THERE IS SOME SMALL COMFORT since the horrific murders at Emanuel AME Church, Charleston to see South Carolina at last removing the Confederate battle-flag from the state’s Capitol grounds, and dispatching it to the relic room.     

The flag-furore has certainly been educative. It’s allowed predominantly white-controlled media outlets to learn – not for the first time, but maybe now for the last, convincing time – a simple truth. That is, how viscerally this provocative red-and-blue banner – so often glibly passed off as worthy of regard for reasons of innocent “heritage and identity” – continues in actuality to insult and injure African-Americans, and how acridly it pollutes community relations.

Doggedly resistant racism might be evident, too, in the stream of small news items about the burning of black churches. These have been erratically reported nationally – with outlets too often easily accepting some immediate, dismissive effort to blame faulty wiring or lightning. The NAACP said that while only three of the recent fires are officially regarded as arson, the blazes do require “our collective attention“, and the organization understandably called for continuing vigilance.

How utterly disheartening.

For all the impressive and powerfully moving expressions of multiracial solidarity that came in response to June 17th, it is still hard to avoid deep dismay. Dismay over the scant enlightenment and abundant hatred that still remain in some truculent quarters of our society, seven years after we elected the first black American president.

HOWEVER … EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT by deliberate design, I do find myself this week delivering some journalistic coverage that offers a strong contrast with the hate-filled racism and violence that could overwhelm our hopes of progress.

For some time I’ve been noting some intriguing change among churches in the historically African-American enclave of Harlem, a couple of miles from my home.

And this weekend the PBS Network carries a report I made several weeks before the Charleston horror. Its relevance for now is simple and direct – it’s a chance to consider the phenomenon of white Americans who want not to attack but to join a black church.

I’ve concentrated on the First Corinthian Baptist Church, situated on Harlem’s Adam Clayton Jr Boulevard, a house of worship whose history places it four-square in the African-American Baptist tradition. Now, though, there is a small but significant number of whites joining this predominantly black congregation – and according to Pastor Michael Walrond Jr, “it’s growing every week”.

Watch the report here:

(HARLEM CONGREGATION CHANGING from David Tereshchuk) on Vimeo.

The report forms part of this week’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, from WNET in New York, for the PBS network.