An invitation to FAST FROM WHITENESS

Our addiction to whiteness grips us more strongly than any vice or drug. So this 4^th of July, an invitation to set it aside and see what new doors open.

It is the 4^th 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 4^th 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.