Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

by LaTasha Morrison

As I became friends with church and staff members, I began to see our historical and cultural disconnection. We had different worldviews, experiences, and perspectives. I’d come to learn the ways the White church in America had perpetuated slavery, segregation, and racism. I had learned how so many churches used and abused Scripture to justify the practices, how some denominations even split over slavery.

My White friends had no connection with my heritage, had no idea how much had been taken from my people when we were sold into slavery. For the most part, they didn’t understand the heritage of racism baked into their own social and cultural structures, including their church.

It was a good church, full of good people, but I came to realize that I was the first and only African American person many of them had ever worked with. As a person of color, I’d integrated within their majority culture. I had become familiar with their movies, music, and fashion. I listened to contemporary Christian music and was familiar with what some of my Black friends call “White worship.” You know it: the moody guitar-driven music that sounds like Coldplay. I watched Friends, The Office, Gilmore Girls, and even the Hallmark Channel. I was comfortable and familiar with White culture, but they’d never had to learn about the history or culture of my people. If I quoted a line from The Color Purple or Doug E. Fresh, my friends were lost. And because I was the only Black person in so many of their lives, I became the go-to source for answers to all their questions about hair and music and all things Black. It felt as if people had saved all their “ask a Black person” questions for me, and they unloaded until it almost drove me insane.

I began to ask questions of and have conversations with my White friends within the church about this topic, and as I did, I found that many were oblivious to the full scope of American history and its multicultural realities.

We came together under an umbrella, the shared idea that we could and must do better, and doing better meant showing up to listen and learn. We

If you’re White, if you come from the majority culture, you’ll need to bend low in a posture of humility. You may need to talk less and listen more, opening your heart to the voices of your non-White brothers and sisters. You’ll need to open your mind and study the hard truths of history without trying to explain them away. You’ll need to examine your own life and the lives of your ancestors so you can see whether you’ve participated in, perpetuated, or benefited from systems of racism.

If you’re Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American, or part of any other non-White group, you’ll need to come with your own posture of humility, though it will look different from that of your White brothers and sisters. In humility, you might need to sit with other non-White groups and learn their stories. You might need to confess the ways you’ve perpetuated oppression of other non-White people. People of color may need to confess internalized racism and colorism. You’ll need to correct and instruct when necessary and will need to recognize the effort of those trying to cross the bridge, even if imperfectly. After all, the work of racial reconciliation is anything but perfect.

We’ve heard government officials use language that, to minorities, sounds racially coded.

Have you studied the history of non-White cultures in America and how those cultures came to be here? If so, 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?

That moment revealed the depth of my cultural loneliness.

Some of my White friends thought color shouldn’t matter in the body of Christ, an easy thing for them to say. I’d ask them to imagine themselves in an all African American context, attending services where they never heard music by Hillsong, Bethel, Chris Tomlin, or Elevation Worship, just to name a few. Wouldn’t that create a cultural shock?

The typology of Black people is a racial reality in America. 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 their racial bias and prejudice.

That there are these two perceived types of minorities—assimilated or non-assimilated—has caused so much division in communities, among other races, and within the majority culture. These perceptions create internalized racism, colorism, and our own racial prejudice against other groups and one another. They often determine whether a person is hired or fired and what opportunities are open to that individual in the current social construct.

Seizing the opportunity, I explained how the implementation of desegregation lacked empathy, structure, and planning. Enforcing a law didn’t dismantle racism. Diversity doesn’t disrupt systemic racism, I told her, nor did it kill racist views. By studying the truth about desegregation, I’d come to see that the process in the South lacked on-the-ground leadership and that the concern for black schools—students and teachers—was not a priority.

What is the truth? Hasn’t truth become a complicated word in these days when news is labeled “fake,” where “alternative facts” serve as the basis for a sort of virtual, choose-your-own reality?

In the love of the family of God, we must become color brave, color caring, color honoring, and not color blind. We have to recognize the image of God in one another. We have to love despite, and even because of, our differences.

The South was in shambles, and its economy, built on the backs of slaves, was struggling. Plantation owners had regained their farms and businesses, but their financial model couldn’t succeed without slave labor. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, allowed for the use of slavery as a form of criminal punishment. So though many of the slaves were technically freed, they could be subjected again to debt slavery or be sentenced to slavery for minor crimes. Black citizens were assessed taxes and charged excessive interest, and Black orphans were returned to the plantations, where their costs of living were charged against them in debt. All of this subjected former slaves to what many today refer to as slavery by another name.

What’s more, many former members of the slave patrol had been recruited as law-enforcement officials. They arrested Black people if they walked on the wrong side of the road or if they were deemed out of place. These arrests subjected Black people again to this new form of slavery.

Grief stricken, enraged, and wanting justice, Turner indicated that if she discovered who’d murdered her husband, she’d seek warrants for their arrest. Her comments were not treated lightly, and a White mob gathered to send a message to the Black community: they would not be subjected to punishment for lynchings; they would not be threatened. Mary was caught trying to flee. The White men who formed this mob tied the pregnant eighteen-year-old by her ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, poured gasoline on her body, and burned her alive. As Mary hung from the tree, dead, her abdomen was cut open and the baby removed. The child hit the ground and let out several cries before his head was crushed by one of the White men. As if the lynching and infanticide were not enough, the men raised their guns and filled Mary’s burned and lifeless body with bullets. Mary Turner and her unborn child were denied the right to live because she had the audacity to demand justice.6

At the time of Turner’s death in 1918, my great-grandmother Gladys Beatrice Nicholson was twenty years old. Women in my family, women I knew, lived through the peonage era, through the era of slavery by another name, through the era of lynching and infanticide.

the Great Migration.

Forgiveness and healing cannot begin until we become aware of the historical roots of the problem and acknowledge the harm caused.

My grandfather was a military man. His educational opportunities were limited as a child. (Black people in his area of rural North Carolina had limited access to school past the eighth grade because of Jim Crow laws.)

But it’s no secret that we as a culture are uncomfortable with lament. Rarely do we look to share our pain publicly. In fact, we are encouraged to mourn quietly and in private. In Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, author and professor Soong-Chan Rah relates our avoidance of lament to a culture of triumphalism. He wrote that, as Americans, we love to focus on praise, comfort, thanksgiving, and worship—anything but lament. He noted, however, “There is great value to lament. Lament must never be cut off before it has run its course, but lament needs a response. That response comes from the Father above, but could it also require something from us?”3 Could Rah be right? Could it be that lament connects us with God, that it allows us to experience his response and then cooperate with him to make wrongs right?

(In the traditional Black church, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are reserved for family gatherings.)

But no matter how we approached it, no matter how passionately we explained ourselves, we began to see that Black History Month was too polarizing. So we compromised. We modified the vision. We shortened the time frame from a month to a week and changed the name. What I had originally envisioned as Black History Month was pitched as “Brotherhood Week of Celebration.” It would still highlight African Americans, but it would also include history from every other non-White group in the high school (Native American, Hispanic, and Asian alike). In some ways, it felt like a disappointment, but in the end, I considered it a small victory. It was a place to start, one week that wasn’t centered in whiteness.

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.

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.

In both instances, the confessors were personally innocent of the wrongs, but they came under guilt and shame nonetheless.

As I got older, my grandmother on my father’s side (who wasn’t as dark skinned as I was) reinforced the message that light skin was better. She bought me a bleaching face cream designed for lightening darker splotches of skin, but she didn’t want me to use it on spots. She hoped I’d use it on my whole face. And even though it didn’t have a strong bleach component, I knew why she was giving it to me: she hoped that cream would make my skin lighter. Because it was my grandmother, because I loved her, I used that cream all through college, believing it made my skin a shade lighter. Believing it made me more beautiful.

Though Plessy appeared to be White, Louisiana applied the one-drop rule: anyone with at least one drop of non-White blood was automatically classified as “colored” under the law.

The answer to white supremacy isn’t black supremacy. The answer to colorism within the majority systems is not corresponding colorism among non-White groups. Any supremacy, any colorism, should be acknowledged and confessed if we’re to find hope of healing. In fact, all forms of racism and bigotry—using racist slang, laughing at racist jokes, entertaining the privileges of color—must be confessed before we can move together toward lasting reconciliation.

Bridge builders don’t deny hurt. They experience it. Sit in it. Feel it. But they don’t stay in that pain. They don’t allow those who’ve wounded them to control them or constantly drive them back to anger and resentment. Instead, they allow that pain to continually push them into forgiveness. Of course, learning to forgive in this way does

While incarcerated, he received a copy of a local newspaper that included an open letter written by eight White pastors. In that letter, titled “A Call for Unity,” the eight clergymen encouraged Black leaders to be patient in their struggle for civil rights and to work within the courts to negotiate change. Of the demonstrators and their actions, the eight clergymen wrote, “We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.”4

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.5

America also continued to remove indigenous children from their homes and families under the assumption that native cultures and beliefs were inferior and needed to be rooted out. America held down non-White communities through systems of oppression, through police brutality and underfunding of educational systems. Ultimately, the government jailed those like Dr. King who fought for civil rights, and in many places, violence inflicted by authorities led to the death of nonviolent protestors. Even today, governmental powers continue to take the lives of unarmed Black and Brown children, as well as women and men, often without repercussion.

At no point in this apology did the prime minister offer any excuses, such as the fact that the abuse took place years ago or that it was perpetrated when a different set of individuals led the government.

This is what repentance looks like: changing course and committing to walking in a new direction. And Canada’s commitment to continuing repentance stands in stark contrast to the nonaction of the United States, where the government (and most American churches) has never made a formal confession and apology, where the government has never attempted to make wrongs right. Instead, the United States has tried to erase and change history and minimize the horrific atrocities against slaves, Native Americans, and other people of color. In other words, the United States government has never formally admitted its sins and changed directions. It has never repented. And neither have the majority of its citizens repented, including Christians.

Acts like 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.

In my work as a bridge builder, I’ve seen how, time and time again, conversations about reconciliation stall when the topic of righting the wrongs comes up.

reparations, affirmative action, white privilege, and Black Lives Matter are nonstarters for so many folks, in part because they disrupt the listener. They remind him or her that making things right costs something, often power, position, or money.

The abuse and marginalization that permeate our history have created wounds, triggered mistrust, given rise to anger, and prompted whitewashing that has perpetuated more and more abuse.

Reparation can seem like a fringe term used only by activists, but it is a thoroughly biblical concept. In fact, specific instructions regarding making amends are woven throughout the Mosaic civil laws, and stories about restitution are sprinkled throughout Scripture. In almost every situation, restitution involves not only repayment of an amount owed but also payment of an additional fee or percentage.

It’s important to remember that in our practice of restorative justice, reparation is not punitive. Reparation is not about punishing anyone. It’s not about paying a fine for a wrong committed or assuaging a guilty conscience. Instead, 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.

It requires rejecting upward mobility to level the playing field for others.

Many of my White brothers and sisters have also felt the sting of others’ pushback against their bridge building. They’ve entered into the hard work of acknowledging their own systemic privileges, repenting of them, righting wrongs, and moving into restorative reconciliation. In doing so, they’ve taken heat from their White friends. They’ve been called names. They’ve been told there’s no reason to repent from wrongs so far back in history, no reason to stir up the past. Their churches have labeled them “liberal” or “leftist” or “snowflakes.” Still, they’ve continued to press into the work and become strong allies. They have loved me as they love themselves. They have become friends. And still, they push into the work for the sake of unity.

Laura Choy, a bridge builder in her own right, discusses racial literacy with others on a one-on-one basis. She tells me that her new awakening has made it hard for her to fit into places she once felt comfortable. Her identity has shifted. She can’t unsee or unknow the things she has learned, the things she has become aware of. She processes the news differently, sees people differently, and even parents out of this new knowing, raising her children to be bridge builders.

I’m not saying this work is easy; I’m just saying it is absolutely worth it.

Bridges are built not with passivity or avoidance but with the deep, hard work of seeking to understand. The deep, hard work of fighting for justice for all. Love is always a fight worth taking on. I know because in my own life I’ve seen it and continue to fight for it to be true.