Over the past few months, I’ve been exploring together with small groups of clergy, friends, and members of my church the persistence of racism and the underpinnings of white supremacy in our culture. I’m realizing that it is so prevalent we can’t even recognize it most days. It is like the air we breathe. We just don’t see it. And we take it for granted.
Two tools from the United Methodist Church have been particularly valuable:
Daily Prayers for Anti-Racism from Discipleship Ministries, which formed the background of our July daily devotion series at church. (these prayers continue… subscribe today!)
And now Thirty Days of Anti-Racism from the General Commission on Religion and Race.
Yesterday’s activity was to pray. And prayer has been a huge part of my faith life lately. Those daily prayers have challenged me and grounded me to really work towards see and overcome the racism present in our world and in our church.
Praying about what God wants me to DO about it is a different story. And one of the things that I realized is that I could do some more intentional writing about this process and what I’m learning in order to help dialogue with others who are on a similar journey… or maybe even people who aren’t sure where to start.
Today’s task is to draft my racial autobiography.
My what?
I don’t think I had ever heard that term before opening up these daily activities, but there are a lot of resources to help with the process:
Racial Autobiography Reflection Questions
When I started in on that first questionnaire, I realized just how much my own race was absent from any discussions I had growing up. We had quite a few conversations about culture and language, however. My dad’s side of the family is Czech and we were near a predominately Czech community. There were kolaches and festivals and morels and polka and kroje. I learned a few phrases here and there. I was even Ms. Czech-Slovak Iowa and competed in the national pageant.
I was proud to claim that heritage and identity. When I shared interesting facts about myself, it was one of the first things I would mention. It was part of me and part of how I interacted with the world.
So was my race. Being born white is also a part of my identity. It is a part of who I am. It is part of how I interact with the world. It is part of how others see me and treat me… in fact, probably FAR more so than my Czech heritage, because it is something that can be seen and visually recognized.
And yet, it never crossed my mind.
I grew up in a very white family, in a very white community, in a very white state. Often, the only mention of race in any form came from a relative who was making a negative comment about someone who didn’t look like us. All of the heroes and heroines of my favorite stories were white. All of my dolls were white. And I didn’t think about it.
In my school, there were a few classmates who looked different than myself but looking back, none that I was close with and would have listed off in my circle of friends. I was blessed with a few teachers who had a profound impact on my education. But I saw them as teachers (and teachers aren’t really people with real lives… at least from the perspective of a kid who only thinks they exist in that classroom). As such, I didn’t really know any of the stories of people of color in my school or how their experiences in that community differed from my own.
When I encountered racial disparity or stereotypes or negative imagery, there was something deep within me that told me that there was something wrong about that. That these siblings, these children, these people were just as worthy and deserving of all of my love and respect and that there was something unfair happening in the other-ing that was taking place. But we never really talked about it at home. Instead, we ignored or brushed aside comments made by family. I never learned in the process how to identify my own whiteness, to see the impact of my race upon others, or how to stand up for others. I didn’t want to be racist. And as long as I wasn’t the one making those comments or acting in those negative ways, I thought I wasn’t.
As an adult… even in these last few years… I’ve come to understand racism, however, not as individual discriminatory or prejudicial beliefs, but as a systemic issue. An underlying ideology that pervades the church, now we build our cities, who gets loans, elections, everything! I’m also learning it isn’t enough to simply not be racist. My call is now to work to become anti-racist and to undo some of the systems we have that create those disparities on the basis of race.
I’ve been reading stories this summer about our national parks and monuments for our Summer Road Trip and so many of them are grounded in the supremacy of white, European, and often male identities. The removal of indigenous people from the land… the destruction of natural environments… This history is sanitized and packaged in a pretty little bow that makes it patriotic, but when we look deeper, I am aghast at letters and statements that dehumanize and diminish the status of people of color.
Just this week, in working on our trip to the St. Louis Arch, I learned more about the old St. Louis courthouse and the Dred Scott case which was heard there. Merely 150 years ago, our Supreme Court denied that any African-American, regardless of whether they were free or enslaved, was a citizen and declared that the U.S. Constitution created a “perpetual and impassible barrier… intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery.”
This is our history. This is the foundation of our nation. And I didn’t know it. I didn’t see it. I didn’t realize it was there. And how much more have I failed to see the way all of those decisions and all of that power and all of those stories have seeped into everything else. The first step is seeing it. Acknowledging it. And then working to create a different reality.
I am white. I grew up white. But I didn’t realize it. I didn’t realize the privilege I have because of the color of my skin. Because I didn’t know the ways that privilege had been used and abused by others before me and how it impacts us still today.
I’m not ashamed of being white. It is who I am. In fact, I am called to claim it as part of my identity as much as I claim being a woman or being Czech or being the oldest child or being married.
It is what I do with it that matters now. How I learn to embrace it and how I celebrate and honor the identities of others.
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