Musings - Beginning my Cultural Identity Journey (White Awake)

I'm white. I come from a county in east central Indiana that is 96% white. I was never in the minority until college mission trips to Thailand and the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana. I've had a few jobs with some racial diversity among co-workers and kids, but for the most part, my world is still very white. With all the protests and awakenings after the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, I've started educating myself more about white privilege and white supremacy.  It's easy to shrug off the notion of white privilege and to assume that "white supremacy" only refers to members of the KKK. My eyes are being opened, though, and I'm on a cultural identity journey.  For the most part, I don't have any new-fangled ideas or approaches. At this point, most of my words are borrowed from others. Since this is a blog about reflection, though, I also want to share my thoughts from time to time of what I'm learning about myself, my whiteness, and my role in "being the bridge" to racial unity. 

On 6-7-20, I shared on Facebook a blog post from a fellow Asbury grad, and I added these words:

I feel a bit like I do when I'm walking up the line to visit the family at a funeral visitation. I know that I should say something, but I don't know what to say and I don't want to say the wrong thing and I don't want to offend and I don't want to offer just a cliche...so...I end up not saying anything. Or maybe mumbling a "sorry" or trying to be upbeat and light-hearted to break the tension. I'm finding, though, that staying silent isn't the answer either, no matter how awkward it is to speak up. The wheels have been turning in my head about what to say, what my response is, what my plan of action is, but I'm not there, yet. In the meantime, these words resonated with me, and I'll share them until I have words of my own. Thanks, Stacey!

Some excerpts from her post:
"We must be keenly aware that speaking up on FB, taking a stand on InstaGram, sharing truth on Twitter PALES in impact to speaking up around your dining room table. Sharing truth on our pages PALES in comparison to doing the genuine, sacrificial, painful, messy relational work needed for true change."

"If change begins at HOME—and it DOES—then let's get some people into our homes...not just our Facebook feeds. If at the root this sin issue is a HEART issue, NOT a political issue—and it IS—then let's invite God to do the heart work; let's be urgently praying for soft hearts for our countries, let's be His vessels as we speak His truth in love, that hearts might hear."

In my quest to learn more, I've starting reading books about the topic and books by people of color (Five stars for Michelle Obama's Becoming, especially the audiobook in her own voice!). At first, I discounted Daniel Hill, who wrote White Awake, since he himself is white, but it was eye-opening to read his journey through the stages of encounter, denial, disorientation, shame, self-righteousness, and awakening. I could see myself in many of the common responses and issues when white people start to consider all that it entails to be white. For example, a common first response is "What am I supposed to do?" It seems noble to immediately want to fix things, but our goal first should be to see differently and to lament the brokenness of systemic racism. In one of the final chapters, he outlines seven markers to know that we are headed in the right direction. This chapter in many ways summed up some of the main themes of the book. Since I borrowed the book from the library (and therefore can't make my own notes and underlines), I wanted to remember some of these concepts as I continue on this cultural identity journey:

Marker 1 - Becoming Theologically Awake

"Therefore, an awakening to justice reconciliation, and cultural identity begins with seeing the full expression of Jesus with increasing clarity." 

"To be theologically awake...is to hold together activism and evangelism; protest and prayer; personal piety and social justice; intimacy with Jesus and proximity to the poor."

Marker 2 - Recognizing the Kingdom Battle over the Imago Dei

"This is why the sin of racism is so serious. The system of race, at its core, is a revaluation of human worth. Instead of ordering human value around the doctrine of the imago Dei [image of God], it ascribes value based on proximity to whiteness."

"I challenged this friend to take note of the unexamined ways race had shaped the way he viewed everything, in light of a black Jesus seeming sacrilegious while a white Jesus was comfortable for him."

"The kingdom of this world continues to accommodate and promote a racial hierarchy...and attempts to deceive white people into cowering in fear and trying to protect what we believe is our racial birthright. The kingdom of God, on the other hand, ...shouts from the mountaintops that all human beings are created in the image of God and are therefore inherently valuable."

Marker 3 - No Longer Being Defensive about White Supremacy

"Once white supremacy is understood as the evil and dangerous system it is, the common enemy becomes abundantly clear. The enemy is not each other; this is not white people versus people of color. No, the enemy is white supremacy, and the evil one leverages that system for destructive purposes. It's a dark and dangerous system, and it must be opposed and dismantled at all costs."

Marker 4 - Dismantling White Supremacy Trumps the Seeking of Diversity

"One of the first blindness-to-sight discoveries for a white person (or church) tends to be the aha moment when she realized her world is almost entirely white. When this epiphany happens, there's an almost immediate desire to pursue diversity."

"Nothing is more critical [in our cultural identity efforts] than to pursue the dismantling of white supremacy, both in the prisons of our own minds and in the toxic structures that everyday people participate in. From there we can pursue diversity, but only when the main priority is clear."

Marker 5 - Changing the Evaluation of Growth from "What am I supposed to do?" to "How well do I see?"

"We aren't engineers who need technical training on how to disassemble and reassemble the pieces of race; instead, we are blind wanderers who need help to see a world that functions according to a different set of rules than what we've been raised with."

Marker 6 - Recognizing Privilege Faster and with Greater Precision

"Make a personal commitment to never lead from privilege without first accessing the voices of those on the margins -- particularly those most affected by whatever endeavor you're undertaking."

Marker 7 - Living in a State of Hopeful Lament

"We aren't supposed to ignore, anesthetize, or screen out this grief. In fact...to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of lament almost all the time. To be awake is to see clearly the sorrows that come in this world."

"Lament is a beautiful and needed resource because it has a unique way of remaining awake to sorrow without succombing to it. Lament allows us to grieve injustice but not fall into despair. We can be awake to the pain of the world but still press forward in faith because of another beautiful word at the center of the gospel: hope."

"We remember that hope was never found in our ideas, solutions, or proposals in the first place; hope always has been and always will be found in Christ alone. We remember that Jesus will eventually make all things right and that our hope is found in this truth. But we remember that he is ushering in the kingdom of God -- right here and right now."

He ended with some words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail (which I need to read!). 

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the... Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate...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.

And here I thought all this time that as long as I wasn't a full-blown racist or white supremacist, I was fine. At least I wasn't like those people. But I have been the "white moderate" with "shallow understanding." 

No more.

This cultural identity journey will take the rest of my life, but I will no longer settle for pretending the issue doesn't exist in the present day. It's time to wake up!