The reckoning is how we walk into our story; the rumble is where we own it. The goal of the rumble is to get honest about the stories we're making up about our struggles, to revisit, challenge, and reality-check these narratives.
Brené Brown, Rising Strong
Like many of you, I have thought a lot in these past weeks about race and racism. Also like many of you I have posted, reacted, posted again, thought again, reacted again, and finally stopped to catch my breath. It's only as I've stopped to catch my breath and pray that I have felt a measure of peace in moving forward.
As I look at the purpose of Communicating Across Boundaries, it is not surprising that there have been many posts by myself and others around racism, immigrants, refugees, and loving the one who is other. It is the "what"at the heart of what I do. It is the "why" at the heart of what I believe, for if a gospel cannot transform me and our world from the inside out, what good is it? Why does it matter?
This time I post with even more care than usual. We have a huge portion of the population of the United States who are in pain over injustice and racism. It is a callous person indeed that doesn't recognize this and respond with deep love and care.
As a third culture kid growing up in the developing world, I had my own unconscious privilege to reckon with, and once made aware, to answer for. This privilege took different forms. From thinking "they" weren't as smart as me to happily enjoying a life that would have been far more difficult if I had been born a different color or had a different passport.
A reckoning is, by dictionary definition, a "settling of accounts." So what does that mean for me, as a privileged, little white girl growing up in a country where people had varying shades of brown skin? What does that mean to someone who is a guest in a country that had a recent history of colonization by the British Empire? For me, this primarily means being honest.
It took me a long time to recognize my prejudice and even longer to be aware of my privilege. Some of my recognition of this came when I began to write. The more I wrote, the more I articulated my perspective, the more I was reminded that that's what it was - my perspective. I viewed the world through a particular lens and that lens affected all my experiences. I walked through the world with different skin on, and skin made a huge difference.
As I moved on to writing Worlds Apart, I realized how my childhood was affected by growing up in a land where colonization ended only 13 years before I was born.
" There was a darker side to high tea I would only confront much later. This pleasure that so delighted me as a little girl was a survival of Pakistan's colonial past. The "British Raj" era, or the era of British rule, lasted for almost 100 years. It included the entire Indian subcontinent. Pakistan was born in 1948, and my parents arrived only five years later. I was completely blind to my privilege as a little, white, English-speaking girl. I cringe now at what I took for granted.
Those who were white and English-speaking went to the head of the line. Those who were white and English-speaking could casually criticize Pakistanis without thought. We traveled where we pleased, we went first class or third class on trains -it was our choice. We were educated and would have a world of opportunity. I thank God for parents that had the conscience and determination to discipline me and teach me in various ways that I was not better than those around me. Still, with a strong personality and ego to match, those lessons sometimes fell on ears unwilling to listen and a heart that would need continual reminders that privilege is not something I earned or deserved." Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid's Journey
Children grow up to be adults, and as an adult I've had to take responsibility for learning and growing in areas where I had a lot of pride and a lot of ignorance. That pride and ignorance led to wrong thinking and distorted theology.
Recently, I've focused more on the listening part of learning. My friend Caroline is one of the people I listen to. We became friends one cold, snowy evening as my husband and I made our way into a large room in New Hampshire for a church retreat. Caroline and her husband were helping to register us. It was pretty much love and friendhsip at first meeting. Caroline and I share a third culture kid background. She is ethnically South Asian, raised in several places in the world and a brilliant speaker and thinker. She said this in a sermon given in Wheaton, Illinois this past weekend:
Be on guard against cheap diversity! Cheap diversity settles for representation, cheap diversity is satisfied when the room looks colorful, Be on guard against cheap diversity. Representation is satisfied with people being present, justice says "I care about this person inside this room and outside of it." Justice says "We see and do not stand for the way that our society and our culture upholds oppression and racial violence." Justice says "I won't quit until all are seen as image bearers." The kingdom cares about life and shalom and flourishing here and now. If one of us is in pain or grieving, we ALL are in pain and grieving. If one is experiencing injustice, then all are experiencing injustice."
Caroline Lancaster
She then gives action steps to her listeners. With her permission I am sharing them here:
- Get in proximity: how can you be in community or learn from a community different than your own?
- What are your spheres of power or influence? How are you bearing the fruit of justice in those spaces? How can you distribute power, access, money, etc. to steward power and influence well?
- Educate yourself about injustice in both your passport country and your host country. Don't walk through the world oblivious.
- If you are a Christian, choose a passage or a verse that anchors you in God's heart for justice. Memorize it and meditate on it daily.
I will be on this long journey in the right direction for the rest of my life. Why? Because this is a journey directly related to who I am as a Christian. God cares about oppression. God cares about justice. God cares about hurting communities. God cares about color - he cared enough to create us in different skin tones with different hair textures.
Here are some things that continue to be a part of my long journey:
- Confession - I had to begin with asking God to heal my thoughts and my eyesight. It was and still is hard, but in searching my soul I have realized that this sin is against God and fellow man.
- Learn to recognize and confess my own bias. None of us is without bias and our bias comes from many things. But we can be crippled into wrong belief when we don't recognize and confess it.
- Develop real friendships with those who don't physically look like we do. We walk through the world with skin on. That skin is perceived differently depending on its color. I walk through the world as a white woman. I have many friends who walk through the world as Arabic speaking, Kurdish speaking, and Urdu speaking brown women and men. I have other friends who walk through the world as black, English speaking women and men. Jesus himself walked through the world as an Aramaic-speaking brown man. Tamika in a recent post on Taking Route says this about color "If you say you don't see color, then it means there is something about me that you can't acknowledge." Developing real friendships and relationships with people that don't look like us challenges us and changes us.
- Always, whether in leadership or as a follower, have a posture of humility and willingness to learn from people who look different than we do.
- Be prepared for that leadership to look different - leadership is culturally based and may feel uncomfortable for a while.
- Read and listen and learn. Let me say that again: Read and listen and learn. Then read and listen and learn again.
- We will get it wrong. Our proverbial old habits die slowly and often painfully, but if we remain open to correction and change, to true repentance when we hurt others, to not letting pride block us, we will continue to move forward.
In my journey I'm learning more about empathy and standing beside - not in front of - people. Most of all, I'm learning that this is critical to my faith and my belief that we are all made in the Image of God.
This is my long and important reckoning.
Note: Other voices that I've been listening to include: Fellowship of St. Moses the Black, Osheta Moore, Black Coffee with White Friends, Caroline Lancaster, Eugene Cho, Archbishop Sebastia Theodosios, Elias Chacour, and Ramez Attalah. They each offer different perspectives based on where they are from and where they live. I have been continually humbled as I hear and read perspectives outside of my own sphere.
[Picture Credit: Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/children-road-distant-supportive-1149671/
