Where Do We Go From Here?

Question 1

Debby Irving writes, “Cross-racial relationships are essential to racial healing. The kind of contact and connection they engender is indeed the antidote to the centuries-old pattern of segregation and avoidance.”

 

She also writes, “White people must learn how to listen to the experiences of people of color for racial healing and justice to happen.”

• Have you tried to form relationships across racial lines? If so, were you successful? If not, what has held you back?
• Have you ever found yourself “not believing” a person of color when a story of discrimination was told to you?

 Question 2

Debby Irving writes, “I couldn’t have known at the age of five that by thinking a fellow human being less human, I made myself less human, or that by disconnecting from my human family I began the process of disconnecting from my natural intuition and ability to love.”

• What is the cost of racism to white people? What do we lose?

 Question 3

Debby Irving writes: "One of the most important things we, as white people, can do to dismantle racism is talk to other white people about race."

 

• Have you ever been an all-white setting when a racist comment was made? What did you do? What was helpful and what wasn’t?
• What strategies might you use in the future in these types of situations?

 

A final quote from Debby Irving (page 228)

Sharing the burden of social discomfort is not simply a matter of helping someone else feel good. It’s about leveling the playing field in pursuit of nurturing individual and collective potential. My colleague Verna Myers puts it this way: “diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” Have you ever been invited to a party but not known many people and not been reached out to and included? I have. It makes me wish I’d never accepted the invitation. Hiring an employee or admitting a student of color and then “tolerating” them and/or “celebrating” their food and holidays without understanding their cultural norms in the context of the dominant culture is a setup for underachievement. Too often the result is discomfort and disengagement on the part of the person of color, which results in poor performance, which then gets blamed on the person of color, not on the dominant culture’s lack of awareness or inability to be truly inclusive and multicultural.

Additional Resources:

A Time for Burning:  Robert E.A. Lee produced for the Lutheran Church back in 1966.  This film is a 1966 American documentary film which explores the attempts of the pastor of Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska, to persuade his all-white congregation to reach out to "negro" Lutherans in the city's north side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujw_KJzTF8k

Racism in America:  Resources to Understand America's Long History of Injustice and Inequality

The Washington Post has compiled "deeply reported stories, videos, photo essays, audio and graphics on black history, progress, inequality, and injustice."  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/08/understanding-racism-inequality-america/?arc404=true

Fresh Air Podcast - The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.   A 47 minute interview with Robert P. Jones, author of the book White Too Long, looks primarily at the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination in which he grew up.  https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/897164585/the-legacy-of-white-supremacy-in-american-christianity

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4iY1TtS3s

National Museum of African American History and Culture - Talking about Race   https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness

"We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic.  Different people.  Different beliefs.  Different yearnings.  Different hopes.  Different dreams."

    Attributed to former President Jimmy Carter, posted on YouTube by James Wright on 3/27/17  entitled "A Beautiful Mosaic" 

Suggested Books to Dive Deeper:  

Dear Church:  A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S., by Pastor Lenny Duncan https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Church-Preacher-Whitest-Denomination/dp/1506452566/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Dear+Church&qid=1596559287&sr=8-1

How to be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi  https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525509283/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RM06NBJOD4G6&dchild=1&keywords=how+to+be+an+antiracist&qid=1596559334&sprefix=How+to+Be+A%2Caps%2C220&sr=8-1

White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo  https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/0807047414/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2A8GJZL2Q4Q1D&dchild=1&keywords=white+fragility+robin+diangelo&qid=1596559400&sprefix=White+Fragility%2Caps%2C237&sr=8-1

On White Privilege

July 29 – On White Privilege

Question 1

The video True Colors from ABC Primetime Live is almost 30 years old now (from 1991).  As I watched this segment, I thought of some of the privileges I have been given simply because I am a white, heterosexual, Christian male.  Privileges that even 10 years ago I was not aware of.  About this video Debby Irving writes,

 If I hadn’t watched this with a racially mixed group of workshop attendees, I might have underestimated the film’s validity in the year 2010. As soon as the lights came up, however, the people of color shook their heads and looked at each other in camaraderie, while the white participants sat wide-eyed and incredulous. (page 72)

True Colors Video (about 16 minutes in length) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi_DF9Iu2xA

      What from the video rang true for you? 
What upset you?
What privileges have you received simply by being white?
What from this video contradicts the idea that in America, people fail or succeed based on individual effort?

 Question 2 - Daily Effects of White Privilege

Debby Irving writes, “It’s not enough to feel empathy toward people on the downside, white people must also see themselves on the upside to understand that discrimination results from privilege.”

 

Debby Irving references Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. The following is excerpted from Working Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh

 

Peggy McIntosh writes:  “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.  I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.   

Identify the statements that are true for you:

 1.      I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

 2.      I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3.      If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4.      I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5.      I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6.      I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7.      When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8.      I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9.      If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10.  I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11.  I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12.  I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13.  Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14.  I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15.  I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16.  I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

17.  I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18.  I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19.  I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20.  I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21.  I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

Why is it important to recognize white privilege?

Dominant White Culture

 On page 194, Debby Irving names beliefs and behaviors that make up dominant white culture. 

                  Ø  Conflict avoidance

Ø  Valuing formal education over life experience

Ø  Right to comfort/Entitlement

Ø  Sense of urgency

Ø  Competiveness

Ø  Emotional restraint

Ø  Judgmentalness

Ø  Either/or thinking

Ø  Belief in one right way

Ø  Defensiveness

Ø  Being status oriented

 She lists these in order to say: “Here are some dominant white culture ways of thinking and acting that are holding back efforts to dismantle racism.” 

On page 197, Debby Irving provides a continuum.  Statements on the left are often associated with the dominant white culture.  She states: “folks working to break patterns that maintain racism notice that thinking and acting in ways closer to the right side of the continuum can be useful in addressing racial healing.”  I invite you to take a minute and identify where you find yourself on that continuum.   

What did you learn about yourself?

Week Two - July 1

Wednesday, July 1

Question 1

Debby Irving remembers learning some of the following values and beliefs as a child:

• Money was mostly for accumulating; waste showed carelessness and flashiness.
• Accomplishment for anyone was simply a matter of intention and hard work.
• Being accomplished and busy were signs of good character.
• Complaining about anything was out of the question.
• Debby was expected to show emotional restraint, and keep an optimistic and chipper attitude at all times.  

What are some of the values and beliefs you learned as a child? How did you make sense of the fact that some people had great material wealth while others didn’t?

Question 2

Debby Irving writes: 

When we replaced the screens on our cabin’s front porch one summer, my parents had us carefully roll up and bind the old screens and set them off to the side “for the Indians.” Acts of charity for people I was taught to see as inferior fed right into my belief that the white race was not only better at achieving but an exceptionally generous and moral breed on whom others depended. Missing from my storyline was the part about how the land grant my family used to settle the town had been a catalyst for the demise of Native peoples.

As you think back to your high school or college history courses, whose “story” did you hear? White people, black people, brown people? What was included and what was left out?

Question 3

Debby Irving describes feeling “duped and alarmed” as she learned about government supported institutional racism. Following World War II, the “same GI Bill that had given white families like mine a socio-economic boost had left people of color out to dry.”

Watch the video (just over 6 minutes) "The House We Live In."

 

Has anything from this book, so far, upset your previous notions about why some people have great material wealth while others don’t? Why or why not?

Question 4

Debby Irving writes that systemic racism is far more than simply prejudice. She quotes a black woman who helped her understand the concept, “All racial groups have problems with people in other racial groups. White folks have not cornered the market on that. The difference between white folks and everybody else is that they have the power to turn those feelings into policy, law, and practice.’

 

How were lending practices following WWII an example of systemic racism? In your own words, how is undoing systemic racism different than encouraging diversity?

For further exploration of ideas presented in the first two sections of Waking up White

Podcast 1619:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/podcasts/1619-slavery-anniversary.html  Transcript is available on this sight as well.  I thought of this podcast as I learned a little bit about Lincoln's view on enslaved people that I was completely unaware of (on page 31 Debby Irving asks if you learned about Lincoln's view on enslaved black people).  

Debby Irving TED talk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD5Ox5XNEpg

Week One - Sunday June 21

Do you remember the story of the Princess and the Pea? The princess, despite being on top of twenty mattresses, couldn’t fall asleep because something kept jabbing her, poking her, and disrupting her slumber. The tiny pea under all of those mattresses was something she tried to ignore. But that pea kept poking at her, disrupting her sleep, and telling her to “Wake up!”

That story describes my feelings about the subject of race relations. For a long time, I have tried to ignore the issue of race in my life and in my ministry. It is much easier that way. It is easy for me to ignore, and much more comfortable to deny that there is something poking at me. But that “pea” keeps poking, telling me that there is something very broken in God’s world, and I need to pay attention to it. Despite my best efforts to deny that race relations is something I need to worry about, it continues to poke at me, disrupt my comfort, and insist that I wake up. 

Why should I, or anyone like me, worry about race? Isn’t that someone else’s problem? I’m white, why do I have to worry about race? But here’s the thing - the pea under the mattress that keeps me from being comfortable and content - Jesus commanded in Matthew 22:39 to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus was very clear about the two most important commandments (loving God is the other one), so we’d better believe that loving others is pretty important to God. We are called to love everyone, each and every person that God has created on this great earth, including the people who don’t look like us.

Loving others is hard work. But it is important work, especially when it comes to race relations. I have recently been “waking up” to the fact that our black and brown skinned brothers and sisters suffer from a very deep wound that we need to pay attention to. This is a wound that is easy for us white folks to ignore. But if we start asking questions and really listening, we will begin to hear stories of pain, of being oppressed by a system that overwhelmingly favors white people.

 

We need to take this pain very seriously. It’s part of being disciples of Jesus. We need to start listening, start learning, and start being curious about what is hurting our brothers and sisters of color in the United States. We need to start believing them when they tell us about their pain and struggle.

 

Thank you for participating in this study of Waking Up White, by Debby Irving. I believe that you will find that this book is a great first step toward understanding why, in 2020 we are still talking about race. As you enter the conversation, perhaps you will be moved to continue to examine the role race has played in shaping your life and the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Perhaps you will feel moved to further engage in the important work of undoing racism in the United States.

In his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, Robert Fulgham speaks with great disdain about the “gunk in the sink.” We all know what he’s talking about - the bits of food and yuck that gather around the drain. He then talks about the bravery of his mother:

 

“One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.”

Cleaning out the “gunk in the sink” is part of being an adult. It’s an unpleasant but necessary job, and Robert Fulgham’s mother, was brave enough to handle the mess.

Racism is like the “gunk in the sink” for our communities and our nation. Cleaning out the gunk, and being brave enough to face it, is simply part of being a grown-up. 

Talking about race is one of those things that is hard to face.  I think many of us would agree with Debby Irving when she writes:  "Not so long ago, if someone had called me a racist, I would have kicked and screamed in protest.  "But I'm a good person!" I would have insisted.  "I don't see color! I don't have a racist bone in my body!"  I would have felt insulted and misunderstood and stomped off to lick my wounds.  That's because I thought being a racist meant not liking people of calling or being a name-calling bigot."  

Questions:

1.  In a few sentences, tell about the community where you grew up.  Would you consider it homogeneous?  Diverse?  In what way(s)? 

2.  What are you looking forward to learning in this book study?  What - if anything - are you anxious about?

3.  If you could change one thing about the way you were raised, what would it be?

4.  What stereotypes about people of another race do you remember hearing and believing as a child?  Were you encouraged to question stereotypes?

Additional Resources:

Phil Vischer, one of the creators of Veggie Tales, has developed a great video resource that helps us understand some of the issues that Debby Irving will raise in her book.  Here is the video if you would like to watch it. Phil Vischer - Race in America