It Was Always Burning

Starting points as we wade in. (Or, floorboards for the rowboat we're building.)

“If you’re not working for justice, stop calling for peace.”

– Bernice King, daughter of MLK

Last weekend the kids and I drove down to Ohio to visit my family for the first time in months. I stayed up late that first night, in my childhood bedroom, reading a spiral bound school newspaper from my tiny public school. I was in 5th grade the year it was published. The point of the publication was to honor our community by showcasing our pride in it. There were grainy, black and white photos of students, prominent residents (as prominent as anyone can be in a village of 2,000 people) and quotes from a selection of students from each grade stating why they were proud to live in Pleasant Hill. Most of the quotes localized around one central theme: “I feel safe here.”

And we did. We do. The quotes about how peaceful it is, how supportive, how cozy and kind, all of them could have come from my own mouth.

But as I turned the pages, my discomfort grew. Hidden between the lines of our hometown reverence was the truth that in most of the ways that mattered, we were all the same. Every face in the publication was white, because every face in the school was white. To my knowledge, at that time, every member of our community was white. There was no disruption of our narrative. This lack of difference – of tension – made us feel safe. And that feeling actually made us dangerous.

It was the way it was, the way it had always been.

~

We were driving back home to Indiana when the news of George Floyd’s murder caught traction.

Since then, most of my waking thoughts have hovered over racism and injustice in America. News like this always rattles me. Which, I am beginning to understand, indicates my privilege. I can rest my head in the encampment of the bewildered. I was born with the luxury of shock, the entitlement of intermittent outrage.

People of Color form a different camp. They grieve and mourn as they wait for the inevitable next time. It is the way it is, the way it has always been.

I had no immediate intention to write about it publicly. As the mom of four non-white children, including a 26-year old Black man, I get apprehensive about inserting myself where I should not. Or causing harm, even in my good intentions. I get tired of repeating myself. (As a white woman with a toe in the fight for only a handful of years, my resilience is uninspiring, I know.)

And then, words came. I knew I could not be silent.

 I ended my Instagram post with this,

“I want to go down with the row-boat full of scrappy people who put the lives of their neighbors above their own reputation, their comfort, and their power.”

I want you in the row-boat with me. I need you here.

I cannot be your go-to expert. I am not the ocean. But I will do my best to help navigate us there, where we can learn from those who live this reality and always have.

For now, here are a few starting points. (Consider them the floorboards of our little boat.)

1. Similarity and comfort are our enemies.

I received a thoughtful message from a reader saying, “I was never taught to be a racist.” Most of us would say the same. I was taught (in words) that God loves everyone and racism is ugly. All the while, I was surrounded by people who looked/thought/believed like me. I learned to attach safety to similarity. I learned to be wary of difference. For many of us, this is part of the air we breathe, part of us, even though we were taught otherwise.

Likewise, having a handful of non-white friends does not exempt us from racism. Through middle and high school, one of my best friends was Korean. (Her and her siblings, new to our school, were the only non-white kids in the building.) I loved her. I saw her as “no different” than myself, which was part of the problem. In so many ways, we (unconsciously) required her assimilation. I never allowed myself to acknowledge the magic of her uniqueness (in addition to our many similarities) or to question how differently the world felt from beneath her skin.

Civil rights activist Angela Davis said, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” The difference is glaring. Not being part of the solution means being okay with contributing to the problem.  

2. Living in primarily white spaces does not let us off the hook.

I truly (quietly) used to believe that since I lived the majority of my life in vastly white spaces, there wasn’t a place for me in these conversations. I liked it that way, because I had no idea what to do or say anyway. The danger wasn’t real. The tension wasn’t proximate. It was easy enough to fly under the radar.

With as much gentleness as I can muster, what I have come to understand is that if we happen to live and exist in white spaces (neighborhoods, zip codes, churches, schools, work places, etc…) we don’t need to feel guilty about it necessarily, but we must ask ourselves WHY these spaces are predominantly white. Why is there an absence of People of Color? In what ways have they been excluded, unwelcomed, or pushed out? In what ways is it not feasible (gentrification, unchecked racist policies and habits, a history of red-lining, etc…) for PoC to be our neighbors? If we are not committing these questions to serious thought and imaginative solutions, we are part of the problem. If this applies to you, I beg you to look around. Would my son Robert feel comfortable in your space? Or even Calvin, Silas, or Ruby? Or the millions of others? If not, why? What could you do today to begin to repair what’s broken?

3. We don’t have to perpetuate the myth of similarity.

Most of us have some agency in this. We could theoretically choose to live in a more diverse community. (Which would require immediate and sustained education so that we don’t unintentionally do damage when we arrive.) But we could also choose different schools, churches, community groups, grocery stores, etc… We could push against our comfort for the sake of a truer reflection of God and the Kingdom.

4. We can commit to being self-motivated and taught.

I echo many others here with a bull-horn. If we truly care, we will do the work. We will intentionally read more PoC and we will not run away when it hits too close to home. We will do our own leg-work. We will make Google and Twitter our friend. (For an easy place to start, look me up on Twitter and go through my Follow list. You will either learn a few things about me or have your suspicions confirmed.) If we care about the oppression of Black and Brown people, we will not heap additional weight on them by asking them to be our teachers.

Unless they offer! Many do. They step into public places of leading and instructing with grace and fire.  We will buy their books and download their podcasts. We will tell them over and over and over, “I am listening.” And then we will take what we learn into our hearts, our minds, our kitchens, our communities. We will embrace discomfort, shrug off the smack-talkers, and decide to make peace rather than keep the peace.

I paid cash money for all but two of these books and have borrowed countless others, not shown. I can’t over-emphasize how much I’ve learned through diversifying my reading list. I’m linking to a handful of the titles (not an exhaustive list) that put my feet firmly on this path but I highly recommend each of them. These shown are mostly non-fiction, but it’s just as important to read fiction and memoir by PoC. I love Jesmyn Ward, Renee Watson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Jacqueline Woodson, to name a few. Load your cart!

Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison - This is an excellent place to start.

“In the love of the family of God, we must become color brave, color caring, color honoring, and not color blind.”

- Be the Bridge

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

One by Deidra Riggs

Shalom Sistas by Osheta Moore

The Very Good Gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper

Rethinking Incarceration by Dominique Gilliard

5. This is not about us.

Now is not the time for guilt. Now is not the time for thin skin. Now is not the time for us to be scared, argumentative, defensive, or to wring our hands and talk about how unfair it is. If we have are lucky enough to have PoC willing to engage, we will not center ourselves in the conversation by crying over past mistakes or current sadness. We will listen. Humbly.

Similarly, now is not the time to talk about how we (or our kids) don’t see color. As someone wiser than I said, “If we can’t see race, we can’t see racism.”

FLASH ALERT: I LOVE YOU!
I know this is direct. You might be feeling defensive. You might think I’m being too bossy or too cranky. I’m just saying it straight. We are here. In the row-boat. Together. We’re going to be okay but the waters will be rough at times. We can do this. We are doing this.

6. This is absolutely, in some necessary ways, precisely about us.

Whether you grew up like I did or not, our American experience has ensured that racism is baked into our bones. Scraping it out will be part of our life’s work. It is up to us to look inward. To dig deeper. To face the painful truth about who we have (or haven’t) been. And then to resolve to do better.

I know it can be confusing and scary to navigate this new terrain. We are scared of doing it poorly. We are (rightly) afraid of somehow making things worse. But as the streets get bloodier, the pleas from PoC grow louder. They are begging us to raise our voices with theirs. It’s not fair or right for them to continue to do all of the heavy lifting. Dismantling 400 years of slavery/lynching/systemic racism/police brutality and even quietly simmering implicit bias is going to require each of us making a choice: with whom will we stand?

~

Earlier today I saw this advice from Latasha Morrison:

1. Don’t deflect racism.

2. Don’t defend racism.

3. Don’t deny racism.

(This is why I will continue to point you toward those well-equipped to lead. Tasha said in nine words what I struggled to say in almost two thousand.)

Are you ready?

Hop in.

Love,

Shannan

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This & That

{As seen last night on my street.}

:: Follow

Roll Call with Austin Channing Brown is one of the handful of email newsletters (like this one!) I subscribe to. I value her perspective and am grateful for her voice. Here’s a screenshot of one of her recent emails, tackling the protests (and riots) happening across the country:

:: Watch

Travis Akers @travisakers

I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the most impactful video I have ever seen. I beg you to watch. Please, for his life.

(To be clear, we are working toward the day that no one feels the need to record a video like this. It’s okay to feel moved by it (I was!) but please go deeper and ask yourself honestly why you were moved and what it revealed in you.)

Just Mercy: This movie was heart-wrenching and gripping. Intense and hard to watch at times, but so important. Highly recommend.

:: Eat

Chef Tanorria Askew gives us strength for the journey, with recipes for biscuits, bacon popcorn, roasted garlic avocado toast, and basically EVERY GOOD THING. (She was in the top 4 of 2016’s Master Chef with Gordon Ramsay. She KNOWS.)

:: Listen

Liz Vice - There’s a Light

Just discovered her and her music is on fire.

:: Remember & Live

“Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless rive of righteous living.” Amos 5:24

If you have suggestions for me, drop them into the comment thread! I’m leaving it open to everyone for this post. Constructive comments only, please!

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