Today was interesting, enlightening, surprising, difficult, meaningful, hopeful — all of which came as a bit of a surprise to me. I'm attending an antiracism training.
I expected some shaking up; it upsets me when something poisonous creeps out of the shadows of my unconscious—like some horrendously bigoted, racist phrase. I learned a few such sayings at about the same time my first grade teacher was trying to get the idea of "subtract" into my head.
My mother taught me "sweatin' like a nigger on election day". Even in the context of this blog, it grieves me to admit I ever said such a thing. It was years before I really understood what it meant and how truly mean and arrogant it was.
Over the years I expunged those racist aphorisms from my speech, and by my early thirties I had a good working knowledge of what "white privilege" meant. I knew I had benefited from it all my life.
But that was head knowledge. Today I began to experience what it feels like to have sailed through life, free to get an education, compete for a good job, join any club or church I liked.
And it didn't feel good. I felt ashamed, frankly. I have been quick to judge my forebears in this country for climbing to wealth and privilege on the backs of the Native Peoples, but today I began to understand how I've kept that dynamic alive.
Cleaning out the shadowy corners is dangerous and not a little scary. It would be a lot easier to just dismiss the feelings and continue to think I'm not a racist because I don't say "those things" any more. But until the poison in the shadows is revealed, experienced and healed, I will continue to wear a face of racism.
I have no business claiming to follow Jesus until I'm willing to own up to my participation in the sin of separation, in any of its ugly guises.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
All racist "guilt" is something created by races who promote their own racial superiority. The Germans did it to Jews, and likewise many minority groups would have the same done to white, or apparently white people.
As for the whole "claiming to follow Jesus" bit. Jesus said to the gentile woman, "It is not fit to take the food from the children and give it to the dogs." Yes, Jesus was promoting a change in social order, but that order is not such that it demands an irrational guilt from those who have experienced God's grace. Through white privilege, whites have persevered in the Gospel. Through white privilege, whites have experienced prosperity and created many good things for the world.
Through white privilege, God has permitted the evil of a few, so that the good of the many may yet be accomplished.
Now, God did not wish for slave owners to be unjust, nor for Christians to be divided on this issue, that is clear from the holy Scriptures, but he permitted it so that the Gospel might be spread. If you can't deal with a God who allows such a thing, you can't deal with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Any guilt must be rational, and it must be personal. Personal guilt is of the nature of sin, i.e. one must be in his or her actions competent for the evil action which takes place. One cannot be competent for the struggle of black persons (though all should show solidarity and compassion with them) a priori, because one is a condition and the other an action. Likewise, it is not rational, because there is no law, derived or legislated, which is contrary to the situation of oppression per se, only to acts which are themselves uncharitable. Where there is no law, and there is good will, there is no rational purpose in guilt. Quit being ridiculous, and use your consecrated time in meditation on God, and on your real failures. That way, perhaps, you won't overlook one of them whilst being deceived of the devil in these failures.
Post a Comment