Our Friend's Photo Became a Racist Meme. Here's How We Responded.

Two weeks ago, while preparing for an Advent sermon on finding joy in the midst of darkness, an unusual text message came in from my brother Greg. With concerned brevity, it read: “Hey, I just saw a meme of your buddy, Darsh.”

Deep down, I knew the next few texts would be upsetting.

Over several short, quick texts, Greg described a meme that had surfaced nearly eight months ago about my friend, Darsh Singh. Darsh is Sikh and wears a turban. Using the same image of Darsh that the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has hanging in their museum in Washington, D.C, a comedy account on Twitter had captioned the photo back in March with, “Nobody at school wants to guard Muhammad, he’s too explosive.”

Back then, as it circulated through social media, the Internet didn’t seem to care all that much.

There were some who objected. Darsh’s wife, for instance, posted a short, somewhat vulnerable tweet to that original meme: “Actually, my husband @darshpreetsingh is a kind and nice man.” Her tender post did not go viral. No hashtag campaigns were sparked. It was not Facebook trending. It only had six retweets, and for the most part, the collective reaction of the Internet was most akin to the drop of a pin.

But if you knew Darsh, and you saw it, it left you with little faith in social media — assuming you had any to begin with.

And while my brother Greg’s post speaking up in support of Darsh would later become a viral source of healing for many — accumulating almost 40,000 likes, more than 14,000 shares, 3,000 comments, a viral hashtag campaign on Twitter, and attention from various media outlets — I am reminded of eight months prior, when no one cared about the meme. And I am reminded of the long history of violence that this brand of racism had already written against Sikhs in post-9/11 America.

Darsh and his brothers went to my high school. On Sept. 11, 2001, I remember being emotionally gutted by the knee-jerk reactions toward them — “towel head,” “camel jockey,” and “rag head” were among the more mild slurs hurled at them throughout the day. Just days afterward, on Sept. 15, Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down at a gas station he owned in Mesa, Ariz. His assailant shouted, "I am a patriot!" and "I stand for America all the way!" as police arrested him. Perhaps the most traumatic and widely known incident took place in August 2012, when a known white supremacist murdered six Sikhs at a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wis.

Almost all of these incidents had someone shouting something along the lines of, “Go back to your country, Osama Bin Laden.”

Here are some things that have happened since Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims:

• Darsh, while being interviewed about Greg’s post, is called “a f****** terrorist” on live TV,
• A young Sikh boy in Texas is arrested after a bully claimed the boy had a bomb,
• Three Sikh men were detained for wearing their turbans to a San Diego Chargers game, and a gurdwara in Los Angeles was defaced with explicit anti-ISIS graffiti,
• A store clerk who was part of the Sikh community was shot in an apparent hate crime in Michigan,
• An elderly Sikh man on a flight to San Francisco was filmed while sleeping by the passenger sitting next him. The man then titled the video, “Would you Feel Safe?”

All of these events are disturbing, to say the least. What's especially difficult, as a Christian, is knowing that much of this anti-Muslim sentiment is perpetuated by people claiming to follow Jesus — with the underlying assumption that any of these things would have been acceptable if these individuals had been Muslim.

Why and how did Greg’s post resonate with so many people on the meme’s second time around the Internet? Why did it take so much darkness before something profoundly positive happened?

I think I come back to two powerful resources available to us as a church, if we have the courage to embrace it.

The first of these is personal connection. Throughout this whole ordeal, the power that came through a deep sense of personal connection was palpable. You see, Greg writes impassioned things on Facebook all the time — as his little brother, I can attest to this. But this time, it had a very different effect on people.

Simran, Darsh’s older brother, put it this way: “If Darsh had written that same post, I don’t know that it would have had the same effect, but the fact that Greg — who is outside of the pain and suffering that Sikhs collectively feel — said something in defense of his friend, I think that’s why this resonated so much.”

In essence, Simran was saying, at the heart of Greg’s popular post was a sense of advocacy through deep personal connection that people could easily identify.

Which brings me to my second thought. Right now, the church is practicing its current rhythm of Advent. Advent is a time of year when we experience great physical darkness and spiritually anticipate the coming brilliance of Jesus’ birth. The lectionary for the third Sunday in Advent focused on Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 4. In that letter he writes,

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

What’s so fascinating to me about this passage is how it centers on the need for peace amid a broken community. When Paul was writing this, the church had been experiencing division in Paul’s absence while he had been imprisoned, along with other followers of Jesus. And while it might seem naive to say “Rejoice!,” the word as used here actually means to “be well.” It focuses on the community in Philippi, as opposed to a single person.

Paul is calling the people to be present with each other’s suffering and lament through prayer during a dark moment in the church. For us now, I think his message looks a lot like the story of Greg and Darsh.

Greg could not have predicted that this viral response was going to happen. He just chose to be present with the suffering and pain that the Sikh community felt. And through that, a sense of peace was offered to thousands of people that my brother didn’t even know.

There are words that give life, and there are those that threaten life. Greg’s words were life- giving. If I could hope for anything as the result of this episode of radical love, it is that we will be more compelled to speak up with words that give life and be present with the suffering of those around us. That we will choose to forgo any fear we might have, and cling to the power that comes from building community.

And if we’re willing to do this, I think what Paul is saying is that God will show up and his peace will be felt. We may not know how that manifests, but that’s okay. Because that peace that surpasses all understanding will come to our table with us, and wellness and rejoicing will be available to our world. And together, we may fully grasp the advent hymn that says:

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.