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

by LaTasha Morrison

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.