Yeah…you’re not mistaken, you read that right.
I have heard many times from my conservative friends that liberals are all too quick to label someone racist*. Now, I’m not here to argue if this is true or false, but I am here to hurl this epithet at someone else directly…Myself.
This is difficult to admit to, but it’s there, and it’s been there since childhood. Like many before, I’d like to label this phenomena the “great white hope” syndrome. From an early age in American Christianity, I was raised to believe that I was special and that god “chose me.” Growing up, everyone at my church looked liked me and thought like my parents. At 11-years-old, I even remember overhearing an odd conversation between some adults at my Southern Baptist Church. They were both agreeing that slavery was a good thing for black people…wait for it…because it introduced them to a relationship with Jesus Christ…
Honestly that wasn’t the last time I would overhear such a gem (yeah … let that sink in).
Additionally, I was raised with the idea that I was given the truth and that others without the truth were somehow less than equal. This is why we young Christians were encouraged to go on mission trips to the developing world (brown and yellow areas…wink, wink!), and also preach “jesus-truth” to the pro-evolution, moral degenerates in public schools.
Side note: If you were privileged enough to attend a private Christian school**, like I was, then you were good not to have to preach at people in school, as long as your pants didn’t sag (Oh the 90's!).
Without going too deep into a critique surrounding this perceived power structure (pretentious coastal elite speak for “religious institutional racism”), the moral of the story is, I was taught that I was exceptional. Intentional or not, I developed this sense of superiority over those that were less fortunate than myself, and the simple fact was, a majority of these people were from a different race.
Fast forward to my early 20’s and I was a volunteer mentorship leader with a group of around 20–30 Latinx students. I was invited to hear a civil rights leader speak by the name of Dolphus Weary. He went on to tell his story of struggle and the progress he had made in overcoming the racism in his home state of Mississippi. By the end of his talk I began to have this epiphany…it was really easy for me to judge other white people’s obvious racism, but what about my own sense of superiority and racist tendencies. He opened up the floor for questions. I went up to the mic, and gave him some context, then proceeded to say:
“How can I begin to face the reality of my own prejudice/ racism, and how it affects those I work for/volunteer with, even if it is not as obvious as the racism of the KKK or Hitler?”
Needless to say you could hear a pin drop after I asked that question. For the next hour or so, Mr. Weary helped walk every person sitting in that room, all 30 of us, on how to address the deep seeds of racism that had been planted in our lives from American institutions like the media and Evangelical Christianity.
The crowd in attendance that day was very diverse, and everyone was able to talk about their own experiences in an open and honest way. Some females in attendance questioned why they clutch their purses tighter and lock their car doors while driving when they see black men in close proximity. Other people questioned the motives of their parents pressure to only make friends with people of their own race or white people. Moreover, we all noticed a pattern when we admitted to the racist cacophony we’d overheard our parents and grandparents say aloud.
After the talk was over, I felt as if everyone was able to scratch the surface of some deep shit. Then it felt as though we realized something collectively, for the first time in our lives we acknowledged that the seeds of racism were engrained in American culture and they were deeply entrenched.
Most people stereotype white liberals, like myself, as addicted to “white guilt”. And that this guilt causes us to apologize too much and demand apologies from others we find offensive. But the fact is, the only way to make true progress is to address the issues in an open and honest way. And the self-reflection of an apology is a sure fire way to make this happen.
This is my attempt to recognize the log of racism in my eye, before I call out the spec of racism I see in others eyes***. I’ll end with this quote and charge from Rosa Parks:
“Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.”
Footnotes:
- *racist (n): a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Merriam-Webster
- **Private Christians Schools are almost entirely and exclusively white. Few exceptions are tolerated due to the need to win sports, and to provide cover for their white students so they can claim to have “a black or brown” friend.
- ***Mathew 7:5 (NLT) — Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.
