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July 18, 2020 - January 18, 2021
what books and articles have you read and what videos and documentaries have you watched about the history of those cultures prior to their forced migration?
As a Black person in a majority-White culture, I observed people looking at me, trying to determine whether I was more assimilated to White culture or whether I was too Black for their comfort. They’d prejudge me by how I spoke and dressed and whether I allowed micro-aggressions to pass without comment. If they judged me more assimilated, more controlled by the majority-culture narrative, I was more accepted. But if I pushed back with my own cultural stories, with more factual recitations of the truth, and if I wore my hair natural or enunciated words a certain way, I’d be judged according to
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each ethnicity reflects a unique aspect of God’s image. No one tribe or group of people can adequately display the fullness of God.
race is a social construct, one that has divided and set one group over the other from the earliest days of humanity. The Christian construct, though, dismantles this way of thinking and seeks to reunite us under a common banner of love and fellowship.
empathy is the first step toward racial solidarity.
Truth is the foundation of awareness, and awareness is the first step in the process of reconciliation.
Awareness of the truth is useless without acknowledgment of our complicity or its effects on us.
In the context of racial reconciliation, shame and guilt often compel majority culture to cover up and whitewash sins.
In the Bible, guilt and shame are often communal and point to the need for corporate repentance.
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.
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.
“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.”
before we can move forward toward racial healing, we need to examine our own family histories, our systemic advantages and disadvantages, and our personal participation or capitulation in acts of racism.
she’d been wired to believe that the success of African Americans took something away from her or had somehow come at her expense.
As she confessed her hidden racism, she mentioned she’d never seen African Americans as deserving success.
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?
Why is it important for us to confess our sins to one another? How does this differ from confessing our sins to God?
God, I have been blind to the plight of my fellow image bearers. I have been deaf to their cries for justice and for mercy. I have been mute when there was no one to speak for them. Lord God, unbind my mouth. Place your healing over my eyes that I might see, and unblock my ears that I might hear. I lay my sins at your feet that you might cleanse me, heal me, and send me to do your holy work of reconciliation with my brothers and sisters. —CORREGAN BROWN
between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.12
Douglass knew that if those who claimed to be Christians finally saw God for who he was, if White people changed course and viewed African Americans as image bearers of the Almighty, God could wash away the sin of the country. God could lead the nation into a better, more just future, one not cursed with spiritual blindness.
asking our governments—national, state, and local—to openly repent of their part in enforcing Frederick Douglass’s enslavement, the disruption of Native American families, the enactment of Jim Crow laws, the separation of migrant children from parents at the border, and the continuation of systemic advantage.
asking our churches to take a critical look at their history, identify the specific ways they engaged in perpetuating racism, name those ways, and repent.
passing the microphone to a person of color and ac...
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true reconciliation moves from repentance to righting the wrong.
repentance requires turning and walking away from the sins of our past, doesn’t it require walking toward something more reparative? So reparations and repentance are inextricably intertwined, and those who’ve inherited the power and benefits of past wrongs should work to make it right for those who’ve inherited the burdens and oppression of the past.
Jesus’s effect on Zacchaeus should be no different from his effect on us today. In the face of historic injustices, we are called to take clear action to pave the way for lasting reconciliation.
reparation acknowledges that through historical injustice, some communities were denied (or had deliberately stolen from them) opportunities, possessions, property, wealth, and safety so that other communities could obtain more of those things. Reparation is about repaying or returning those things so as to restore equity.
I ask them whether they’re actively promoting people of color in their businesses, whether they’re inviting Black leadership into their churches. Do they support Black-owned businesses or donate to nonprofits that work for the advancement of people of color?
righting the wrong, making reparations, is precisely where the conversation ceases to move forward, because it requires that we give up something: yielding influence, decentering our own experience, letting go of privilege.
making wrongs right requires sacrifice. It requires rejecting upward mobility to level the playing field for others.
