We have begun our racial justice journey as a church.
This journey has begun with learning,
listening, and engaging with one another this past year. We’re watched and discussed, “Race
the Power of an Illusion,” “Mirrors of Privilege,”
and “Cracking the Code: Making Whiteness Visible.” We’ve held a number of small
group listening sessions, and we’ve preached on the
spiritual imperative of racial justice work, as well. It is a reclamation project of sorts, a way to reclaim our full humanity, and the humanity of others, and a way to commit to be partners in dismantling the devastating impact of racism.
I’ve just
finished reading Isabel Wilkerson’s book, The
Warmth of Other Sons, which is about the “Great Migration,” the untold story of the
millions of African Americans who left the Jim Crow South for opportunities and
better lives in the North and West.
As human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson says in a TED
Talk: “I tell my students about slavery. I tell them about terrorism, that era
that began at the end of reconstruction that went on to World War II. For
African Americans in this country, that was an era defined by terror. In many
communities, people had to worry about being lynched, about being bombed. It
was the threat of terror that shaped their lives. And these older people come
up to me now and say, “Mr. Stevenson, you give talks, you make speeches, you
tell people to stop saying we’re dealing with terrorism for the first time in
our nation’s history after 9/11.” They tell me to say, “No, tell them we grew
up with that.” And that era of terrorism, of course, was followed by
segregation and decades of racial subordination and apartheid.”
Stevenson goes on, "And yet, we have in this country a dynamic where we don't really like to talk about our problems. We don't like to talk about our history."
