and those perceived as such. 

As a UNC student invested in robust conceptions of emancipatory social sciences, I strive to be analytical of the status quo regardless of shared identity.

Blackness should never be centered in my, or anyone else’s, critique as a means to implement racist, ahistorical and intellectually dishonest debate.

In both theory and praxis, the UNC community must invest, by way of labor, in efforts of liberation.

We should critically reflect on self and state, but also remember to love. Celebrate community, womanhood and Blackness.

Celebrate grace.

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