The Content of Our Character

Freedom Acres Ranch Is Revealing More Than We Think

There are moments in history when people reveal themselves. And the beauty of history is that when it offers us the truth, we don't get to write the caption.

History is wiser than our biographies, our mission statements, our diversity commitments, and the performative quotes many post every January when America decides it is time to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. again.

The same is true of every historical moment we look back upon and confidently declare, “I would have known better. I would have spoken up. I would have stood with them.”

Hindsight makes courage easy. The present reveals whether we actually have any.

Because those moments when humanity was “supposed to become better” were never meant to simply become history. They were supposed to prepare us to recognize the patterns when they appeared again.

Different time. Different circumstances. Same moral test. And right now, at Freedom Acres Ranch, history is taking notes.

CW and Nicole Mallery wanted to be ranchers. Sit with the simplicity of that sentence. They wanted land. Animals. Agriculture. Peace. The opportunity to feed people. The ability to build something with their own hands and experience the particular kind of freedom that comes from looking across acres that belong to you and imagining what they might become.

They did not purchase land intending to become symbols. They did not set out to become activists. They certainly did not ask to become another Black family whose pursuit of something beautifully ordinary would eventually require extraordinary levels of advocacy. They just wanted to ranch. And yet here we are.

Their story has become nationally known through their accounts of racism, intimidation, threats, conflict, interactions with institutions they turned to for protection, arrests and criminal charges that were ultimately dismissed, and years spent fighting for something that should never have required a fight. Peacefully existing on their own land should never have required them to summon this much resilience just to protect a freedom that was already theirs.

And perhaps that is why this story feels simultaneously extraordinary and painfully familiar. America keeps asking Black people to treat history like something that happened. But every once in a while, history refuses to stay in the past tense.

America Prefers Its Racism In The Past Tense

There is something almost haunting about watching a Black family fight to remain free on land they own. Because America has a complicated relationship with Black people and land.

We are encouraged to study slavery as history. Reconstruction as history. Black Codes as history. Racial terror as history. Redlining as history. Dispossession as history. The systematic loss of Black farmland as history.

We are permitted to remember these things as long as we keep them safely behind glass. We can look, but are told not to see it. We can study, but are told not to learn from it. We can commemorate, but told not to speak of it. We can even build a museum, but are told never to atone for it.

We are asked not to draw too straight a line from then to now. Because the moment Black people begin identifying familiar patterns in present-day institutions, suddenly we are accused of “making everything about race.” But history is not useful because it gives us something to remember. History is useful because it teaches us what to recognize.

The mechanisms evolve. The language becomes more sophisticated. The institutions change. But the questions remain remarkably familiar.

• Who gets presumed credible?

• Who gets presumed dangerous?

• Whose fear requires an immediate response?

• Whose fear requires additional evidence?

• Who gets to simply own something?

• Who is repeatedly asked to prove they deserve to keep it?

That is why what is happening around Freedom Acres Ranch requires discernment and action.

Of Course, The Word "Race" Means We Resurrect Dr. King

There is a sentence from Dr. King that America absolutely loves. We hear it constantly. You know the one with the aspiration that his children would one day be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?

For generations, that sentence has been selectively deployed as an instruction to Black people to stop talking about, noticing, and naming racism. Over the course of this most recent rise in the Freedom Acres Ranch dialouge, I was told "If you were really living King's dream, color wouldn't matter."

What an extraordinary reduction of the words of a man whose life's work explicitly confronted racial injustice. But perhaps we've been so busy debating the first half of that sentence that we haven't spent enough time with the second.

Content of character.

Freedom Acres Ranch has given us an extraordinary opportunity to examine exactly that. Not just the character of CW and Nicole. Ours. And Lord, has it been revealing. Let's break that down, shall we?

Some People Choose Hate

There are people outside the Black community who appear determined to reproduce one of humanity's oldest failures. They hate what exists outside the boundaries of what they have decided belongs.

Sometimes prejudice is inherited so thoroughly that people mistake it for instinct.

They inherit suspicion, entitlement, narratives about who belongs where. And rather than interrogating what previous generations handed them, they carry it forward. Then something remarkable happens.

In the effort to diminish somebody else's humanity, they begin diminishing their own. Because hatred and cruelty do just that, and it is often laced with a low intellect. Dehumanization does not stop at its intended target. Every time you have to make another human being smaller to justify what you are willing to do to them, something inside of you has to become smaller too.

Some People Choose Suspicion

This part requires us to look inward. Some people have encountered the Mallery family's story and immediately begun searching for the reason it cannot possibly be true. Here are some of the top contenders for that narrative:

• Something isn't adding up.

• They must be frauds (this one particularly comes in when it is revelaed that they have received financial support)

• There has to be another side.

• They must have done something to cause all of this.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that questions are a sign of betrayal. Facts matter. Evidence matters. Accountability matters. No individual should be beyond reasonable examination simply because they are Black. But there is a difference between discernment and inherited suspicion.

And Black people should be particularly careful about repeating the very narratives that have historically been used to determine whether another Black person is worthy of empathy, credible enough for protection, or respectable enough to be believed.

In the exchanges I have had with people who have fallen into this line of thinking, their doubt has often revealed itself through questions like these:

• Were they polite enough?

• Were they calm enough?

• Were they credible enough?

• Did they respond perfectly?

• Are they really competent enough to manage that land?

• Are they compassionate enough?

• Could they really be ranchers?

• Could they really feed people?

• Could all of these things really be happening?

Read those questions again. Underneath them is a standard Black people have been measured against for generations. We have had to prove that we behaved perfectly while being harmed, prove that we are exceptional enough to belong where we are, and then maybe we are worthy for others to consider whether what happened to us deserves concern.

Ya'll, that is not discernment. That is an old narrative wearing a new outfit. At some point, we have to recognize the architecture. Because oppression has never survived exclusively through the people directly practicing it. It also survives through the narratives other people agree to repeat.

You don't have to surrender critical thinking to stand with somebody. But skepticism should never become a requirement that Black people produce a perfect victim before we decide they are worthy of protection. CW and Nicole do not have to be perfect people to deserve peace.

None of us do.

Some People Choose Silence

This category may be the most uncomfortable. Because there are people and institutions who will tell you privately that what is happening concerns them.

You know who I am talking about. They fall into this checklist:

• They support Black ownership.

• They believe in racial justice.

• They champion equity.

• They believe Black farmers matter.

• They believe Black businesses matter.

• They believe Black families deserve protection.

• They have entire websites explaining it.

Ah, but when we look for them when it is time for action, their tone changes and they reveal that Freedom Acres feels...risky.

• Too controversial.

• Too complicated.

• Too public.

• Too many competing narratives.

• Too much possibility that somebody might criticize them for standing beside the family.

And so they choose silence. This is where character becomes expensive. It is easy to believe in justice when justice is a paragraph in your strategic plan. It is considerably harder when justice asks whether you are willing to spend some of your social capital.

What exactly is a commitment to freedom worth if it disappears the moment freedom becomes controversial?

Silence is sometimes prudence. Silence can sometimes protect an investigation, a legal process, or someone's safety. But we should be careful not to rename self-preservation as strategy every time somebody else's liberation asks something uncomfortable of us. History is filled with people who privately disagreed with injustice. History remembers the people who decided that wasn't enough.

And Then There Are The People Who Chose to Show Up

What's up, Community? YOU are MY people and ya'll give me hope and keep me fueled!

Some of you knew the Mallerys, many didn't. Some had large platforms, others had 200 followers and a Facebook page. Some prayed, some purchased, some protested, some shared, some asked what they could do, some went to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office on their own accord and peacefully demanded equal protection under the law.

Some ordered products from Freedom Acres Ranch, some offered professional expertise, some offered resources, some simply said we see you.

And importantly, showing up does not mean abandoning discernment. It means refusing to abandon people while practicing it. There is a profound difference. We can ask questions without interrogating somebody's humanity. We can seek truth without participating in isolation. We can demand evidence without deciding that a Black family's pain is inherently improbable. And we can acknowledge complexity without using complexity as an excuse to do absolutely nothing.

It is this body of people who understood something our ancestors understood very well. They understood that the assignment of protection is simply making isolation impossible.

So Yes, I am Judging Your Character...As Will The Next Generation

Perhaps it is time we stop running away from Dr. King's challenge or using it as a deflection to stop calling out racism. Let's actually do it. Let's judge character.

I'm ready...judge mine. No matter if you like it or not, I'm judging yours. Let's judge our organizations and our institutions.

And we shouldn't do so by what we post or what we proclaim. We shouldn't judge by what appears underneath the “Our Values” tab of a website or the mission statements we slang. Nor should we judge by the title we hold in our local church or in a municipal government. And we most certainly should not judge by how people rationalize their way through racism.

Nah, let's judge ourselves and each other by what happens when another human being's freedom requires something from us. Look around your network and notice who ducks around the corner when it's time to get active. Notice who disguises themselves beneath the modern-day KKK robe (that damn keyboard) using distance and anonymity to spew the same hatred previous generations had the audacity to deliver face-to-face. And while you're looking around, don't forget the most important examination of all. Look in the mirror and reckon with what is staring back at you.

Hatred reveals character. Suspicion reveals character. Silence reveals character. Showing up reveals character.

Which One Are YOU?

Hate? To all who continue to hate who are likely not reading this blog, may my ancestors deliver this message to you in the exact way you need to receive it. I challenge you to interrupt your inheritance of hate.

You are not required to carry every prejudice handed to you. Meet people you were taught to fear. Examine the stories you were taught to believe. Decide that whatever your ancestors normalized does not automatically deserve another generation.

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Suspicion? To all who are standing in suspicion, I challenge you to practice discernment without dehumanization. Ask your questions. Examine evidence. Seek truth. But interrogate why disbelief comes so quickly when a Black person describes an experience that history has already demonstrated is possible. And examine why you are upholding and lubricating a system that would harm you in the same way it is harming the Mallery family if given the chance.

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Silence? To all who have been silent because this feels too risky, I challenge you to face the fact that you are not the leader for this time and identify where you are getting in the way and slowing down the movement. And as you navigate into your calling, I challenge you to find one courageous thing you can do.

You don't have to become the spokesperson. Make the call. Offer the resource. Buy from the ranch. Ask the institution you belong to what it is doing. Pray publicly. Stand somewhere. Put something on the line for the freedom you say you believe in.

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Action? And to MY PEOPLE who have already been showing up I challenge you to stay and I vow to you that I won't leave you! That may be the most important instruction of all. Stay after the story stops trending. Stay after celebrities move to the next story. Stay when accountability becomes procedural and boring. Stay when the cameras disappear. Stay long enough for support to become sustainability.

CW and Nicole do not need to become permanent symbols of Black suffering for us to remain interested in them. They deserve the opportunity to become boring again. To wake up. Feed the animals. Work the land. Open the ranch store. Laugh. Eat. Love each other. Make plans. Grow something. And go to bed without wondering what tomorrow will bring.

They deserve the freedom of ordinary life. Maybe that is what Freedom Acres has been asking us to understand all along. Freedom is not simply the absence of chains. Sometimes freedom looks like land, ownership, safety. Sometimes it looks like a Black family being left alone long enough to build something beautiful. And sometimes freedom looks like an entire village deciding that they do not have to protect that beauty by themselves.

Ase to Dr. King, and thank you for the instructions to judge one another by the content of our character.

Freedom Acres Ranch has given us the opportunity to examine. The question is whether we are prepared for what our choices reveal, and from what I can tell...some of ya'll are big mad because the Black community that Dr. King's instructions resonated with are doing just that.