both and

Our brains look for simple explanations to complex issues and problems.  Part of the reason we are so polarized in our country is that we as humans have a difficult time living with complexity, tension, and both/and thinking.  We instead tend toward binary or dualistic thinking.  This OR that.   Us vs Them.  

Sometimes, we think that racism will only be defeated by dismantling and creating new structures/systems OR by people taking personal responsibility for their choices and actions.   As if it's an either/or option.  Of course this is not a binary choice but a BOTH/AND.  Systems and structures of injustice need to be emphasized because racism operates in a way that keeps white people from seeing the structural nature of racism and instead to only see in terms of rugged individualism and personal responsibility.  

MLK Jr.'s 2 minute interview on NBC in 1967 addresses this "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality.  

https://www.facebook.com/NBCNews/videos/3057819507571392/

remember

We are encouraged to remember.  To say the names of victims.  To move forward with hope, courage, persistence, and faith.

more courage needed

This mural is outside EJI's Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL

I invite you to look up and learn more about the tremendous work being done across our country  by EJI (Equal Justice Initiative) 

courage is contagious

I was looking through pictures from my time at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis in 2018.  These two placards caught my eye:

The struggle has been going on for over 400 years now.  We're seeing increased momentum in the struggle these days and there are people making shifts and leveraging their influence and platforms for justice.  Regardless of whether you and I choose to engage or not, The struggle continues.  Silence and apathy allow for the powers and principalities of oppression and injustice to recreate over and over.  We must WORK and STRUGGLE together to cut a different path forward and create a more loving and just world.  Because of this struggle and the price of freedom, it will take courage, courage, courage!

Read, listen to, talk with someone in the struggle who inspires you by their COURAGE.  We all need this inspiration so that we might takes steps of courage ourselves.  

own it to grow

When we can own our brokenness and depravity, we can begin to grow and transform.  At the National Monument for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, there are rows upon rows upon rows of large iron rectangles hanging.  Each represents a county in the United States where lynchings happened.  Each block has the county and state listed on the top and below are the names and dates of persons lynched in that county.  

Outside of those hanging monuments, duplicates of each iron block lay flat on the ground with an invitation to each county across America to come and pick up their monument as a way to own their history and their contribution in the traumatic narrative of racism and injustice.  Most duplicates remain.  Few have been picked up and taken back to their respective counties.  It is a powerful visual display of how we as humans try to hide and deny our sin due to ego and the fear that we will be exposed and will live forever in weakness and inadequacy, in guilt and shame.  

Christian Scriptures, however, state that "the truth will set you free (John 8:32)," and that "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)" 

What might we as individuals and institutions need to own in the traumatic narrative of racism and injustice so that we can grow and transform?

 

redistribute

I recently listened to Pete Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Podcast on grieving as a necessary precursor to addressing racial injustice (found here.) In his podcast, Pete spoke of the stages of learning about racism and racial injustice as the following:

1) Awakening, beginning to ask questions, beginning to seek knowledge.

2) Reading, listening to speakers and podcasts, watching videos and documentaries,...input, input, input.

3) The learner begins to put value to this knowledge and topic.  Once a person begins to learn about this, they begin to value this journey.   

4) Once this becomes a value, the person begins to prioritize life and actions around undoing racism.  

5) This stage is about owning this journey and having it live deep in your bones. 

Redistribution is word that often makes people itchy, but perhaps we can look at this concept through the lens of stewardship. When a person or institution begins to move into stages 3 and 4 of this journey, they will begin to value and prioritize anti-racism work and will begin re-examining and re-distributing their resources.  Linking arms in this restoration business of Jesus is a part of our Christian discipleship and our human growth.  

Time, gifts, passions, creativity, relational networks, money...how am I distributing these resources for racial justice, peace, and reconciliation in my community and in the world?   How can we structure our lives and organizations in ways that will value and prioritize healing and justice? 

Along with continued listening to and learning from people of color, consider listing ways you might steward (redistribute) your resources for the work of bringing about healing and racial justice.  

    

resources

I was listening to the Pete Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Podcast yesterday on grieving as a necessary precursor to addressing racial injustice (found here.) In his podcast, Pete spoke of the stages of learning about racism and racial injustice as the following:

1) Awakening, beginning to ask questions, beginning to seek knowledge.

2) Reading, listening to speakers and podcasts, watching videos and documentaries,...input, input, input.

3) The learner begins to put value to this knowledge and topic.  Once a person begins to learn about this, they begin to put a high value to this journey.   

4) Once this becomes a value, the person begins to prioritize their life around undoing racism.  

5) This stage is about owning this journey and living this journey in your very bones.   

With the pause button pushed in our world due to Covid-19, and with the quick succession of several blatant, public acts of racial injustice (Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper), many people who had previously not shown much interest are awakening and seeking education on race and racism.  This is extremely encouraging.  There are so many resources being listed on websites and social media sites. 

The next two resources I want to engage more fully in are:

a) The 1619 Project Written by Nikole Hannah Jones (she's also a fellow graduate of West High, Waterloo!)  Click here to see more.

b) Whiteness Intensive by Be the Bridge author Latasha Morrison.  I think it would be beneficial to learn more about white identity, white superiority, white fragility, white privilege.  Click here to see more.

Here are some books that I have read and found helpful:

One particular video that has been very educational for me has been a lecture given by Dr. Joy De Gruy Leary found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGjSday7f_8

If you wish to comment below on resources that have been helpful to you, that would be so welcome. 

who is in need?

Churches value seeing needs, meeting needs, and sharing Christ as the one who satisfies people's deepest needs.  

What if, in this current time in history, the white church sees its own need and works to meet it?  My journey in anti-racism turned a corner when I went from thinking about helping other people get their needs met, to recognizing my own need for healing and transformation and a new worldview.  Without addressing the impact that racial oppression has had on my own eyesight, heart, and choices, meeting others' needs only continues to be done through the lens of white superiority within a mindset that maintains systemic racism.  I think this is true institutionally for the church as well.  

The system of racial oppression has harmed every person.  Even though white people live with privilege and power, as a people group they have consciously or unconsciously betrayed love, compassion, justice, community, wholeness, humanity, to have that privilege, power, and upper hand through the years.  

When we can grieve this truth and see the need for our own transformation, we can begin to confess, own our part in the narrative, and turn and move in a different way.  The words and life of Jesus can guide us in this repentance, both in values and in actions, so that we as the church might bear witness to good news of great joy for all people.  

feel the feels

* Reading deeper into history through the book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, a friend called to tell me she just broke down crying.  Tears.  Heaviness.  Overwhelmed.  Grief.

*Pulling over my car to weep while listening to the audio book of A Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  Tears.  Heaviness.  Overwhelmed.  Grief.

*Walking through the Lynching Memorial and the Peace and Justice Museum in Montgomery, AL, walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, with my neighbors from Iowa, experiencing the intensity and the actions of the oppressor and the oppressed through time in the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  Walking through the National Underground Railroad Freedom Museum in Cincinnati with friends.  Tears.  Heaviness.  Overwhelmed.  Grief.    

*Kneeling in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and considering the depth and levels of dehumanization present in a man's mind that he could casually have his hand in his pocket and his eyes resolutely looking into a camera while George Floyd begged for his life under the weight of the officer's knee on his neck.  Tears.  Heaviness.  Overwhelmed.  Grief. 

*Being asked by a black friend, "Do you ever cry tears over this injustice, trauma, and racism?" after we listened to John Perkins describe being tortured in a Brandon, Mississippi jail in 1970.  Tears. Heaviness.  Overwhelmed.  Grief.  

*Listening to Richard Twiss tell attendees at a CCDA conference about history from a Native American perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGw7AU6VDOs  Tears.  Heaviness.  Overwhelmed. Grief.

Racial Oppression works in such a way to try to keep the oppressing people group from feeling compassion and empathy for the oppressed.  Racism has organized for 400 years to dehumanize, criminalize, blame, and internalize the idea of inferiority of the oppressed.  Racism has also organized for 400 years to internalize the idea of superiority of the oppressor and to keep the oppressing group in denial, defensiveness, and justification.  

Deconstructing and dismantling racism is more than an intellectual effort.  Yes, justice is needed and laws and policies have to be changed.  Yes, critical thinking and education is an absolute must.  Yes, we need to create different structures going forward so that we don't maintain and perpetuate racist systems.  But, we must also feel the feels.  And they will be uncomfortable feels.  The emotional world must be integrated into the work for peace and justice.  

What hooks you emotionally as you listen and learn about racism?  What feelings can you identify?  Who can you talk with about these emotions?  What opportunities for healing and growth are you finding through this journey?  

Resource:  Pete Scazzero's "Emotionally Healthy Leader" Podcast this past week (June 15, 2020) is "Why We Must Learn to Grieve to Address Racial Injustice" It is 30 minutes long, and I recommend this podcast, as it talks about the necessity of grieving for healing and growth.  

https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/podcast/?v=7516fd43adaa

what is white privilege

As a part of being educated about the effects of race and racism, it is important to learn about what the term white privilege means and to look at some examples of it so that we can identify it.  I found this article helpful in describing white privilege.   Give some time to read through it so we can continue to learn together:

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really

the brain on race

We often hear the phrase, "the brain on drugs".  In this post, we'll take a look at "the brain on race" for those who are benefactors of this construct.  Racism is a system of oppression that operates in a way that:

a) dehumanizes the oppressed so that the oppressing people group often feels little empathy for the oppressed.  Instead of empathy, the "brain on race" works to blame the oppressed people group, to justify unjust treatment.  For example, "George Floyd was trying to use counterfeit money.  He was a criminal." This is a brain on race in a dominant culture person working to justify a police officer slowly torturing and murdering a handcuffed black man over the course of 8 minutes and 46 seconds by putting a knee to his neck and cutting off his air supply until he died.  

b) The brain on race for the oppressing people group also works in a way to ensure they do not see themselves living in bondage under an oppressive system.  Living with power and privilege does not feel like harm because harm is not being done to them.  Or is it?  When we grow a conscious awareness of how racism works, the dominant culture can begin to see that compassion, justice, love, humanity, community has repeatedly been betrayed and sold out to retain benefits at the expense of others.  

A turning point for me on this journey was when I began to grow awareness of both of these ways that my thinking works to retain and perpetuate the system of racism.  When I began to understand how I've thought about and seen people of color AND when I recognized my own bondage and what I've lost of myself because of racism, I was broken and wrecked.  This is a needed wrecking.  I can only begin to move toward growth and freedom when I can recognize and feel the brokenness and bondage caused by racism.  

A quote that leads me and has been so influential for me on this journey is this:

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.  But if you are come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."  -Lilla Watson, Indigenous Australian, artist, activist

black suppression

As I grew up in public school, my history lessons were primarily white washed and romanticized accounts of American history.  It was not until the past decade that I learned about periods of time where great gains were being made by the black community only to be squashed and suppressed by white people.  Two examples:

1.  Reconstruction Period (1867-1877)

After the Civil War, Black Americans were rising as activists in the political, economic, and social landscape of the South.  Sixteen African-Americans served in the U.S. Congress during Reconstruction; more than 600 more were elected to the state legislatures, and hundreds more held local offices across the South. As a way to suppress Black Americans' growing autonomy and success, the Ku Klux Klan rose up, voter suppression practices grew, Jim Crow laws were put into place, all to ensure that whites would not lose control and power. Read more here:   https://www.history.com/news/voter-suppression-after-reconstruction-southern-states

2.  The Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa, 1921

You may have heard on the news that there is opposition to the location choice of Trump's rally in Tulsa, OK, today.  Instead of just blowing by this in the constant stream of newsfeed, take a moment to read about this white act of terror and black suppression in Tulsa in 1921.  It's important not to turn our eyes from really uncomfortable truths of history that tell a different story than racism's narrative which will always work to criminalize people of color and to make white people out as the heroic, upstanding people group. 

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/19/tulsa-1921-massacre-trump-violence-legacy

Once we begin to see these patterns in history, we can begin to look for signs of racial suppression today in our current context.  

sup·press

/səˈpres/

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verb

1. forcibly put an end to.

   "the uprising was savagely suppressed"

   Similar:

   subdue

   defeat

   conquer

   vanquish

   triumph over

   repress

   crush

   quell

   quash

   squash

   stamp out

   overpower

   extinguish

   put down

   put out

   crack down on

   clamp down on

   cow

   drive underground

   end

   put an end to

   stop

   discontinue

   terminate

   halt

   arrest

   Opposite:

   incite

   encourage

   • prevent the development, action, or expression of (a feeling, impulse, idea, etc.); restrain.