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June 6 - June 23, 2020
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.
But to build bridges of racial reconciliation, we’ll need to confront the guilt and shame of our collective past.
Our Western society is highly individualized, and our measure of morality is based on individual guilt or innocence.
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.”
Daniel heard from the Lord, and as he did, he felt the weight of shame and guilt. He confessed, “O LORD, we and our kings, princes, and ancestors are covered with shame because we have sinned against you.”
In both instances, the confessors were personally innocent of the wrongs, but they came under guilt and shame nonetheless.
Although communal shame and guilt brought both Ezra and Daniel great personal distress, their response highlights the redemptive arc of Scripture. 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.
Dealing with that guilt and shame, really owning it, can be a tear-filled, painful process. But if we’re going to find freedom, if we’re going to build bridges to freedom for others, it’s a necessary part of the work.
Sometimes slaves are even portrayed as happy servants, glad to be taken care of by their masters. (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,
That sound grounded me there with my ancestors, with those who had died on this soil.
In fact, it can make those who were oppressed feel shame and guilt too. Why?
This shame and guilt—the shame and guilt of both White and non-White people—can keep us from reckoning with the truth.
The Whitney Plantation illustrates how to deal with communal guilt and shame in a way that propels us forward.
And if a place like the Whitney Plantation can do it, why can’t the church?
Ninety-two-point-five percent of churches in the United States are racially segregated.
I’m here to say it clearly: 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.
There’s no shame in wanting to be treated equally, no guilt in using your voice to shine a light on the history of racism.
The church will not be a leading example in racial healing until we feel the weight of communal guilt and shame and then allow it to push us into the truth.
She shared how, no matter how hard we might fight against it, some of that water soaks into us as though we’re a sponge. “It’s impossible to grow up in the sea of white supremacy without absorbing some of it,”
Like Elizabeth, 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.
it resulted in my first experience of colorism.
That’s when she said the words that shadowed me for years: “What if your face were this color?”
I reached up and touched the edges of that cut, much the same way my mother had touched it, and I liked it, because even though it hurt, I thought it was pretty.
Does she believe I’m a black jelly bean? Does she believe my skin is too dark, that I don’t look pretty? Does she believe my darker skin is less desirable? Why doesn’t she accept me the way I am?
my grandmother
reinforced the message that light skin was better.
She hoped I’d use it on my whole face.
Oh man. Heart breaking.
When we saw signs pointing to lighter skin, we felt a kind of relief. After all, with lighter skin, wouldn’t they have fewer issues fitting in? If their skin was darker, though, there was lament.
I found it difficult to purchase cosmetics that worked with my darker skin.
Then I grew emotional. Over makeup. How did such a little thing hold the power to make me feel as though I fit into this country, this culture?
I’ve come to learn that no one in my family meant to hurt those of us with darker skin. I know my mother loves me dearly, and we’ve long since mended fences.
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?
This is “white supremacy.”
Thankfully, I’ve seen a shift beginning to take place within our community when it comes to colorism, much of it in the past ten years.
When darker African Americans see themselves represented, it helps diminish the stereotypes.
And what is colorism if not a form of white supremacy?
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.
Concealing our sins robs us of the riches of God’s merciful forgiveness.
confession puts us in alignment with God’s forgiveness.
And though we must name our individual sin, we must also confess our corporate sin.
We can point to current systems of oppression too, to police brutality and inequity in systems of education in predominantly non-White communities.
And it can be tempting to bypass our own personal confession as we wait for confession from others. But that’s not the way of bridge builders. Bridge builders don’t refuse confession just because the wrong done to them feels greater than the wrong they’ve done.
Confession of our entanglement in racism and systemic privilege is essential for complete healing and restoration. And none of us is off the hook. Not White southern evangelicals. Not White northern progressives. Not the African American community either.
Wow.
Plessy argued that applying the law to exclude him from a train car violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection (and treatment) under the law. The Supreme Court did not agree.
Colorism in the United States was long promoted by the White community as a way to divide and conquer African Americans.
“The Superiority of the Mulatto,”
the brown-paper-bag test
