45/50: Critical + Race
Glory is an abundant resource and only present when all can stand in the light.
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”
I attended a small private K-8 Christian school that was nearing the end of its lifespan by the time I was in eighth grade. There were only seven kids in my graduating class, five girls and two boys. Of the five girls, 3 were black and 2 were white. We were all close — in and out of each other’s homes and families. I assumed, like so many others, that I didn’t see color.
But there were things that unsettled me. Like when we had moved on to a Christian high school and our Bible teacher made disparaging comments about Martin Luther King, Jr, and I saw my friends’ eyes darken. Or when I sensed their discomfort with the “slave sale” held on our campus to raise money where you could “buy” a person to serve you for the day. I knew there was something I didn’t get. To my now deep sadness, I didn’t ask what I was missing.
At my Christian college, it became a bit more obvious when the Black Student Union objected to a mural of a white Jesus holding a Bible on campus. They seemed so angry to me, and I thought it was all way overblown. While I had always experienced an ease in relationships with my childhood friends, I sensed it was not that simple with other people of color in college. Again, I didn’t ask why.
I was in my junior year of college during the Rodney King trials and Los Angeles riots. Our campus went on lockdown and the skies were red at night with smoke. By this point, I had taken some basic courses on intercultural studies and justice. I had vehement arguments with my friends who were objecting to the violence and were defensive of “law and order.” I now saw the smoke rising as a desperate cry for justice.
It wasn’t until I was in seminary that I began to see the total deficit of my education. My history courses throughout my Christian education had always ended after World War 2. We hadn’t learned about the Civil Rights movement at all. We hadn’t read books by writers of color. We hadn’t even read To Kill a Mockingbird. I had a lot of catching up to do.
I still have much to learn. My commitments are to be a learner, to decenter my experience as a white woman wherever possible, and to not ever fully “get” it. Recently, this has meant acknowledging where racism is in “my” institutions and in my cognition. This is embarrassing at best. Everything in me wants to beg off on account of ignorance. What keeps me pliable is that I now understand that racism is built into all of us in this nation. It’s a source of corporate shame and culpability. But, there is no healing without seeing and without humility. If this is what critics mean by critical race theory, then I’m all for it. I don’t see a future without it.