Thanksgiving can be a great anti-racist event, even better than most. Thanksgiving for a race or ethnicity that you have a grudge against is the Good Samaritan way of racial reconciliation. You can hardly have reconciliation by pointing out the logs in the other person’s eyes. This just builds walls and is why most anti-racist training has been a failure, according to a review of empirical studies by Columbia University sociologist Musa al-Gharbi. This bad advice is still making the rounds. Better to count the blessings that you have received from people of other races and ethnicities. Examine yourself and think carefully.
Give thanks for something the other race or ethnicity has done, created, or exemplified. It should be something that you could adopt in your own life. This is thankful, functional unity: I have been given a gift from the “Other” and am thankful and will make it part of my life. In doing so, you will also become part of their life. “Otherness” is diminished and even demolished.
Preferably, it should be something that is not trivial or commonplace. In other words, if you are thanking the American Indians because you have a prejudice against them, don’t just thank them for turkey and corn. Think harder, go deeper, and add something really new in your life from “the Other.” Yes, this is the hard part. You have to really start to understand the Other culture and personality.
I remember that I went up to Syracuse, NY one time to address a meeting of pastors on racial reconciliation. Before the meeting, I visited an African American who was head of the African American pastors group. He told me about the immense amount, and often successful, marriage counseling that he was doing. He was really quite shrewd and discerning about these counselees. I thought, wow, we should go to him for counseling tips. That is something to thank God for and to incorporate into one’s life. And I have run across this expertise among African American pastors across the nation.
Thanksgiving as a national holiday came out of a need in the Civil War to look forward to rebuilding the unity of the nation. Thanksgiving is a time to build relationships by thanking God for other races and ethnicities about whom you have criticism.
Lincoln’s Proclamation was printed in Harper’s Weekly on October 17, 1863, to help spread the word about the day of observance. On December 5, Harper’s published a two-page engraving by renowned artist Thomas Nast illustrating scenes of a grateful nation.
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to invite and provoke the aggressions or foreign states, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theatre of military conflict, while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
The needful diversions of wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vjgor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people;
I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender ca.re all those who have become widows,· orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done in the city of Washington this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
Abraham Lincoln
By the President:
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.
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