Before George Floyd’s murder began drawing so much attention to racial injustice, I had just read Glennon Doyle’s new book, Untamed, in which she writes about her own realization of racism in herself. ”It is in the air we breathe,” she wrote. In our history, in our media, in our growing up experiences. How could it not be in us? A white woman I admired was admitting to racism. I thought she was quite courageous and . . . the timing was a set up for me.
When the protests began, I knew I needed to listen, to read books on racism, to watch movies and documentaries, to hear the lived stories of black people and to sit with the awareness of racism and try to pay attention to where it is—not just in our society and in our systems, but in me. It has been uncomfortable, and to be honest exhausting. I know. What a privileged thing to say, to feel. Even as I have needed to take breaks, I have been aware that black people have never been able to do so.
As I write this, I see the awful truth that black people have been telling us—telling me—for all of my life and I did not listen. I listened to a white woman I admire.
I also know that by telling some of my own experience, I might be centering myself instead of those who have been and still are suffering under the system of racism that I have benefited from my entire life. But I wonder if my attempt at sharing honestly will encourage and give permission for some more of us white folks to excavate the racism in ourselves.
I Failed
Just a few weeks before Breonna Taylor was murdered in her own bed, I failed a black man in our Joe’s Addiction community. Our community is mostly white. The neighborhood is mostly white, those experiencing homelessness nearby are mostly white. And there is a lot of open racism in the culture both of the surrounding area and in the local gangs. But we, the #belovedchaos of Joe’s Addiction, highly value welcoming and loving everyone. This is what we teach, what we try to live, and I as the leader am supposed to model this as best I can.
A black man who has been part of our community for years showed up for lunch. He hadn’t been around for a while, so I was glad to see him. Immediately it was obvious that he wasn’t doing so well. He had “fallen off” recently and was on the grumpy, downside of a high. This is not an unusual experience in our community.
As I was serving up plates, he asked loudly, “Is there any prejudice here?” Immediately the atmosphere tensed. He was the only black person among all of us white people. I said, “Really? You’re gonna ask that? Of course there is. You know there is, but why do you need to bring that up now?” He said, “I feel it. I can feel it.” I asked him again, “But why do you need to bring it up? Can we not just eat lunch?”
I was annoyed. I knew that some of the people at lunch are openly racist, but nobody was saying anything out of line. I thought to myself, “Why does he have to come here with such a big chip on his shoulder, stirring the pot? He’s going to bring the racists out. Just leave them alone.” He backed off and ate his meal in silence. I was grateful I had been able to keep the peace.
Racism rears its ugly head
The next day during our lunch a young white man showed up cussing angry. Something had happened in the camp. I don’t remember what, but in his rampage, he shouted the n-word about some guy who had supposedly done such and such to him or his stuff. Our black friend was there, quietly eating his lunch and when he heard this outburst he said, “See! There it is! I told you! I told you!” The white guy said, “I’m not talkin’ about you. I’m talkin’ about somebody else.” I immediately told him he had to leave, that language would not be tolerated at all in our community. Not ever. He left in a huff and I felt good about having taken a stand against racism. My black friend just shook his head at me.
I knew in that moment I was set up. I could feel it. That feeling I have come to recognize as The Muse getting ready to teach me something. I was uneasy. I knew I hadn’t handled the situation well, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I should have done differently. I thought, “Well, it ended okay.” But it hadn’t.
As I began listening to the experiences being told by so many black people, I have tried to sit quietly in contemplation with the discomfort. I have been paying attention to my body and my emotions. I have waited in the stillness trying to notice what is there, and I have found that I have racism in me. In my own self. Racism has not only been in the culture around me, blared at me through media and inaccurate education, but also in my personal family history and upbringing.
Racism in me
I grew up in a beautiful tourist town in Washington State, but my grandparents lived here in Oklahoma. I remember once when we were visiting them I was riding in the back seat of my grandparents’ car. As we pulled up to a red light, my grandma quickly reached over and pushed down the lock on her car door, then reached back and pushed down the one on my door too. I asked her, “What’s the matter Grandma?” She said, “I’m just locking the doors. We need to be careful.” I followed her gaze to the black man standing on the corner waiting to cross the street.
As this memory came to my mind, I suddenly became aware that I have feared black men. I know. It sounds so terrible. It IS terrible. I am utterly ashamed to say it, but there it is. As I sat with my discomfort this is what I found in me. I am in potentially dangerous situations daily. I encounter mentally ill, intoxicated, angry people face to face as a staple in my work. I am accustomed to deescalating anxious situations, and I can tell you honestly that I am almost never afraid. Of white people.
As I sat with this shame, I remembered another day in our community. It was evening, dusk. I was alone at our building. I looked out into the yard and this same black man, dear friend of mine, was pacing back and forth in the yard. It was obvious he was looking for something on the ground. As I sat with this memory, I felt an overwhelming wave of fear. Fear that I never admitted to myself. I remember that I quickly finished what I was doing, got in my car and started to drive away. He waved for me to stop and came to my window. He asked me to keep an eye out for his house key. It had fallen off of the chain he wears around his neck.
I allowed myself to imagine one of my white male friends in exactly the same situation with me. I imagined several of them, some of our most violent white community members, and none of those imagined scenes produced the fear in me that my black friend did. I can tell you that I know this man. I know he would never hurt me. He is my friend. He has deep respect for me. But somehow, deep in my soul, in my psyche, in my genes? I carry a stereotyped fear of large black men which now has me terrified of the ugliness in myself.
Baby steps to reconciliation
I called my friend, this man I’ve been telling you about, and I asked him if I could meet him somewhere to talk. I told him over the phone that I had not handled that day at lunch well and I wanted to apologize to him. He said, “You got that right.” I cringed with the even deeper realization that he was sooo aware of my failure. I told him that he had no obligation to get together with a white lady and listen to her apology, but that I would do my best to apologize well and try to make things right. He agreed to meet with me.
When we met up, I told him all of what I have written here. I felt a lot of things. Regret. Remorse. Guilt. Embarrassment. Shame. As I knew he would, he said over and over, “I would never hurt you. I would never hurt you.” He told me he would never have imagined that I had this in me. “You love everybody,” he said. I told him I do, at least I am committed to, but I’m learning that I can’t love everybody well if I’m not honest with what is really in me.
Oppression Every damn day
Then he told me a story. Just a month or so before, he had been walking alone at night and tripped. His forehead hit the ground, breaking his glasses. As he sat on the curb bleeding and trying to settle his bearings, he realized he was pretty dizzy. Thinking he might have a concussion, he called 911 and asked for an ambulance. Police almost always accompany an ambulance and the police car arrived first.
Two officers approached him and asked him what was going on. He told them he had fallen and had called an ambulance. They took his arms and picked him up off the curb. One asked him if he had any weapons on him. He told them, “I have no weapons. I called for an ambulance. I’m hurt.” One held his arms behind his back while the other searched his pockets. They took his phone and his wallet from him.
Tears poured down my friend’s face as he told me he kept saying to them, “I ain’t done nothing wrong. I just need an ambulance.” He said, “I kept thinking. They’re gonna kill me. They’re gonna kill me. There is nobody here to see what is happening. I am gonna die.” They looked at his ID and checked his record, then put him in the back of the police car until the ambulance arrived. They did not give him back his phone or wallet.
As he climbed into the ambulance to take a ride to the hospital, one of the police officers poked his head in and said to the paramedic, “Hey, come here.” Again he thought, “They’re all gonna kill me.” He was so afraid, he stepped down out of the ambulance and began to walk. He refused their offers to go ahead and drive him to the hospital. He walked about five miles in the dark, with no glasses and a possible concussion, to a friend’s house because that felt safer to him than staying with personnel that did not feel like they were there to protect and serve him.
When he had finished his story, he wiped his eyes and his nose. I said, “I cannot even imagine how hard, how frightening your life is.” He said, “Every damn day. Every damn day.”
The conversation then arrived at that awkward moment when I had said everything I knew to say in confession and apology. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. I then asked him, “How do we go forward? What do we do now?” He answered, “I think this is it. This is the starting place. We gotta bring this stuff out into the light. Expose it.” I wanted to end in a hug. A hug to thank him. To tell him I love him. But if I’m honest, also to end this hard conversation by relieving me of my shame. So I could feel better. I know. There it is.
But COVID. So we turned our heads and elbow bumped. I thanked him and then left with the same discomfort sitting in my stomach. I think it will be here a long time. I think it needs to be, because racism is in me.
racism in the air I breathE
The n-word was never used in my house growing up to refer to black people, although I do recall occasional calling of Brazil nuts as “n-toes,” but I was also told “that’s what we used to call them.” Why was I even told this?
I remember other derogatory racial words that were just simply a part of everyday vocabulary. Bargaining about the price for something was called “Jewing” someone down, and the Hispanic immigrant agricultural workers in our town were called “beaners.” (I thought it was because they must pick beans, which doesn’t really make sense because our area was all fruit orchards. I now know it was a reference to the food they ate.)
As an adult, I became aware of how racist these words were and quit using them, but I assumed older people in my family were just kind of “out of touch” with culture. I didn’t really consider them racist. Of course not. They were good Christian people. I even defended family members when they used racist terms, because I assumed they just didn’t know any better. How could they not know any better? They had not been living under a rock. I just could not face that racism was in my family.
As a young person when I made admiring comments about Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of the Kingdom of God, I was taught that he wasn’t a “real, Bible-believing Christian.” My spiritual teachers told me that he was “just a cultural Christian.” “Most black people are just cultural Christians,” they told me. “Besides, he was a ‘womanizer.’” An extra-marital affair disqualified him, although Evangelical white pastors committed this sin and were forgiven and reinstated without anyone ever questioning the “reality” of their Christianity or their qualifications. And still I did not see it. I could not face that racism was in my church.
I have tried to reflect as best I can on what my childhood was like in regards to race, and remember that beautiful tourist mountain town where I grew up? I cannot remember a single black person in my whole history of growing up there. There was one adopted Native Alaskan child who we referred to as “black.” He had been adopted by a white couple, and I remember that being an issue for some of the folks in town. But I couldn’t imagine this was true. No black people? My memory must be faulty. I was a kid, after all. So I went to the internet to search the demographics of that town, and here is what is listed not just for the 1970s, but for 2020:
White: 90.84%
Asian: 5.84%
Native American: 1.28%
Two or more races: 0.93%
Black or African American: 0.00%
How can this be? Where is there a place in America that is not integrated? Is this intentional? What is it that keeps black people from living there? Perhaps they just don’t want to? One more piece of information: this town’s tourist attraction that was created in the late 1960s is that it is made to feel like the Bavarian Alps. The town is German.
I have always treasured my memories of my childhood. Growing up there was like living in a fairy land. Snow in the winters covered the evergreen trees. Christmas lights twinkled from every roof line. Bells jingled from horse drawn sleighs. I’ve taken my kids back to experience my home, and the scent of the pine and fir trees floods my soul with nostalgia. I have told my husband that there is just something about the air there. I didn’t know that the air I breathed was also filled with racism.
I march for Love
So here I am. I have been watching and listening to black people calling us out, telling us their experiences and letting us know what they need from us. I have seen their explanations of “performance allyship” as opposed to us white people really doing the work of change that needs to happen deep down in our beings. And I am trying. My foundation has become shaky. My security is wobbly. It feels the same as when I began deconstructing the religion I grew up believing. Doubt was terrifying. If everything I thought I knew wasn’t true, then what was?
In that frightening time, I retreated to the teachings of Jesus. I loved them. I still do. I believe them to be true for today. I believe that when we live them, the Kingdom of God (The Beloved Community as Martin Luther King Jr. called it) becomes a reality right here on earth.
So I have gone back to Jesus’ teachings again. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” I thought I was living this verse that day at lunch. But I now see that I was not a peace maker. I was a peace keeper. There is a difference. A peace keeper keeps the boat from rocking, maintains the status quo, actually prevents things from changing. That is not what Jesus was talking about. He invited us to be peace makers and even said that when we do, we are acting like children of God. Making peace is messy. It requires us to take a stand, to rock some boats, to offend some people.
So I went to my first Black Lives Matter protest. I didn’t know how to be, but I went choosing to be on the side of those who have been suffering even from my own white privilege. I marched, I watched, and I listened as the crowd began to chant: “No justice. No peace.”
