don't give up, part 1: be actively antiracist

As peaking summer temps drain us, COVID realities demand we again limit our behavior, school decisions loom and confusing messages about protests abound, it is easy to stick our heads in the sand, ignoring injustice and the painful realities others face. Feeling legitimately overwhelmed, it is easy to shrug our shoulders (either because we don’t know our own power, or because we listen to fear, or because we can’t support some of it so we decide to bail on all of it, or because apathy is so much easier), and turn away. I will offer more ideas on what we are accomplishing and why we have to stay at the work of paying attention to the words and actions of those around us later.

For today, I’d like to gently remind us that we are the people we’ve been waiting for. That your changed action is the spark that could revolutionize your community. That people are being treated differently because of their skin color on your watch, in your city. I will remind us that disagreeing with a pillar or fearing what you see in another city does not mean that your city/business/school/police department/neighborhood/house of worship/drugstore/university/city council/school board suddenly corrected the old habits that protected white supremacy and norms at the expense of brown bodies and their futures. Even if you detest what is going on in some other place, pay attention to what is going on around you.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball. Slow down, breathe, and pay attention to what is happening in your part of the world. Don’t take the easy exit ramp a bad actor across the country revealed; stay on your path, and do the right thing that you see before you right now. This requires you to

a) Pay attention. I know you’re tired. I know the instability and decisions facing your own family are enough to crush you. Lift your eyes and look around anyway. Find people more vulnerable than you who are facing similar challenges, and hear them. (Also, pay attention to local elections and how your school board will care of students whose families have limited resources).

b) Be creative. Creativity and beauty are fierce rejectors of hate and evil. Muster the courage to keep your family talking, showing up, noticing the injustice around you. Creatively think of small (or big) ways your family can speak up for and stand up with people who are hurting. Do the same at work, and in every other room you enter. Teach your kids how to do it too.

c) Be antiracist. Hit pause and hear the things you think or say. Notice and reject statements about “them.” Actively expand how you define “us.” If your us is small and similar, then give your kids and community a chance to thrive in the years to come by expanding that us.

If you noticed yourself leaning in to hard conversations a few months ago about how policing works, about what they are expected to do for and in our communities, about the realities of suspicion and abuse that black folks endure, then commit to staying at it. I’ll remind us how far we’ve come and how we might keep marching on in later weeks. For now, enjoy these suggestions to help spur you to antiracist thinking and acting. Allow them to help you pay attention, and then get creative as you decide how you will engage.

I know you’re tired. Don’t Give Up.

Suggestions to help you become actively antiracist:

(Curated from @ExpandYourUs Tweets in 2017-2019)

Recognizing racism, denouncing its ‘cultural symbols’, is important work, but it quickly becomes a distracting sideshow if we don’t also act as antiracists who dismantle the system of oppression built with racial hierarchies in mind. Be antiracist with yourself, not just a pointer outer of racism in others. To learn more about the work of antiracism, understanding what it asks of you and how it is different than not being racist, read the work of Ibram X. Kendi. In Stamped from the Beginning, he frames the actions and perspectives of historical Americans as either segregationist, assimilationist or antiracist. In How to be an Antiracist, through exploring his own story, he explains the difference in racist and antiracist thinking in every single American mind. All of us, members of every race, ethnicity and religion, have to work to recognize toxic racialized thinking, and then commit to thinking and acting in antiracist ways instead.

Ideas to be actively antiracist

1: Don't say "failing school" (or overlook other coded language like this). Ask instead, "why is our community failing these kids? What can I do?"

2: Own & embody this fact: Interrupting or identifying racist undertones is not bad manners. It's a basic good.

3: Replace judgment with curiosity. Hearing one's different experience poses no threat to your existence. Never ask someone to “prove it” when they share their pain.

4: Recognize that life is incredibly limited if you disregard the experience of others. Pursue diversity by valuing diverse perspectives.

5: Speak about others-strangers & friends-the way you would want your kids to hear people speak about you.

6: Don't look for a reason to be right about your suspicions of others. Look for reasons to be wrong.

7: Transform your desire to "do something" into a desire to know & learn from someone different from you first.

8: If you are new to seeing the reality of systemic racism, own it & then sit at the feet of those at work.

9: Explore your own story in CONTEXT with others, recognizing the hardships & privilege you find there.

10: When you hear stories about America you didn't learn in school or at home, educate yourself before denying them.

11: Utter aloud (to yourself) the stereotypes & prejudices you instinctively believe. Do strangers deserve them? (PS: they sound as bad as they are when you hear them out loud)

12: Witness someone's story without editing it. Resist the temptation to erase her experience.

13: If we don't explicitly reject evil, we walk in step with it, stand in the way of it, and eventually sit down entrenched in it. #rejectracism @mikaedmundson

14: In [a house of worship] look for evidence of actively addressing racial divides & injustice. If not, ask ?s @dukekwondc

15: Don't refuse to others what was freely offered to you. Recognize the access you've been given, & share it.

16: Examine words you use & avoid. Are you unwilling to utter some ideas because you've been told they’re "political"?

17: Fully embody citizenship by informing yourself about your city. Visit night court, learn crime and education stats, ask ?s about why things are the way they are.

18: Trust the shared experience of a person of color more than you trust your perception of their experience.

19: Talk openly (with yourself) about the deficits that come when you share trust & break bread only with people like you.

20: Resist the temptation to make all exposures of racism about you. To be an ally, decenter your self & story in order to see the bigger picture.

21: Know you have a role to play in pursuing equity & justice, & can ask for help in figuring out what it is.

22: Consider the impact of policies on communities of color before boisterously supporting them. Expand your us.

23: Use whatever platform you have to expose injustice through speaking up, asking a question, or passing your mic to an "other." For those of us reluctant to weigh in on advocating for marginalized others, for what are we waiting? For what are we saving our "capital"?

24: If you want to pursue justice, you must sit at the feet of people who identify with marginalized people. Increase your proximity to the powerless until you know them.

25: Hold your tongue before you ask a person to prove their experience of injustice, ostracism or hurt. Listen.

26: Acknowledge & change your instinct to label the box someone fits in. This instinct makes empathy impossible.

27: Figure out how to leverage your power (not just to make money, but) to advocate for those forgotten by others.

28: If someone feels the need to challenge the status quo & protest perceived injustice, LISTEN (don’t just dismiss or tell them to calm down).

29: Find a way to confront bigoted comments/jokes/assumptions in a way that allows the relationship to survive. Blowing up relationships will not reconcile us.

30: It may seem counter-intuitive, but those seeking to examine white evangelical culture and behaviors should actually ask black and brown folks. Our status as "other" (in their eyes) and minorities means we've had to learn their patterns for our own safety and flourishing. @JemarTisby

31: Be willing to admit your mistakes while walking with people whose mistakes define them.

32: Be more about where you stand--not who you distance yourself from.

33: Share your grief/sadness/revelation openly with people you have never “gone there” with you before. Acknowledge all is not well. They might be thankful.

34: Telling ourselves the truth about who we have been, who we are now & who we are committed to caring about is a courageous act of resistance.

35: Rather than taking stances only against people or ideas, what are you for? Who does it help? Who does it hurt?

36: Dream about how you can leverage your assets to take care of folks in your community (rather than thinking of them as tools for your own security).

37: If you want to take care of kids across the country/world, consider investigating your local school or housing situations. Invest in the kids within your proximity who suffer from food insecurity or who are overlooked and undervalued.

38: Be specific in your praise and resistance. “They” are not a thing.

39: It is crucial to know that it is NOT contributing to partisanship to resist systems and norms that are unjust.

40: Recognize difference. It isn’t racist to do so.

on changing our culture of white centrality

The primary block to justice is not intentional corruption or overt racists. The primary blocks to justice are white folks consumed with themselves, habituated to ignore or diminish the lives of others. Economic, legal and racial inequities continue to define our country because they are the foundation upon which our country was first established. Our American founders gave rights to people based on their wealth, race and gender. This became the status quo, and every study of history and culture reveals that status quos are powerfully resistant to change.

Video recordings seen across America in recent weeks have alerted many to the long-standing, violent mistreatment of people of color. Many are shocked, appalled, confused, and outraged; they continue to lean in to ask what can be done, even though they might be overwhelmed or scared. I am grateful for these people. They have decided that the status quo is not okay. That what is normal is not acceptable.

These sentiments offer a wonderful chance to start again, but norms will not change unless systems change. Deciding “in my heart” that I am sad for victims and suspicious of unjust authority will not change the nature of the power that erases hope in communities of color. If we want our society to disavow racism, we can’t simply understand our history or label overt evil, we have to each actively become antiracist in our thoughts, speech and actions. If we want to create a just society, we have to actively change the one we have been creating for 250 years.

To that end, here are a few suggestions for how we in the white community might begin:

First, make is personal. Don’t start with ‘them’, start with yourself. Take inventory of your life, relationships and investments. Do you regularly share experiences or routines with anyone outside your tax bracket, religion or race? Do you seek advice from or lean on a person whose life experience is different from yours? Do you read, watch, follow or listen to podcasts made by people of color? The purpose of such inventory taking is not to shame, but to help you see who you trust in your life, whose experiences you value, and what you think is normal based on that information. If you don’t spend meaningful time with people whose reality differs from yours, you should not be surprised when a viral video reveals that different realities exist.

Educate yourself, seeking to learn with humility. I have been flooded with messages from folks who are discovering for the first time that our country’s status quo undervalues, restricts and violates the dignity of people of color. I am thrilled people are engaging with such desperate passion, and thankful I can share my own experience on this journey. Unfortunately, many black friends have also been bombarded. Nearly all of them are thankful to know their white friends care, but most are also exhausted by the idea that they are asked to comment on, explain, defend or teach a well meaning but uninformed person about what it is like to be black in America, this week, or today in Nashville.  

(PSA: if you want to reach out to a black friend, colleague, student or mentor, but feel frozen about what to say, I gently urge you to get over yourself and reach out! When you reach out, even if you feel awkward, you remove the need for them to wonder whose side you are on. Simply say something like: “I have been thinking about you this week, and want you to know I am thankful to know you. I value you and I am learning how to be a better ally to help change our city/workplace/church/school/country. I hope you feel safe. You aren’t alone, and I’m here if you want to talk. No need to respond.” Your words will not rescue them, and you need not ask anything of them either.)

As you educate yourself, notice who you ask to pay for your education. You must actively engage in your own journey rather than climbing on the back of a generous black friend willing to carry you from first to second base as she teaches you what is yours to discover. Even more costly, when African Americans do the heavy lifting for you, they usually do so in a way that privileges your feelings and comfort, rather than allowing you to discover that our status quo began and continues based on the comfort and feelings of white people. Don’t ask someone else to do what is yours to do. (I’ll provide a reading list to help you get started at the end of this essay).

 As you become educated about our racialized society, I hope you will take time to lament all we have lost by only privileging one type of life. We are all victims of the racialized hierarchy that determines our status quo. I am furious that my city’s segregation makes it difficult for us to live in multicultural neighborhoods. I am sad that my moving to a diverse neighborhood often means I will accelerate gentrification that displaces impoverished people. I am shamed when I realize that my white culture makes it bad manners to challenge a comment reflecting racial bias, or that I participate in a culture that normalizes only white wealth, while ignoring or actively avoiding an experience with a person from a different perspective in the name of safety or comfort. If we don’t take time to grieve these failures, we are more likely to abandon our efforts to change because facing our habits makes us feel terrible. You are not alone! We have much to face, and need honest courage to do so. Don’t stew in despair; instead, admit the failings you see and commit to live and speak differently.

It is easy to point a finger at an actively racist person; it is much harder to begin to notice and correct small, racialized biases, and stereotypes or fears that shape my behavior. Not many of us are overt racists, but most of us take actions to avoid certain areas, keep distance from certain people or vote against certain policies—all along racial lines. These implicitly racist habits explicitly impact the lives of others in devastating ways. Acknowledge the subtly racist thoughts that occupy you, and confess your sadness and frustration. Share your lament, your broken heart, with others in your circle. Doing so invites them to join the journey you are on and is much more hospitable than shouting them down once you “get woke.”

Moreover, sitting with your sadness will likely spur you to action. It might lead you to change your routine so that you begin to spend time in places where you are not in the racial, religious or socioeconomic majority. You can be kind and good as you go about your day, but you will never understand the reality of our unjust status quo if you only spend time with people whose lives mirror your own. If you want to challenge the norms that lead to black necks being knelt on and crushed while silent others watch, you have to share your grief with those in your circles, and you have to disrupt your own comfortable path.

Finally, as you walk along this journey, be aware that your life will change. You will become comfortable with difference, and will likely develop sincere gratitude for how much strength you derive when you learn from other people as they share their lives with you. As you do this, you will begin to de-center yourself. As you recognize the wildly different realities Americans live, you will soon begin to know and articulate your perspective, while simultaneously hungering for someone’s take that differs from yours. You will want to vote in local elections and pay attention to policies, housing, education, policing, oversight and power in your town. You will be less consumed with finding folks to affirm and agree with you, and more interested in listening to the different perspectives others might bring. You will be reluctant to share an opinion, a policy, or a voting position without seeking to understand how someone different from you approaches a similar issue.

Celebrate this fact, because when this is true of your life, you will have expanded your us. Your sense of community, of belonging, of “your people,” will have grown. You will find yourself going to bat for people in a way that offers you no direct benefit. You will create a more just and equitable society because you will use your intellect and voice and power and money and influence and vote to elevate people other than you. When wealthy white people do this (because our power is unparalleled in America), our status quo will change, our society will become more just, and we will all breathe. Every person has a role to play, and it will take all of us to create a status quo where black lives obviously matter.

If you are looking for a place to start, educate yourself by reading these (mostly) recent books. For a white person, this is the order I suggest (many of these reference or mention Christian outlooks):

On Race:

Waking up White, Irving

How to be an Antiracist, Kendi

I’m Still Here, Channing Brown

White Fragility, D’Angelo

Between the World and Me, Coates

The Color of Compromise, Tisby

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race, Eddo-Lodge

Podcasts:

Code Switch

Truth’s Table

1619

Still Processing

Other helpful texts

On Christian Engagement with Social Justice:

White Awake, Hill

Generous Justice, Keller

Disunity in Christ, Cleveland

Seek the Peace of the City, Banister

Knowing Christ Crucified, Copeland

Dream with Me, Perkins

On Education, Criminal Justice and the Law:

13th, film, DuVernay

Just Mercy, Stevenson

New Intro to Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, Tatum

The Color of Law, Rothstein

Democracy in Chains, MacLean

The Sun Does Shine, Hinton

On Economics and History:

1619 Project, New York Times (Hannah-Jones)

Toxic Charity, Lupton

Stamped from the Beginning, Kendi

The New Jim Crow, Alexander

The Economics of Neighborly Love, Nelson

Stony the Road, Gates, Jr

12 Million Black Voices, Wright

what I've been reading

Yesterday I met a dear friend to watch the documentary,Toni Morrison: Pieces I Am at a small theater in Nashville. Before the film, we met for a drink and talked about all the things. This friend and I stumbled upon each other near or in our 40s, and we have been making up for lost time since. She is brilliant and fierce and compassionate and reflective. She is curious and challenging and knows who she is and isn’t. Time together feels abundant, full of possibilities and lament, hope and outrage. She makes me better.

So does Toni Morrison. I’m so sad her voice has reached its coda. Spending three hours together and with Morrison, we explored ALL the ways to be a human, to love and to hurt, to be torn apart and put back together again. Time well spent.

Of course I am biased. I love books and think words are magnificently powerful. I rarely regret any moment I spend with a book in my hands. In the film, a Morrison scholar, like a precious disciple, suggests that the written word is the only real medium that allows a person to immerse themselves in the skin of another. Books help us to dive deep, to witness and share the thoughts, histories, hopes, fears and emotions of a character. Good characters are precise in a universal kind of way, and he thought Morrison wrote people better than anyone.

In the spirit of losing (and understanding?) ourselves by immersing our thinking in someone else’s context, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve read in the past couple of years. Particularly for those of us hoping to understand and confront the racialized society we live in, these texts help. (And stun, and shatter, and inspire, and undo, and motivate, and educate, and satisfy.)

Happy Reading.

Recent-ish Books Worth Reading in the Quest for Racial Justice

Addressing our Historical Gaps

Stamped From the Beginning Ibram X. Kendi

Academic, thick, and accessible. A well documented and contextualized account of racialized understandings in America.

The Color of Compromise Jemar Tisby

History of the Church’s action and inaction regarding racial oppression. Truth-telling that demands the church reckon with our past.

Stony the Road Henry Louis Gates, Jr

Academic essays and photos discussing the history of black resistance. Gates is a rare scholar determined to teach us all, convinced that his work is relevant and meaningful for each of us. He is right.

Waking Up White Debbie Irving

Personal account of a wealthy white woman studying the origins of racial inequities interwoven with research explaining the history of those disparities (informative and personal).

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria Beverly Daniel Tatum

Academic, but from a social science lens mixed with observational research. The 2017 Introduction is one of the best pieces I’ve read on historically contextualizing our current moment.

The Color of Law Richard Rothstein

Deep dive into the history of segregation at the hands of our government. Academic but accessible.

Why I’m No Longer Talking (to White People) About Race Reni Eddo-Lodge

Clear about her own boundaries and determined to educate, she covers the reality of and paths of resistance against structural racism in Britain. Includes a fabulous chapter on the nature of the interaction between feminist and antiracist activists.

Personal Accounts of Experiencing/Overcoming Prejudice and Valuable Advice on How to Engage the Work

How to be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi

Just got it…can’t describe it yet but expect to devour it shortly. He is an incredible thinker and communicator.

White Awake Daniel Hill

Story of a well-meaning, woke-ish pastor who tried to start a multicultural church in Chicago, and learned a lot through his failures as he learned to be antiracist as a Christ follower.

I’m Still Here Austin Channing Brown

Personal account of the cost of being “the only one” in many white, church/non prof spaces. A love letter to black women saying, “I see you. I hear you. We’ve got this.”

 Between the World and Me Ta-nehisi Coates

A letter from a black writer to his son about being in his skin in America. Morrison called it “required reading.” Wow.

Dream With Me John Perkins

Reflection on how to reconcile communities without hurting them from a legend in community development.

Finally, Fiction

I’ll only say here that I recently reread Morrison’s Love and Home, and both are brilliant. The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved get all the love. They are indeed wonderful. But so are the others. Pick any book she wrote and wrestle/read your way through. You might just come away understanding your town, the people who share it, and yourself, a little better.