I consider myself a reasonably “woke” white person. I’m still learning, yes, but I feel that I’ve come a long way in my understanding of the necessity of the Movement for Black Lives, the deep history of oppression of Black bodies that extends into every sphere of our current lives, and the importance of white people talking to other white people about systemic racism and white supremacy.
But just the other day in a racial justice dialogue group organized by the UMC Baltimore-Washington Conference, I found myself slipping into an old narrative of Black experiences during a role-playing exercise.
I was supposed to be an applicant for a job with an interviewer who had my fictional criminal record in hand that included, among other small offenses, a drug charge. When asked to explain my fictional record, I immediately went for the poor-relationship-with-my-father-and-a-rough-childhood-on-the-streets story with an image of a Black man in my mind the entire time. I didn’t require my brain to consider the fact that the majority of drug users and sellers in the US are white.
I told the story as I had been told for many years, consciously and unconsciously, that Black men sell drugs and they do so because their culture and leadership is lacking.
When confronted with my blatantly racist thinking, I was so disheartened yet not surprised.
The layers of my own racism are deep. They are so. very. deep. And I realized anew in this dialogue group that my own self-understanding is only just beginning.
And yet, I could not come to this conclusion on my own. It was only in facilitated conversation with white and Black folks that I could begin to peel back the layers of the racist narrative I have been taught. I can read a great deal on my own, yes, but self-understanding does not come easily and it often cannot come through reading in isolation.
When I place myself in the sometimes uncomfortable position of connecting with others, of building sinew between us in conversational relationship, I open my heart up to immense change.
And isn’t that really what Jesus has called me to, anyway? Changing my own heart to build the Kingdom?
