How can I help?
To my white friends, family, co-workers, Christians, we can do better. I am still very ignorant myself. I know how you are feeling. You want to do something, but you don’t know what that is. So many white brothers and sisters are asking what they can do to help. It is wonderful that you are even asking. Here is a good place to start. YOU.
We HAVE to start with our own hearts, our own words, our own beliefs, our own behaviors. Trust me, I know how difficult it can be to look beyond how you grew up and do the hard work of shifting your mindset. But I know first hand that it is possible. No one blames you for following down the path of what you have always known. However, we have to allow God to strip away a lot of things of how we think about people around us, about the world and realize the privileges that we walk in as a white person. Let me give you an example. Band-aids that come in flesh color are white, but that is not indicative of all flesh. And that is not indicative of how God created all mankind to be. God delights in his creation, so he must of done it with a purpose. Big picture society has been set up for white Americans to go with the current and often times men and women of color have to go against the current to be able to swim with the current. I know by now you have felt overwhelmed by social media posts sharing how we need more love, more listening more learning. Yes, we need to love more and better. Yes, we need to listen, not listen to respond. Yes, we need to learn by using the resources that have been provided to us by so many. You don’t need me to reiterate these statements to you. However, what I can give you are additional action steps within your day to day that will bring about transformation. It has been on my heart all week to share these actions because I too have had to shift my own mindset over the last five years.
Here is what we can also do. We can tell our friends/family that their racist jokes and comment are not funny, but are completely unacceptable. We can speak up when we hear a racial slur used rather than sitting passively and saying nothing. We can stop warning our white daughters about dating black males and our white sons about dating black females. We can buy our kids Barbie dolls that do not look like them. We can ask our black friends about their experiences without defending our whiteness. We can examine the words spoken within the walls of our homes. We have to hold hard conversations with family members in a loving and Christ-like way, even if this means calling them out. We have to stop saying that we don't see color. God's kingdom is not white. We can send resources to our friends/family to help educate them. We can stop surrounding ourselves with only people who look like, talk like, live like, think like we do. We can speak up and say NO MORE. We can call racism and evil and sin for what it is.
To my fellow white teachers, we model every day how we want our students to speak about and treat people of color. They copy our behavior. They watch and repeat. May we consider who is represented in the children’s books we choose to display around our classrooms. Let me be frank, if all of your books only represent white children, then there is a problem. In each short school year, I believe what we teach our students now, may inform and shapes their beliefs about people of color later.
We don’t have time for excuses or justifications. Precious and beautiful lives are at stake. Image bearers. When Jesus came to earth and He died on the cross, the gospel itself tore down every division between us. It unifies us as ONE. If I can live my life like that by recognizing others as image-bears and chasing God's fullness through other people, I want to spend my life doing that and my future kids to spend their lives doing that and my students and my family and my friends. Because, the more I know of others and really enter in with other people, the more I know about Jesus. Oh, what joy that floods my soul.
Now, it's hard. It's sticky. It's not clean. It doesn't feel good always, but if we can lean in it, we will become kingdom cultivators.
All my love,
Jess
1 comment
As a white person, this whole situation spoke volumes to me of my ignorant bliss when it comes to race relations in America and globally. I walked in silence of not noticing my white privilege for all of my life and kind of assumed that because American made so much great progress with electing the first black President, that racism was more a thing of the past. With all of our political unrest including a leadership that is currently FAILING us all as a society, it’s obvious that things have taken a turn for the worst with time. My only prayer is that we ALL can start to healing process of being better people toward each other. Treating one another with respectability and accountability for our actions. I want all of us to live as one, as cliche as it might sound. I feel we are so much better than the bigotry that I have been seeing and it hurts my heart to its core to see anyone else suffering in so much pain and agony for who they are., as people. Only God can judge and that should stand no matter what. We need a healing. We need better leadership. We need LOVE. We need understand and we need patience!