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July 6 - September 26, 2020
If there’s one thing non-White students know, it’s that the school cafeteria is the second-most-segregated place in our country, behind only church.
Those parts of history might make the White students and teachers feel guilty, we were told. They might also embarrass or shame Black students and teachers. So we avoided some of the uglier parts of race relations and did our best to highlight better parts of our diverse history:
It was far from perfect, but it was a start. What I didn’t think about at that time, though, was how the objective of avoiding shame and guilt had shaped the conversations of the week. Because of that, we weren’t able to make real strides in reconciling our history.
But to build bridges of racial reconciliation, we’ll need to confront the guilt and shame of our collective past. We’ll need to see those responses to the uncomfortable truth as tools that help lead us further into repentance.
Our Western society is highly individualized, and our measure of morality is based on individual guilt or innocence. We’ve all heard the justification: Why should I repent of racism? I never owned slaves. But in the Bible, guilt and shame aren’t described in such a narrow individualistic sense. In the Bible, guilt and shame are often communal and point to the need for corporate repentance.
Ezra, a priest and scribe, was personally innocent of the sins committed by the people, but he still felt the weight of guilt and shame. He prayed, “O my God, I am utterly ashamed; I blush to lift up my face to you. For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens.”4 See how Ezra acknowledged and lamented the truth of the sins of Israel? See how that acknowledgment and lamentation connected him with the guilt and shame of that sin? And identifying with that guilt and shame, Ezra cried out to the Lord.
Like Ezra, Daniel had been personally innocent of the offenses against God, but he did not try to distance himself from the collective sin of his people. He owned his part in it as a member of the community.
For them, experiencing shame and guilt provided an opportunity to recognize the ugly reality that had led to their current situation and initiate communal restoration.
We can’t bypass the weight of our guilt and shame if we intend to arrive at true reconciliation and justice.
(Imagine the pain this causes Black Americans when we’re invited to plantation weddings, the very place where our people were so thoroughly dehumanized.)
In that same interview, he was asked if he felt guilty. He said he didn’t feel guilt anymore, that he’d moved past the guilt and into a stage of lament, and though he admitted he couldn’t do anything to change the injustices of the past, he hoped to change some of the effects of slavery by looking at the truth and “owning it.”6
hearing the truths, they were faced with a decision: they could feel the weight and shame of their collective sin and repent like Ezra and Daniel, or they could continue to whitewash over the guilt and shame of the past.
Acknowledging racism, both explicit and systemic, can lead us to experience shame and guilt, even if we haven’t acted in overtly racist ways ourselves.
Because we gave in to those feelings of guilt and shame, we didn’t address the truth, and without truth-informed perspectives, we’ll never build bridges of racial reconciliation.
Ninety-two-point-five percent of churches in the United States are racially segregated.
let’s not hide from the communal shame and guilt of racism; let’s acknowledge it and step from its shadow and into the light.
Americans—herself included—swim in a sea of White-centeredness.
“It’s impossible to grow up in the sea of white supremacy without absorbing some of it,” she said, “whether that’s implicit bias or prejudiced beliefs or discriminatory actions that we don’t realize we’re engaging in or that we’ve convinced ourselves are okay.”
none of us are disconnected from the sins of our culture’s past.
Have you ever been ashamed on behalf of someone else’s sin? If so, describe the situation.
My mom
How can experiencing communal guilt be an opportunity to pursue righteousness?
We represent God xommunally aswell as individually
we cannot properlyrepresent him without repentance of communalsin
Reflect on your cultural upbringing. Were you raised in a more collective communal community or a more individualistic one? How was this evidenced?
Individualistic and looking forward
The question came out almost as an afterthought. No malice in it. No cruelty. But she said it as if having a different-colored face—a pinker, lighter face—might be possible.
And later, after my parents separated and eventually divorced, my mom would sometimes call my dad “Gene, Gene, the black jelly bean” as a way of deriding him. Each time she said it (which was quite often), I looked at my own skin and noticed how it was the same shade as my father’s. I internalized her comments, and as I did, I came to believe she was making fun of me too.
How could such a little thing—no makeup for my skin color—make me feel as if I didn’t exist, as if dark people didn’t exist? How could it make me feel so invisible and unwanted?
The Black community has its own sort of embedded racism, rooted in society’s unconscious bias toward lighter skin. For years we applied this standard against our own people. But where did that bias come from? Born from white supremacy, colorism among African Americans grew from the belief that whoever had features closer to those of the White slaveholders (often the biracial children of raped slaves) was more valuable, was more beautiful, and as a result would be treated better. This belief has caused deep divisions within our community as lighter-skinned African Americans treated with
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It reminds me that for years I, too, engaged in colorism. And what is colorism if not a form of white supremacy? This is my confession.
Confession requires awareness of our sin, acknowledgment of it, and the desire to move past the shame and guilt, but those aren’t the only conditions for confession.
Confession also requires great humility and deep vulnerability. While this might feel risky, consider the risk of not confessing our sins.
“People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.”
He wrote, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
failure to confess undercuts our reconciliation with the Father and keeps us locked in unrighteous patterns, such as racism, bigotry, and colorism.
it can be tempting to bypass our own personal confession as we wait for confession from others.
racist ideology had reached all the way into the very organization that was supposed to be advancing opportunities for all people of color.
The feud between these two revealed the deep impact of white supremacy on people of color. It showed how systems of privilege based on color can become systems of oppression. It showed how easily the sin of the oppressor can trickle down and become the sin of the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Because he couldn’t confess the truth of his sin, because he couldn’t move into reconciliation with God and his fellow man, Garvey became what he disliked in others: someone who used skin color as a measure of worth. That is the power of the unconfessed sin of white supremacy, racism, and resulting colorism: it leads to death, sometimes physical, sometimes metaphorical.
laughing at racist jokes,
This includes old ones by people we lnow mea no harm. Instead we should tell them it is offensivd.
it also requires each of us to admit our own private racist or colorist beliefs, beliefs we know aren’t right and that we may not want others to know about.
confession isn’t just for those in the majority culture who’ve benefited from or perpetrated discrimination; it’s for people of color too.
Have you ever looked down on others because of their ethnicity, their race? Have you ever thought less of them because of the way they looked? Have you ever played zero-sum games as it relates to those of other ethnicities, believing their opportunities came at the cost of yours? Have you ever been afraid of someone just because of the color of his or her skin? If you have, whether you’re White, Black, or Brown, you have confession work to do.
Name some historical examples of confession leading to repentance. What about times in your own life?
Confessing my past to michael
Describe a personal experience you’ve had with racism or colorism. How does that experience, or retelling it, highlight for you the value of confession?
Couson christine sating she wished se had white girl hair like me. Others
...
I grew up in an unsettled house,
It didn’t take long for my mother’s boyfriend to move in. My dad still paid the mortgage and took care of us financially, which made me even angrier with my mother.
I tried to do it without practicing forgiveness.
But my anxiety only grew worse, and my chest pains increased. How would I get over this? That’s when I decided I needed to be honest about my hurt and to process my pain with safe people.
I practiced and practiced and practiced forgiveness, and as I did, my anger and resentment faded. Sorrow took its place.
That’s how I came to understand the surprising truth: forgiveness wasn’t a gift to those who’d hurt me; it was a gift to myself.
How can you get rid of rage until you’ve taken the time to feel it? How can you get rid of anger unless you’ve made space to recognize it? How can you forgive without first understanding the wrong and hurtful actions you’re releasing the perpetrator from? See? Only when we’ve made space for our emotions, when we’ve honestly evaluated them, can we move into true Christlike forgiveness.
