Tag Archives: Race

The power of story

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She hesitantly and a bit awkwardly began her story, sitting among a group of about 20 people, a handful of whom she knew well, the others she had just met for the first time. This young college student was at this diverse group – a brunch at my home – because she and all of the others present had some connection to Ireland. For some, it was their Irish heritage, some had studied in Ireland, while others were anticipating studies in Ireland in the future. It was the week of St. Paul’s Irish Fair and we had come together to visit with Dr. Tim Campbell, director of the St. Patrick Interpretive Centre in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland.

The group was having a lively discussion about cross-cultural interactions and experiences and of how best to take groups of students from one country to another. Participants raised a number of questions: Are these kinds of cross-cultural experiences more about the communities that host students or about the students that visit? What are the kinds of experiences to offer to students? What do you want students to learn? What are the most effective ways to help students consider the ways their own culture shapes how they interact in the world? Mindy began to share her story in response to the latter question.

It was Mindy’s conviction that one helps students learn about their own context by exposing them – no really immersing them – in another context, intensely looking at the conflicts, injustices, and inequities in the other. Those kinds of experiences then become a mirror within in which to reflect and see one’s own conflicts, injustices and inequities. She talked of growing up in a sheltered middle-class suburban home, unaware of how that protected environment had prepared her for living in the world and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that values had been bred into her. Mindy came to the Christian liberal arts university where I teach in the fall of 2009. She talked about her trip to the Republic of Ireland and to Northern Ireland in the fall of 2011 and how it had begun to open her eyes, not just to the history and horrors of sectarian hatred and violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, but how that trip helped her see the divisions around her and even within. When she returned from Northern Ireland and back to school, she began to take even bigger steps to learn about the injustices in her own backyard. She moved into an economically deprived urban neighborhood in St. Paul and for the past eighteen months has been living in community with students and residents from the neighborhood. Living in Frogtown has opened wide the windows into the world of oppression and injustice in our own society. She gave the group much to think about, but one comment in particular was chilling in its honesty. As Mindy shared how she had been transformed by her experiences of living in Frogtown, she shared how living in community with others from the neighborhood had forced her to look deeply at the values she held, some so deeply imbedded that she acted upon them without even being aware of them. Growing up in her sheltered and cloistered suburban context, she had learned that black men were dangerous, they only wanted to harm you and should be avoided at all times. Her realization that she held that belief was shocking and revealing and stood in great contrast to the black men she has grown to know and love in her new community. In her estimation, she would not have come to that understanding about herself, nor been given the gift of reconciliation in her neighborhood without having had the initial journey of immersion in the culture of conflict in Northern Ireland. Mindy’s story and her willingness to share it with friends and others clearly articulates the need for the experiential in teaching and ministry. It also testifies to the power of story. But the story doesn’t end there.

Later that afternoon my neighbor and I were cleaning up after the brunch and talking about the highlights of the morning. She brought the conversation back to Mindy’s story. “Here I am,” she noted, “twice the age of Mindy and it wasn’t until I heard her story, that I realized that I have lived with that same assumption about black men.” She went on to share that all her life she had steered clear of black men, was always suspicious of them, feared what they would do to her if given the opportunity, but those thoughts and feelings were always simmering underneath the surface and it was only when Mindy shared her story that she saw things clearly. And, while she was glad to have had that “ah ha” moment, the tragedy for her was the realization that if that was hers and Mindy’s story, it was also probably the story for thousands, if not millions of others. “I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be a black man in America – to live in a society where you are always under suspicion just because of the color of your skin.” For too many black men it doesn’t take imagination, it is their lived reality.

The weight of our Assumptions

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As is my usual routine when I’m driving or writing, or doing almost anything, I have MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) on in the background. Late last week, I heard the snippets of a conversation in which a middle-aged African American male shared his story about being placed in special ed. I tried to find the story on the MPR website without luck. So what I share is from memory. My mind was drawn back to his story as I again had a thought-provoking conversation with Cierra.

But first, this man’s story. He shared that he had struggled with learning and that adults around him worked to get him help. He was eager to learn and when those adults made the decision to place him in special education programs, he thought that was a really good thing. He was special, he had always been told, and he thought being placed in a special education program would be better than what he had been experiencing and that the special ed environment would provide the opportunities he needed to grow and learn. What he experienced, however, was something completely different. Being labeled special ed brought with it assumptions about intellect. If you had special educational needs, it was assumed that you were, therefore, stupid and incapable of learning. Consequently, the education he was offered was substandard and minimal, guaranteeing that he would live up to the assumptions placed on him.

His words came back to the forefront as Cierra and I talked this week about the beginning of a new school year and her transition to high school. In an effort to prepare her and myself for the move, I did some basic research about her new school. As I talked with her, I shared that her school had lots of diversity, with 73% of students identifying as students of color. She was interested in the breakdown of the racial groupings and as I shared those, I noted that there aren’t any categories for mixed race and wondered where they had placed her. She quickly responded, “I know where they put me; they put me where they always put me. They identified me as African American, even though I am as much white as black.” She went on to say that really didn’t bother her, but what did bother her were the assumptions that teachers made because of her skin color. From her experience, most of her teachers, make assumptions that because her skin is brown, she comes from a poor and uneducated household. She noted that they talk to her differently than they do white students, even when they are wanting to be supportive and encouraging because they assume that color = poor. All of us draw the wrong conclusion on occasion, but I couldn’t help wondering, about the consequences of these kind of assumptions. Does assuming that a student is poor because of the color of her skin lead to beliefs of inferiority, both her beliefs and ours? Does assuming that students of color come from uneducated households foster convictions that those same students are incapable of academic success? Do our assumptions as educators preclude students from thriving in school?

Interracial Relationships and the Church

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First, thanks to Rachel Held Evans for including me in her Sunday Superlatives 5 August 2012.

Twenty years ago I was serving at a youth camp as summer staff and was leading a track on tough questions and crisis situations. During a forum discussion I was leading, one comment silenced all the others and I was point-blank asked to give my opinion. The topic was interracial dating. The leaders in the room ranged from saying they personally did not care but knew it would not fly in their church to being vehemently opposed personally. I sat bewildered never once having heard anyone in real life say such things and having seen interracial relationships my entire life. It was normative at my high school and college.

Then the bomb dropped…one woman said…out loud…that God did not intend interracial dating as dating leads to marriage, and marriage leads to procreation, and that would be like asking cats and dogs to mate.

While the entire room fell silent at her comment, I think I was the only one who gasped. I tried to respond with gentleness, I am certain I failed. We looked at Galatians 3:28-29 and Acts 10:34-35. We talked about what it means to be human and to be God's adopted children. The woman who made the comment didn't see it as racist at all, even when I said it was a racist comment. She said she wished no ill will to others, but that young people should not be allowed to mix with those not like them for all the problems this creates. Almost more shocking to me than her comment was that no one else in the room seemed as offended as I was, and not a single other adult spoke up against this woman's comment. In all fairness, there were only about 25 people there, but you'd think one of them would have been so horrified that they too would have spoken up.

Fast forward to today. One of my students who recently graduated from seminary and is in an interracial marriage, has been interviewing for youth pastor positions and is faring quite well. She just had an interview at a church in my home state of Arizona when the following occurred.

She asked how the church would receive her and her husband. She fully intended this to be a question about her interracial marriage. Those in the room just stared at her. She asked if there would be any problems or issues. Again, blank stares. She told me it took the older people in the room to explain to those who were younger what her questions were trying to uncover and why this would be an issue. When they finally understood her question, their response was clear, no one would think poorly of them. It would not even cross their minds. Clearly, it didn't cross their minds.

I am encouraged that she finally had an interview where she was received so positively on this one issue. Her own suspicions that other churches dropped her as a candidate once they knew of her interracial marriage may never be able to be confirmed but this one church has been an encouragement to her and to me.

As much as I am encouraged, I am also frustrated that she even has to bring this up as an issue in the interview process. She understands this is life and chooses not to be bothered by it. She will serve well where she is hired and pray for those churches and individuals who still hold to the ignorance of racism.

 

The Eyes of Color

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I am back in the Midwest after a two-week trip to the Deep South. This trip was the first time in many years I had spent an extended time in the south.

For the past eight years, I have lived in an old neighborhood in St. Paul, MN. Affectionately dubbed “Hoyt Village” our community consists of three moms, one dad and six girls, plus two dogs and a variety of other animals.

One of the moms and I share a number of commonalties. We are both raising daughters later in life, an unintended result of life circumstances neither expected. We are white, our daughters are not. Her twin daughters are from the Democratic Republic of Congo and my teen-aged granddaughter is bi-racial. Both of us spent our childhood and much of our adult life in the Deep South before moving to St. Paul.  We share a rich heritage and history growing up as Southern Baptists during the years of civil rights, which ingrained in us a committed social activism. Daily, we dance the dance of balancing professional careers with being single parents. We have no doubt that God planted us across the street from each other!

Last week Hoyt Village moved temporarily to the beaches of South Carolina. The three moms and six girls joined another female friend at an old beachfront house where we built sand castles, walked the beach, swam in the ocean, followed the ‘footprints to the ocean’ of a newly hatched sea turtle and ate lots of fresh seafood! The other mom in our group hails from SD and her only other visit to the south had been a recent trip to Disney World. South Carolina’s Low Country is quite a different cultural experience than the Black Hills of South Dakota!

Our six daughters range in age from 6 to 14 and represent the variety of possibilities of skin color.  Cierra, my granddaughter and the oldest has skin color that makes me think of café mocha or milk chocolate, the twins are a brilliant ebony hue. My next door neighbor’s girls are fair, the oldest two pale creamy beige and freckled with strawberry blonde hair. Their sister and the youngest of our neighborhood family, has albinism, leaving her skin and hair almost translucent in its absence of color. Each one is incredibly beautiful!

I have said before that race is a cultural construction and not anchored in biology. Race doesn’t matter. It doesn’t and yet, it does. Each of these girls’ life journey is shaped in a variety of ways because of the color of her skin. They are subtly and not-so-subtly judged, evaluated, acknowledged, welcomed, and critiqued because of their skin.

This again became apparent in a conversation I had with Cierra in the middle of our beach trip. Her life experiences have taught her that race matters. One afternoon, after an outing to a nature museum and lunch, Cierra asked this question: “Have you noticed that you only see African Americans doing the dirty jobs here? They pick up the trash, they do the construction work; they buss the tables. I haven’t seen any black people working in nice jobs, like waiting on tables, working as clerks in the stores. Why is that?” How do you even begin to answer that question. In our house, we have a saying, “Here she goes again,” a reference to me kicking into teacher mode with a complicated response to an often simple question. So, I said to her, “Okay, this is one of those times when I’m going to give you the teacher’s response, because there is no simple answer here.” I responded by saying that the playing field of opportunity is not the same for everyone. Some people have greater access to the paths that lead to greater opportunity and more often than not those people have a lighter skin tone. It’s about money or the lack of it, it’s about education or the lack of it, it’s about who you know or don’t know, it’s about history. . . . . As I droned on, Cierra in frustration, interrupted me and said, “The answer is simple, ‘it’s about skin color.’” In her fourteen years, she has already learned that lesson over and over again.

She had no choice

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Several years ago, I attended a Sunday morning high school Bible study at an urban, predominantly African American church in the Twin Cities. I was there to observe a youth ministry student who was completing an internship with this church. As with most youth groups, this one was full of energy, the usual games and activities and eventually students settled down for the Bible Study. The Bible study that morning was 2 Samuel 11 and the story of David and Bathsheba. I seem to recall that the student intended on talking about God’s grace and forgiveness when we sin, but as he shared the events of the story, the conversation took a different turn. As he highlighted how David observed Bathsheba taking a bath and that he had her brought to him, one young woman shouted out, “he raped that woman, how could he do that?” The youth ministry student tried to get things under control and said something to the effect that what David had done was wrong but that he went on to marry her and had Solomon who would one day be king and that the Messiah, Jesus, ultimately came from that family. That did little to settle the unrest in the room. “I don’t care, he raped her and she couldn’t say no, he was the king. She had no choice.”

I thought about that incident, when I read the story in the NY Times Sunday about Michelle Obama’s white ancestors. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/us/dna-gives-new-insights-into-michelle-obamas-roots.html Michelle Obama may be one of the most prominent African Americans to discover her connection to white slave owners in the South, she is certainly not the only. As the author of this article notes, family ties between blacks and whites highlights “the entangled histories and racial intermingling that continue to bind countless American families 150 years after the Civil War.” This story again begs the question for me; exactly what does race mean? This is evidence again that race is a social construct, not a biological reality.

In the case of Mrs. Obama’s family lineage, the son of a slave owner had at least one child with one of his daddy’s slaves, a young woman named Melvinia. The first child was born when Melvinia was 15 or 16 years old. The son was 20. Rachel L. Swarns, the author of the article, concludes her story with comments that some on the white side of Obama’s family, hope that the relationship was consensual and that maybe there was real love between the two. Perhaps. But regardless, she was a young female slave and he was the son of her owner. She had no choice. And like Bathsheba, God blessed the children and today one of her descendants lives in the White House. God’s goodness and blessing in the midst of oppression is not to be confused with sanctioning the sin. Not for Bathsheba, nor for Melvinia.

Even when you don’t want to be, you are

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Pamela Erwin, June 13, 2012

Seventeen tired and weary travelers sat sporadically throughout the cavernous meeting room perched high up on a cliff overlooking the North Atlantic. The view was breathtaking and consumed our attention. With every crash of the waves against the rocks below, the air in the room grew more tense. No one spoke. No one looked away from the view for fear of looking at someone else; afraid that they might have to confront the issue floating in the electrified air of the room.

We had come to this place to process and debrief three intense weeks of immersion in the sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. A conflict unfathomable to us. How could there be so much hatred between people who both followed Jesus, especially when you couldn’t even tell them a part. Or so we thought.

We began our discussion in that room with hundreds of questions about the whys of it all and why couldn’t things be different. As our host facilitator helped us sort through our questions and emotions, he made a startling comment about the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of reconciliation in Northern Ireland: “sectarianism”, Jeremy said, “bleeds into you here. Even when you don’t want to be, you are.” As he unpacked that statement for us, Jeremy went on to share that when he works with groups of Northern Irish youth across religious boundaries, one of the first things he asks them to do is to acknowledge their sectarianism. He has them repeat, “I am sectarian.” Once everyone makes that move to acknowledge their sectarianism, they can begin to actually talk about the ways they live and think that continue to divide Catholics and Protestants from one another.

As our group pondered this, one student voiced the thought that sectarianism was a lot like racism in the U.S. and that if we acknowledged our own racism, if we were able to say “I am racist” we might be able to have open and honest conversations about racism. A few students quickly reacted, “but I’m not . . . .” And then it grew quiet, a heavy electrified silence.

Racism, it bleeds into you here. Even when you don’t want to be, you are. . . . even when I don’t want to be, I am.

 

as quiet as it’s kept

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As quiet as it’s kept I’ve been teaching college students for 20 years and doing youth ministry even longer than that. I fell upon teaching right after I finished seminary, still in my twenties, a bit naïve, not sure what I was doing but always up for adventure. A private Christian college hired me to direct their college prep program for urban high school students, help connect college students to city ministries for volunteer work, and teach one course each semester. The student population was majority white, middle class, suburban and evangelical.  I thought it would be a cake job, but it was one of the hardest jobs I’d ever done in my life. No one told me that my physical body would be a source of anxiety in some students. After all, I was black, female, and had an urban affect. Yea, I was a Baptist from Philadelphia and wore that more than I realized.

The day a white male student in one of my classes assumed two things about me was the day I began to plan two options 1) my departure from what I started calling “that nasty white evangelical world,” or 2) stay, get tough, and do some real education. That student told me I must have grown up in a “ghetto” since all the black people he knew were from ghettos; and his dad was tired of affirmative action taking all the jobs from white people and giving them to unqualified black people. He asked if I thought I got my job due to affirmative action.

Twenty years later my body is still causing visceral reactions in some students, even before I say a word. After twenty years of unintentional research and seeing similar patterns; I have become confident and accustomed to using my own experiences as research fodder. Bodies matter, race, gender, class and space matters, even in theological dialogue; especially in theological dialogue. I’m a cultural anthropologist and youth minister who studies global youth cultures, particularly youth from the peripheries of the world. They are poor, yet mighty in spirit. Their bodies, voices and experiences matter.

My contribution in this space is to highlight the voices of not only young women and people of color, but all young people living on the edges of society. The ways they understand and experience God are distinct and unique to who they are and where they find themselves socially. Many resist external constructions of themselves, and the fear provoked by their brown bodies; they carve out their own identities via the arts, media, music and hip-hop. I’m curious about the ways God is using indigent young people who have been left on the world’s trash heaps by the religious institutions around them.