Black and Blue and All
At age 23, I met a friend who pointed out the whiteness of many home schoolers' lists of heroes. Her point was reinforced when my next job involved researching Sergeant William Carney and the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry and others...trying to find characters and stories that would bridge racial divides...recognizing for the first time the patronizing tone of some things I read...hearing offhand remarks that Martin Luther King Jr. was disqualified because he protested the Vietnam war.
There's cultural pressure on white people—or I used to thing there was—not to be racist, a word I've tended to associate with white supremacists. So some of us scurry for safe, logical colorblindness.
This is why a member of a minority who brings up racial issues—or who might have mixed feelings about #bluelivesmatter—seems “angry” or “racist” to a lot of whites.
It's also why I felt so confused the night a bunch of us were at a steakhouse and a black friend and a Latino friend started joking about certain physical characteristics. What struck me then was that it wasn't fair. I couldn't make that kind of jokes, and I didn't have a category for my friends other than racist, since they drew distinctions based on race.
If economists can show that those areas of Africa most affected by the slave trade still have lower levels of trust today, why would we expect American neighborhoods to be any different? Using statistics to say the current rate of police brutality against blacks and whites is actually the same...misses the point.
At the same time, there's little thought about what whiteness means. So whiteness becomes “normal” and also sometimes pejorative. I say “normal” because this content gets smuggled into conversations in the shape of our assumptions, and I say "pejorative" because it can become a synonym for "white supremacist."
Grandpa Paulsson immigrated from Sweden in 1928. My dad remembers his accent. Several aunts still go on about Swedish things, and one of my uncles initiated me by putting a piece of pickled herring on my plate at Christmas.
Mom's family's habit of opening presents on Christmas Eve turns out to be a German thing. And there was that time in Germany the buffet server greeted me in German instead of English, a moment more special for its rarity.
My point here is that whiteness is a range of things, that aren't universal. Many of them are wonderful to share, but we should understand when, as Lecrae recently pointed out, some of those things feel as foreign to others as...I don't know...the presence of Mexican flags at an immigration rally.
This is also where American individualism lets us down. We envision problems and solutions at the individual level. We want to treat other people as equals; so we imagine everyone is like ourselves...on the inside...where it matters. Unfortunately, that approach works about as well as thinking all the world speaks English.
That confusion, anger, even shame—tied to something unchangeable, interwoven with all our assumptions and experiences, separating us from others—can awaken us to a swath of human experience we only intermittently encounter.
We need to cultivate curiosity...to let others interpret themselves...to see what shape the image of God takes in other peoples. There will come a time to talk together about what the stories mean.
There's cultural pressure on white people—or I used to thing there was—not to be racist, a word I've tended to associate with white supremacists. So some of us scurry for safe, logical colorblindness.
This is why a member of a minority who brings up racial issues—or who might have mixed feelings about #bluelivesmatter—seems “angry” or “racist” to a lot of whites.
It's also why I felt so confused the night a bunch of us were at a steakhouse and a black friend and a Latino friend started joking about certain physical characteristics. What struck me then was that it wasn't fair. I couldn't make that kind of jokes, and I didn't have a category for my friends other than racist, since they drew distinctions based on race.
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I did not intend to feel superior that night, but there are many ways power dynamics favor members of a majority, and in this kind of world, my friends are always aware of race. I, on the other hand, am largely unaware...until somebody points it out.
Then I don't know what to do.
Cultural contexts and experiences lead all of us to have blind spots...and privileges. My German and Swedish immigrant ancestors had mostly economic obstacles to overcome.
I know what it is to feel economic limitations, like some things are not possible because we lack money or connections and lack the experiences required to relate to those who have them. The middle class friends I've discussed this with haven't understood.
But we tend not to have to think of race. We don't have to moderate our feelings when we express support for the police after five officers are murdered in Dallas, even though two black men died at the hands of two other police departments in the previous few days.
African Americans have traditionally had other and greater obstacles to overcome—slavery in the past...segregation...the threat of violence...and the sense the justice system is stacked against them. It isn't white lives that have systematically or historically been in danger from American institutions...and it hasn't been white middle class communities that feel deeply alienated from their police departments.
Then I don't know what to do.
Cultural contexts and experiences lead all of us to have blind spots...and privileges. My German and Swedish immigrant ancestors had mostly economic obstacles to overcome.
I know what it is to feel economic limitations, like some things are not possible because we lack money or connections and lack the experiences required to relate to those who have them. The middle class friends I've discussed this with haven't understood.
But we tend not to have to think of race. We don't have to moderate our feelings when we express support for the police after five officers are murdered in Dallas, even though two black men died at the hands of two other police departments in the previous few days.
African Americans have traditionally had other and greater obstacles to overcome—slavery in the past...segregation...the threat of violence...and the sense the justice system is stacked against them. It isn't white lives that have systematically or historically been in danger from American institutions...and it hasn't been white middle class communities that feel deeply alienated from their police departments.
If economists can show that those areas of Africa most affected by the slave trade still have lower levels of trust today, why would we expect American neighborhoods to be any different? Using statistics to say the current rate of police brutality against blacks and whites is actually the same...misses the point.
At the same time, there's little thought about what whiteness means. So whiteness becomes “normal” and also sometimes pejorative. I say “normal” because this content gets smuggled into conversations in the shape of our assumptions, and I say "pejorative" because it can become a synonym for "white supremacist."
Grandpa Paulsson immigrated from Sweden in 1928. My dad remembers his accent. Several aunts still go on about Swedish things, and one of my uncles initiated me by putting a piece of pickled herring on my plate at Christmas.
Mom's family's habit of opening presents on Christmas Eve turns out to be a German thing. And there was that time in Germany the buffet server greeted me in German instead of English, a moment more special for its rarity.
My point here is that whiteness is a range of things, that aren't universal. Many of them are wonderful to share, but we should understand when, as Lecrae recently pointed out, some of those things feel as foreign to others as...I don't know...the presence of Mexican flags at an immigration rally.
This is also where American individualism lets us down. We envision problems and solutions at the individual level. We want to treat other people as equals; so we imagine everyone is like ourselves...on the inside...where it matters. Unfortunately, that approach works about as well as thinking all the world speaks English.
That confusion, anger, even shame—tied to something unchangeable, interwoven with all our assumptions and experiences, separating us from others—can awaken us to a swath of human experience we only intermittently encounter.
We need to cultivate curiosity...to let others interpret themselves...to see what shape the image of God takes in other peoples. There will come a time to talk together about what the stories mean.
But we have to listen.
Especially when it startles us.
Sometimes, I think, humility feels a lot like grief.
Sometimes, I think, humility feels a lot like grief.
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