recognizing my America

To hear Brandi read “Recognizing My America,” click here: https://youtu.be/IfafK5C1a4Y

This week Americans celebrate Independence Day, a holiday that cheers freedom and demonstrates patriotism, often with jorts, fireworks and excessive day drinking. Just as often, we mark the holiday with neighborhood bike parades, BBQ and watermelon. Thinking about the various ways we spend our fourths of July leads me to also wonder what exactly it is that we are celebrating. Put another way, what is America, and who gets to decide?

Are we Lee Greenwood’s version? Proud, certain we are free and blessed, and familiar with the agricultural highlights of each state? Is Charlie Daniel’s vision of a national kumbaya correct? Will we “all stick together, you can take that to the bank. That’s the cowboys and the hippies, the rebels and the yanks?” Does Donald Glover get to decide? In “This is America” he reveals a country alive with movement and soul, but also littered with guns, violence, apathy and fear. Maybe Toby Keith gets it right, describing us as an international bar bouncer: “You’ll be sorry you messed with the U. S. of A; we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.” Do veterans who think we honor the whole America in the National Anthem by standing or kneeling get to decide what America is? On a national holiday that celebrates our origin story, it is worth thinking about who we think we are.

For many Americans, , America does represent freedom and independence. We are the magical land where people prove their worth through their work, where everyone gets a fair shot. God loves to bless us because we are His favorites (outside of Israel, of course). Real Americans have no need to protest anything, because we are great and protesters are violent whiners. I like this idea of America, and sometimes wish I could believe it. I have learned, however, that in order to believe this is THE version of America, I have to erase more history than I remember. I have to erase the experiences of many friends. In order to believe, I have to ignore the fact that our country was founded to guarantee the freedom and equality of white men, and white men alone. I have to ignore that fact that we legally and intentionally oppressed, killed and stole from Native and Black peoples. I have to ignore the single mom in Appalachia who works incredibly hard but can’t establish her worth or sustainability to the world around her. I have to ignore the Black man who works long hours even though he is treated with suspicion and disdain when his paycheck fails to give his family breathing room.

I recognize these ideas can seem inflammatory, but I don’t write them to provoke. Instead, I am suggesting that we might best celebrate Independence Day by recognizing our entire history. We are both a country that loves our work ethic and a country that refuses to reward the hard work of some parts of our population. We are both a country that believes in equality and justice for all and one that legislates injustice and inequality. We believe in democracy and fair shots, while protecting a caste system based on race and education. We are the home of the brave and yet we have punished displays of bravery in brown or female bodies. We cherish our religious freedom but we ban people on the basis of their religion. 

Calling these assertions unpatriotic doesn’t make them untrue.

People who study American culture talk about our longstanding tradition of imagining American spaces really as white spaces. In our dominant cultural imagination, hard workers look like white workers. The American heartland looks like quilts sewn and fields plowed and pies baked by white hands. I know the mention of race is off-putting for some, but this is because many Americans have the privilege of not thinking about the cultural and historical racism that links color with suspicion. If we could recognize our passive linking of “real Americans” with “white Americans” then we can embrace our country’s entire story on this historical holiday.

This Independence Day, could we honor our nation’s legacy by thinking independently? Could we reject the narrative that the only way to be patriotic is to love Lee Greenwood and ignore Donald Glover? Could we listen to those who honor our flag by kneeling or standing? On July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. A group of brave white men in tights and wigs wrote an epic letter protesting the oppressive injustice of a group of powerful privileged men who refused to consider their perspective or value. The origin story of America is one of protest. Knowing this, it is hard to now accept the idea that those who protest are unpatriotic. Un-American.

Writing this gives me pause, because I know the dangers of living in the middle space, where American failures and triumphs are remembered. I know the mention of white supremacy feels like an attack on America, but I am even more afraid for all us if we continue to act as if America only belongs to a certain type of person. The thing that we celebrate on July 4th is taking power from a few and sharing that power with many. While we have yet to get this right, we come closer to living up to the American democratic ideal when we make room for all kinds of voices to share their experiences of America. This begins by remembering our whole history.

When our daughter was three she had a funny speech pattern of addressing people with a possessive pronoun.  She called her favorite neighbor “my Isabelle.” She said, “I want to swim with my Emmett” or “I go play with my Marion.” Remembering this makes me think about what it means to claim a person. She was not trying to own them with her “my,” she was asserting her devotion to them. She was relationally bound by love and delight to these people.

As we celebrate Independence Day, to whom are we relationally bound?

Who is worthy of our delight and love, and who do we naturally dismiss or avoid? We all have these kinds of biases. They can be confessed and examined, transforming them as markers in our journeys as we expand our us and build better communities. These biases become dangerous though when we trust them as good and right, using them to demean the value of another human being who shares our air and zip code and country.

In an age where I hear angry voices claim, “He’s not my President,” or “They aren’t welcome in my America,” I want to celebrate the 4th of July by claiming my America. Our America, which has been exclusive and inclusive, brave and cowardly, bullying and welcoming, oppressing and dignifying. Let’s celebrate the whole America, and every person who helped build, cultivate and shape it. Every race, culture and gender who contributed to the country we call ours. It took a diverse village to build us into who we are, and we lose very little when we acknowledge that fact. We lose our country when we pretend like it is and always has been the result and promise of one race alone. As we celebrate, let’s reflect on who we’ve been, who we are, and what each of us might help America become.

the grip of white supremacy

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/ZkrUdS534QQ

My six year old asked me if policemen want to hurt her because she is Black. Her crushing question hung in the air while I struggled to decide what to privilege in that moment. Her need to brace herself for the hate that would come her way? Her need to trust the power structures of society? Her need to be a little girl? Her need to survive into adulthood? Her need to understand the world around her?

White supremacy forces the parents of Brown kids to forfeit their innocence in order to keep them alive.

This week, when she asked me that horrible question, I privileged her need for emotional safety. I told her no one wanted to hurt her. That she was safe with me. That policemen were there to help. That she could trust the people around her.

I lied to her. I did it to protect her six year old sense of self. She needs to trust that the world will welcome all she might bring to any environment. I join a centuries-long list of other mamas struggling to bottle the rage I feel about the unjust world she enters as a Black female. How long will we allow kids to wonder if they are seen as creative assets or as destructive drains on society? I wanted to give my daughter an answer that was true and comforting to her at the same time.

White supremacy removes that option.

She asked the question because she is taking in her surroundings. She is watching her world. My daughter and I are beginning a conversation shared by thousands of kids and parents all across our country. I am not the first mom to wonder how much truth her child can handle. The Talk has been popularized across culture recently by artists like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kenya Barris. What might be less understood is that the talk doesn’t begin when your kid gets a later curfew for the first time. The subject of white authority mistreating Black bodies is not first broached when car keys are tossed across the table, caught by young, eager hands. No. The talk begins when a child spends any time outside the home, and every time American history is mentioned. A Black child can’t learn about our founding without learning about 3/5s. A Black child can’t learn about American agriculture and cotton wealth without learning about slavery. A Black child can’t learn about education without learning about what Ruby Bridges endured. A Black child can’t learn about the Civil Rights Movement without learning about Jim Crow. A Black child can’t grow up in America without learning about racism. The talk lasts a lifetime.

White supremacy makes American history terrorizing.

As a white Christian woman who studies the history and literature of the African diaspora, I understand white supremacy. I see how it is enmeshed in Christianity, and I see how it served white Christians then and now. Because we historically set norms of behavior, if American Christians had wholeheartedly rejected racism, white supremacy would never have been a thing in America. Instead of following the Gospel model of privileging the outcast, of welcoming those on the margins, of confronting power that excludes others, many white Christians continue to preserve the status quo, questioning the faith of any person who dares to notice the racialized hierarchy in our churches and communities. Rather than naming the evil that segregates us, extending welcome to those who suffer, much of American Christianity seems content to ignore our role and to blame those who suffer for the suffering they endure.

White supremacy gives easy reasons for Black suffering.  

Christianity is incompatible with White supremacy. Christianity is also incompatible with defensiveness. Christians should lead the way in confronting and rejecting white supremacy. We should be eager to name it, grateful to renounce it, and humbled to confess the power it has on so many of us. Trusting systems might keep us comfortable, but such trust requires us to ignore the experiences of those who remind us injustice is baked in to our status quo.

White supremacy continues when white Christians ignore and protect it.

If Christians would confess the power of white supremacy, repenting of the damage it does to others, then six year olds would not ask their parents if they should prepare to be hurt because of their skin color. This week has brought tension to the public sphere and pain in private ones. The trial recounting the death of George Floyd, the killing of Daunte Wright and the murder of Adam Toledo wreaked havoc on many Black minds.

 It is time for all Christians to recognize their pain and to do the work to end white supremacy.

Pretending it isn’t real is evil.

Acting like it is not our problem blasphemes the life of Christ.

White supremacy is our problem, and it is terrorizing our kids and neighbors.

Below is a prayer of lament I prayed in church this week. I hope it invites us into the work God has given us to do.

This morning we come to you as your church, Asian, Latin, African, European, and Indigenous Americans. We bring our many voices and cry out with one voice: Lord, we are broken and weary. When we think of the grief pouring out of Atlanta, Minnesota, Indianapolis and all across our land, we feel our own grief rise, and we can barely lift our eyes to ask you for help. George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo. We are tired Lord. We feel abandoned when those we hoped were friends either ignore the trauma overwhelming us or, worse, question our experience. You are no stranger to betrayal. We feel afraid, as we look to our younger friends and know we cannot protect them from the evil white supremacy and violence gripping our country. You are no stranger to fear. We feel angry when we hear the blame, excuses or nothing at all coming from the mouths of brothers and sisters who claim to know and love you. You are no stranger to anger. We feel weary, distracted by grief, paralyzed by fear, stuck in the despair that wonders when it will stop. How long? Hear our lament as worship, Lord.

We have been oppressed and doubted, our dignity has been denied. We have also been oppressors and doubters, using our power to deny the dignity of beautiful image bearers you call “Mine.” We have allowed our bias to hurt those who need protection. We have blasphemed your name by refusing to act as your Church, as a refuge for those who suffer. We have called order peace, instead of making peace—even peace that disrupts. We have worshiped our own comfort, rejecting your way, which requires sacrifice. We have allowed systems that hurt Brown bodies to remain, checking out when it feels too hard or takes too long.

But you God, are patient. You forgive us and invite us into a new way. You do what you say you’ll do. You cannot and will not abandon your children. You sacrificed your comfort to be our Comforter. You disrupted your life to be our stability. You walked out of your way to make a way for us. You called out the powerful to lift up the lowly. You are the God who sees us when no one else does. We praise you that we belong to you. You see us struggling to get out of bed, and yet here we are because of you. You know when we cannot have one more hard conversation at work, and yet because of you some of us felt hope at work this week. You strengthen us before we even ask, because your new mercy comes each moment of the day. You lift our head when we cannot lift our eyes, and you remind us of the generations before us who have believed what their eyes did not see.

We put our collective hope in you, Lord. We will surely perish without your love. We praise you that we do not suffer alone. We praise you that Koinonia is no stranger to suffering, so we will open our arms all the wider to comfort those who mourn. Expand our capacity to stand with those who hurt, Lord. Show us how to bind up broken hearts. Give us a holy imagination for what our Beloved Community can be. Show us how to believe what we cannot see. Help us imagine your justice and mercy invading our broken systems. Pour your compassion through us, so that we become a church that embodies solidarity with those you love. Remind us that your justice will not wait forever, and we can trust you to redeem all things to you. Thank you for taking our burdens as your own, and give us your strength to do the same.

don't give up, part 6: stay local and pay attention

 To hear Brandi read this essay, visit the Expand Your Us youtube page here: https://youtu.be/UnniNVKmQI0

This week’s essay continues a series called Don’t Give Up. It is geared toward helping us find resiliency, stamina and hope in at least two areas of our communal life: One, to keep pursuing wellness, creativity and compassion for others as COVID drags on. Two, to stay present, leaning in to the stories of the toll our racialized society takes. Don’t give up, but keep learning about the lives others lead, actively rejecting any position that upholds a dangerous hierarchical status quo.

In part 5, I recounted an incident I witnessed earlier this month when a couple’s aggressive public commitment to white supremacy scared me. See my last essay to dig into the deep toll such moments take on people of color, and, indeed, on all of us. When we live in communities where belligerent white supremacy runs rampant, we live in communities struggling with terror. This week, I will speak mostly to a white audience, helping us consider how we might respond to such active racism.

In my experience, when we see open displays of racism in others—like I did at Kroger—many of us let ourselves off the hook by comparison. It is easy to see a couple like that and sigh, resting in the fact that they are what racism looks like, and you thankfully act nothing like them. This is dangerous, because we can’t confront or repent of that which we choose to ignore. If we don’t acknowledge our own subtle racial biases, we can’t strip them of power, or free ourselves from their grip.

White supremacy takes many forms, and I urge us all to do the work of recognizing the form it takes in us. In May and June, we experienced a collective awakening as we recognized that as individuals and as institutions, we are biased to doubt and fear the presence of brown bodies. We saw that when all of us, police included, don’t confront the evil in our history, that evil is more likely to thrive inside us, giving us bias against folks of color that we barely even recognize. We saw that we are more likely to trust whiteness, dismissing bad actors among us, while we chronically mistrust the presence of black bodies, applying stereotypes that undermine their humanity.

If we hope to re-seize the moment of cohesion we are losing, we have to make it good and normal to notice our secret racialized judgments, to confess them, and to re-teach ourselves to reject any thinking based on white supremacy. Further, when our executive branch threatens to defund any agency, school or department that implements training in bias, in clarifying our history of hate, in teaching the way that white supremacy impacts communities, we should reject that executive branch.

Here’s the thing though, just like it is easy to absolve ourselves and instead blame the Kroger couple for their issues with race, it is also easy to live unexamined lives while we complain about what our government is or is not doing. By all accounts, our President believes a comprehensive view of American history is unpatriotic, and that training in bias or racialized assumption-making is a threat to America’s safety.

If you see racial inequities and want to make our country safe and more equitable, don’t look to Washington.

Instead, look within. Stay local, doing your own crash course in American history. Stay local, observing your possible tendency to make assumptions about others based on their outward appearance. Stay local, noticing when you let a joke or coded language stand unchallenged in your hearing. Stay local, recognizing when you equate whiteness with safety (especially when it comes to your kids). Stay local, observing who you trust, learn from, or talk with about the polarized state of our country. Stay local, paying attention to what you will bring up in certain friend groups. Stay local, noticing who you are willing to forgive, and who you are likely to ignore. 

One day last week I went on a long run on the country roads near my childhood home. A few miles out, I took a side road I had never before taken, and was stunned by the beauty. The road curved over gentle hills, trees nearly touching overhead. Realizing I was on a stretch of road that was stubbornly uphill, I decided it was time to turn back. As I ran back toward what was familiar to me, I started laughing. There was a massive cow staring at me behind a barbed wire fence enclosing a field. I thought I had been paying attention when I initially ran by! In fact, I was intentionally looking around, trying to take it all in (the way my Dad taught me to run). But there was a big fat cow, and I had totally missed it. It got worse as I got closer: The big fat cow was surrounded by many other, less fat cows. I’m ashamed to admit there were even little baby fat cows, frolicking near a pond in the dappled sunlight.

We have to train ourselves to pay attention. For many of us, we live in kind, generous worlds built on evil white supremacy. Once we discover it, we can either pretend its not there, we can get angry at whoever else sees it, or we can humbly say, “Wow. A cow. How on earth did I miss that?”

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain if we stop our fixation on violent racists or rioters. Instead, find the cow in your own backyard. Pay attention to your life, your thoughts, your friends, your habits. Pay attention to your police department, court fines and Sheriff’s office. Pay attention to your child’s history curriculum and your family’s past or present acquisition of wealth or land. There is so much to learn, so much to repent of, so many connections to be made, so much healing to be done. Don’t give up. Pay attention.