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| Rev. Sylvester "Tee" Turner |
Rev. Sylvester “Tee” Turner is director of
reconciliation programs for Hope in the Cities. He talks with Rob Corcoran
about his approach to racial healing.
Was
there a particular moment that was a turning point for you?
My
“encounter” with the Confederate monument during Richmond’s first walk through
history in 1993. I had seen that monument all my life. But that experience
forced me to look at things from a new perspective, one that I did not want to
look at.
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| Confederate Monument. Richmond |
What do
you mean?
I had to
decide whether to tuck and run or come face to face with my own struggle. When
you are raised in the South there are many survival mechanisms. To pretend that
something doesn’t exist is one of those mechanisms. I had always denied the
impact the statue was having on me. Being able to identify with the Confederate
sense of pain and betrayal allowed me to see inside myself. Seeing how they
were held in bondage by their grief helped me to understand and to deal with
the bondage in my own life. The light clicked on. It became a doorway to
healing.
You talk
a lot about honoring “sacred stories” of each group. How do you do that without
moral compromise?
John W.
Franklin talks about his father saying that we need to tell the whole story no
matter how painful or ugly it is. That has been the approach of Hope in the
Cities. To the best of my ability I try to validate the experience of the other
group. Not to justify it but to validate the fact that it is their truth. Until
a level of respect is created you can’t have dialogue. If we say we are
Americans than we have to own all our stories, the good, the bad and the ugly.
And as we grow, we can let some stories go. This is the foundation for working
towards reconciliation. It’s not about being right but about being healed.
Let’s
talk about forgiveness.
Forgiveness
frees me not the other person. When I have been victimized, the pain and
suffering impacts me. It dictates how I treat other people and what I pass on.
When I forgive, I am able to pass wholeness to my children and grandchildren.
It has nothing to do with the other person. That person will need to repent in
order to be free, but I don’t control that.
What do
you want to say to America at this point in history?
We can
all win if we work together and we will all lose if we stay divided. Most
Americans actually want to work together but we don’t want to deal with the
divisions caused by our racial and political history. Without a doubt race is a
major component in the political debate. Racism grew out of greed and a class
system that pitted poor whites against enslaved, and later freed blacks. We are
all imprisoned to some extent by the history of slavery. Some of us are in
maximum security prisons and others in minimum security prisons, but we’ve all
suffered and we all need to be healed.
