Our addiction to whiteness grips us more strongly than
any vice or drug. So this 4th of July, an invitation to set it aside
and see what new doors open.
It is the 4th of July. In 2020 it seems that the
greatest act of patriotism imaginable is now is to kneel, instead of stand,
before the flag, in recognition that the penned values of our nation have yet
to be realized.
My religious foundation teaches the importance of
repentance. Repentance is not guilt. Guilt indulges in self-imposed or external
punishment to ease the pain of guilt. Repentance leans into the pain, following
the path to healing through all awkwardness and heavy questioning, self- and
communal-reflection – the long, slow path that calls for forgiveness, sacrifice
and realization that we clench position, capital and the sense of “being right”
in hidden ways we cannot even imagine. That we need a more magnanimous spirit
to search us and bring our darkness into the light. I need this healing
repentance somethin’ regular, for the self-righteousness I harbor toward my
colleagues, my partner, my brothers and sisters…
And we need it now especially as a nation.
I was raised in the good life of white moderatism. It all
seemed so rational, with the “bad guys” an abstract force beyond us. We
maintained the seemingly-good systems around us, which always treated us
well-enough, such that we were never forced to question their fairness. It was
rational to follow along. But if those systems had rarely treated you fairly,
it would be irrationality to follow along.
I came of age in churches that spoke more about the sexual
purity of its membership, than the sexual assault that happens to workers in
the vegetable fields that feed us. If we maintain our sense of goodness by
keeping the painful inequities of the world out rather than repenting for our
complicity in them, we fortify the mirage. Even the college religious community
that I loved and love so dearly kept much at bay. There I learned a white
version of history, a white version of religion, a white version of community. We
spent significant time learning about John and Charles Wesley, but little about
Richard Allen, or even Martin Luther King Jr. But of course that is the white
history we inherited, and our imagination had not been sufficiently jolted to
recognize that racism, including the racist church, is as American as anything.
It is hard to acknowledge how these seemingly good places
and institutions have been complacent in decades—centuries—of harm because they
were good to me. How could my undergraduate university and the institutions
that formed it, which had been good to me be complicit in such un-good to
others? My last home in Minneapolis was blocks from the site of George Floyd’s
murder. As many of my white friends recount the horror of the week after
Floyd’s death, I recognize the process of privilege thinned – the assumptions
of safety, of goodness all questioned. “I thought Minnesota was good.”
expressed one born-and-raised friend.
Before we shatter the white supremacy that has gripped our
nation for over 400 years, I think we have to shatter the idea that we are
good. Goodness and whiteness have become so intertwined they are invisible to
us. If it’s true that 75% of white people don’t have a single black friend
(real friend), then we only know one version of goodness – unfortunately, that
version has stood at the sidelines supporting the subjugation, enslavement,
legal rape, psychological destruction, dismemberment of families and lifelong
humiliation of other races.
I’ve been exhausted these weeks. Friends have asked me for
insight, for input -- like many, most days I’m too overwhelmed by daily
responsibilities, or just FEELING and paralysis to do something constructive. How
do I confront racist injustice in my neighborhood, my churches, my workplace,
my country and myself all at the same time?
So we keep writing letters, we keep noticing and not letting complicity
in systemic white supremacy go on without being called out, we keep taking to
the streets, voting, and listening. But to do all these well, we have to step
away from our whiteness long enough to feel with others. When you are born, as
I was, with all the necessary comforts and privilege to be what you want to be
in this world, it is so difficult to imagine the opposite. So my response this
4th of July is to call for a fast from whiteness.
Like any other obsessive vice—coffee, social media, sex—that
may not be on the whole bad or unlawful, sometimes setting it aside for a time
enables a clearer view of reality and of yourself. Make a clean break for a
time—like learning a new language by full immersion—give up speaking one
language to take on another. The invitation is as much to myself as everyone:
Let us immerse ourselves in non-whiteness for a season, and see what we learn.
Let us fast from:
· Films
directed, produced and written by white artists
· News
and media by white writers and anchors
· Books
and literature by white authors
· Restaurants
by white chefs and owners
· Music
by white songwriters
· History
written by white historians
· Sermons
by white preachers
· Communities
dominated by white leaders
Most of the above are givens if you’re white. But 2020 calls
for enlarged imagination. 2020 calls for repentance and fasting. Let us fast
from white dominance to see what calls for repentance and opportunities for
healing arise.
