Tonight, the thoughts are still swirling, but the words are beginning to come, and I needed a way to record them, just to get them out of my head, if nothing else. I know that many of you reading this will disagree with points or not understand. But if that's you, I beg you to try to drop any defenses and just try to begin to understand the "other side" for a few minutes. Learn from my journey and begin to seek ways to learn for yourself.
I in NO WAY claim to be an expert on these topics, and 10 years ago, I probably would have agreed with many of you (who might disagree with a lot of what I'm writing now). I am learning alongside a lot of other people. I believe I first heard the phrase "white privilege" in one of my early grad school classes taught by Dr. Yolanda Carter, who is now the Dean of the School of Education at Gonzaga University. I was in my early 30s. At the time, it was a new idea for me to be learning about, and quite honestly I balked at some of what she taught and shared. BUT those seeds were the beginning of a journey toward greater understanding, and now? I can see it.
I've had an experience that few white Americans ever get to have: living as a racial and cultural minority in another country. It hasn't given me all the answers, but it has given me some perspective. First, PLEASE hear and understand me on this: being white in East Africa is NOT THE SAME as being black as America. In many cases it came with MORE privilege, and I don't EVER want anyone to think I'm comparing the two. However, before living in Kenya, I had never known what it was like to be judged simply by the color of my skin, and I will tell you this: I HATED IT. More privilege or not, having people constantly assume things about me without ever knowing me was demeaning and exhausting. And I only lived with it for 7 years. Ultimately it was one of the things that led me back to the US.
Then there's this thing called cultural fatigue. The first definition I ever saw about it said, "Cultural fatigue is the physical and emotional exhaustion that almost invariably results from the infinite series of minute adjustments required for long-term survival in an alien culture." (I don't remember the source.) A quick Google search today provides this definition: Cultural fatigue can be defined as a state of being where the small, adverse [intricacies] of the culture begin to bother you out of reasonable proportion after living in another country for an extended amount of time (www.vagabondjourney.com). My friends can tell you that all of those things were very real for me my last year in Kenya. I was angry much of the time, usually about little things that didn't even matter. Definitely out of reasonable proportion, but about things that seemed so engrained in the culture that I was powerless to change.
Fast forward to today and try to begin to apply those ideas about cultural fatigue to living here as an African American (of which I do not speak from experience), often being judged and having things assumed only for being black. Having to constantly try to "fit in" to white America's ideas about what life should be like. African American culture IS a minority culture in the U.S. We were having a diversity discussion in my office at school recently (well, ok, I guess it was February!), and I shared a bit about my experience with cultural fatigue. One of my colleagues piped in that he had recently been talking with a black friend about life in America as a black man, and he had described it in the same way as the end of my experience in Kenya: exhausting.
When we can start to consider the fact that generations of people have had to live this way in America, we can BEGIN to get a tiny bit of understanding why moments of racial tension often end in violence. Please note: I am not condoning violence, but I have started to be able to understand some of the emotion behind (some of) the violence. And there's a whole other post that could be written about how many white Americans have ignored or condemned the peaceful protests that HAVE been attempted in recent years. Along those lines, a friend shared this with me the other night. It's worth thinking about. (I'm not sure of the original source, but I think it's a book by Glennon Doyle.)
I was in the US for the summer of 2013 when the Black Lives Matter campaign began. Like many of you, my first response to that was, "Of course they do! All lives matter!" and I viewed the campaign as something else to divide us. In the spring of 2017 I was helping a student in Kenya with her senior seminar paper that focused a lot around this topic. She had a resource cited that began to help me understand how continuing to insist, "No! All lives matter!" is not helpful, even if it's well intended. I don't have the exact source she used, but it used the analogy of a burning house. Some of you may have seen the editorial cartoon. (This page explains: https://www.vox.com/2015/9/4/9258133/white-lives-matter). The article she used helped me to see the different perspective. While talking with friends last fall, my friend Sara said something to the effect of, "I think of it as Black Lives Matter TOO," which we SHOULDN'T need reminded about, but clearly we do. In an interview with the New York Times, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor said, "The entire point of Black Lives Matter is to illustrate the extent to which black lives have not mattered in this country." To me, especially as Christians, when our black brothers and sisters REPEATEDLY tell us (white people in America) it's a problem, that they're hurting, and we continue to ignore it and tell them to get over it, well, we're jerks, and we are failing humanity in so many ways in which Jesus commanded us to do otherwise. We should be leading this fight. It's not political. It's being a compassionate human being.
If you were a youth group kid in the 90s, chances are good that you know the song Colored People by DC Talk or were involved in a well-meaning conversation about being "color blind." There's a book called 35 Dumb Things Well-Intended People Say: Surprising Things We Say That Widen the Diversity Gap. I haven't read it yet myself, but I know that whole "I don't see color/I don't see you as black" thing is in there. I HAVE SAID THAT. Multiple times. I had the very best of intentions when I did. BUT I'm not a person of color, so I don't understand what that implies. The lead pastor of my church is a black man, and last year he spoke about this one Sunday. He recognized that people say this with good intentions, but he added something like, "I am an African American man. That heritage is important to me. I'm proud of my identity in that, and I don't want people to ignore that part of who I am." Hmmm...I'd never thought about it like that before. But it makes sense, and I'll never say it again.
One other thing that has really helped shaped part of my thinking on this is some books I've read. I have many more to read, but White Fragility, The Hate You Give, and No One Ever Asked are good places to start. My church has compiled an Ethnic Reconciliation Reading List here if you'd like to check it out.
My team at school just finished reading a book called Mindshift, and one chapter was titled "From White to Mosaic." As I finish, let me share the analogy from the book, because it's very easy to follow.
We invite you to imagine this scenario with us. Six-year old Jack and five-year old Toni are playing with Lego bricks together. They each build a house; Toni's house is built with colorful bricks and Jack's house with white bricks....The teacher then asks them to use the Lego bricks that they have and build one house together. They respond to the challenge enthusiastically, look to each other, and wonder how to begin.
The question is: do they tear down both houses, re-imagine a new house together, and then use all the bricks, both colorful and white, to build this new house? Does Toni tear down her colorful house and put her colorful bricks on Jack's white house?
This scenario is reflective of complex questions about diversity, pluralism, and racial relations in our U.S. society in its historical context. For example, who is in charge of deciding what bricks to keep and what to get rid of? Whose vision of the new house will serve as the blueprint? Who has the power to decide on the rules of the game that Jack and Toni play? These are the key diversity questions that we need to ask, but are NOT asking at the moment....
Much of America's history has expected African American culture to assimilate to white American culture. To use another quote from the book, "many [people] of color ultimately feel the pressure to break up their colorful houses and place their blocks on the white Lego house." African American voices have not often been included/heard in "choosing the bricks," "deciding on the rules of the game," or "designing the blueprint."
Guess what? I wouldn't have learned any of this if I'd stayed surrounded by people who looked like me and believed the same things I believe. Many of us simply haven't known some of these things were happening because they've never happened to us. (That's no longer an excuse. Now, we know.) It has been exposure and listening to those living the reality that has helped me change. "We are often surrounded by only the voices with which we already agree, making it easy to just ignore or write off people with different perspectives." (Mindshift, p. 68) So if you don't know anyone of another race, find ways to start engaging with those who are. This week a parent at my school shared about the group Be the Bridge. It's a national group, but there are online local chapters as well. I've joined the one here in Louisville and plan to start participating in some of their discussions and courses they offer. It's another small thing I can do to keep learning, and I encourage you to check out the local groups' facebook pages where you live.
I know there are a lot of arguments I haven't addressed. I know there is a lot of confusion with ways some of us are trying to do things better, just to be told that's wrong too. I know this issue is extremely complex on all sides. But for now, especially those of you who identify as Jesus followers, please stop with the "buts" and think about how you can start to be part of the solution. How you can love on the black families in your neighborhood? How can you speak up? How can you stand in the gap? "Seeking racial and cultural diversity in our human experience is essential to the discipleship life that God calls us to live." (Mindshift, p.67) We cannot keep pointing fingers and saying the "other side" has it wrong. IT'S NOT WORKING. We have to change.
In closing, I want to leave you with words a colleague posted this morning that her husband, a pastor here in Louisville, shared with their church.
What might Jesus be saying to us right now? Look to me. I am the only hope for overwhelming circumstances. Whether it is a virus, an economy, injustice, racial fragmentation, evil stirring up evil, looting, riots. I AM the only way. Look to me. ~Fritz Games
Additional Resources:
- My church shared this video a few weeks ago after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, and in it Jamaal shares some of his experiences of being black in America.
