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.
I lived in Aurora, IL until I was 11, and it was a diverse city, both among the races and within the races. One of my best friends was black and another's parents were immigrants from Poland. I was a Girl Scout with a diverse troop. Then, my family moved to a suburb north of Indianapolis, and though there was some diversity, it was a predominantly white community.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to diving deeper into whiteness. I, too, for a long time didn't think race was my problem, but as I learn more, I know that it is precisely my problem; people of color have just had to deal with the fall-out and oppression that has resulted from it. I'm not anxious at this point, but I actually hope I will be. I think growth happens when we're made to feel uncomfortable.
I wish that I had had a more balanced education, especially when it comes to history. There are so many events and people that I never learned about until I was older. According to what I learned, it was manifest destiny that European Americans took over the already occupied lands of this country. According to those same classes, Native Americans were killed off, and after slavery ended, everything was fine for black people. I have had to reeducate myself on a lot of topics.
I actually remember having a lot of discussions at the dinner table about race during high school, thanks to my dad. We both enjoyed a healthy debate, but we tended to lie on opposite ends of the political spectrum. I don't think these stereotypes were explicitly mentioned during those conversations, but I think I took a lot of them in from my surroundings:
-Black people are lazy. Black men never stay with their families.
-You should lock your doors when driving through certain areas, i.e. where there was a larger population of black residents.
-Muslims are terrorists, and Islam is a dangerous religion.
-Asian-Americans speak broken English, have slanted eyes, and are bad drivers.
Through those debates with my dad, I think I was encouraged to question those stereotypes. We often disagreed, but he made me think critically about why I believed what I did.
1. I grew up in a rural farming community in southwest Wisconsin. Our family was definitely homogeneous. Looking back diversity was represented by being a farm kid or a town kid and if you were Lutheran or Catholic.
ReplyDelete2. I want to increase my knowledge base; I know how we function in the world differs depending on the color of your skin. In pre-COVID world, I could go wherever I pleased with no concern that I would be singled out and perhaps persecuted because of my skin color. I fear that I may say something deemed racist when perhaps it was stated out of curiosity from a lack of knowledge.
3. I don't think there is much I would change about my upbringing; my dad loved all people! There were times I would probably have liked him to be a little more subtle or politically correct but political correctness wasn't as prevalent.
4. Right now I can't think of any stereotypes but I am thinking as other post, it will jog a memory. I don't think I was encouraged to question much, especially about someone who had a characteristic unfamiliar to our family.
1. I grew up near a very small town in southern Minnesota. It was very homogeneous. There was one person of color in our entire school and she was a Jehovah's Witness. I agree with Laurie. Our diversity was basically town or country kid and Lutheran or Catholic.
ReplyDelete2. I'm the study will help me be a more open person and not feel guilty about times when I could have supported people of color more.
3. I had a wonderful childhood with supportive parents. However, we were raised very conservatively and not given a lot of exposure to other ways of life, other beliefs, etc
4. One of my best friends is marrying a black man. One thing I heard growing up was that white people should only marry white people. When I used to travel in the South, white people would say the black people weren't smart. I was not always encouraged to question stereotypes but have done so more as I've grown older. I married in to a family who had friends of ethnicity and all walks of life. That really opened my eyes to wanting to learn more about the many people I meet in life.
1. I have grown up in a homogeneous community. The most diverse my class in school has been is through our academic, sports, and extracurricular interests. At one point there were up to three people of color in my class. My encounters with ethnic diversity have been through traveling to Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston, and Los Angeles.
ReplyDelete2. I am looking forward to being able to combat my implicit biases as well as learn better how to be actively anti-racist.
3. I would want to have grown up in a more ethnically diverse area.
4. I do not remember much right now, but I remember the POC in my classes at school being disciplined more than other kids, so I think I began to associate having a different skin color with not being "good". I remember celebrating Christopher Columbus day in school and learning about how great he was. When that day became Indigenous People's Day, however, we did not do anything to commemorate it in school. I was also not taught about Juneteenth and did not learn about it until this past year.
1 - I never viewed Houston County as homogeneous. Eitzen was a German town with names like Gerardt. My great grandfathers name was Heinrick! Spring Grove Lutheran and norwegian. And Caledonia needed two Catholic churches so the Germans did not have to sit next to the Irish
ReplyDelete3 - It would have been nice to know my grandparents prior to running into them by accendent at the county fair when I was 13. Catholics did not associate with Lutherans in the 1960s. Sadly my grand mother Schwartzhoff was my longest living grandparent and I never had any shared history to talk about
4 - I dont remember any sterotypes. I lived in the south as a child. I guess black folks liked watermellon. I do clearly remember that in Selby Dale area in st paul not far from my college black people would congregate on the street corners. My friends and I thought it odd - even the blacks from other continents I went to school with.
Scott, I like how you look at Houston County as not being homogeneous from a religious and cultural background. But when you look at each person, they don't look a lot different from others in the community. But when you look at the community, I bet all were Caucasian with varying hair colors.
DeleteI grew up in a similar community, where I was told Catholic kids and Lutheran kids should not play with each other. Thankfully my classmates and I were able to ignore that dictate and played freely with each other. I could never understand why my Catholic best friend and I, a Lutheran, should not play together. I understand that bias better as an adult.
You mention 2 Catholic churches to separate ethnic backgrounds, we had 2 Lutheran churches in close proximity. I can't remember the basis but I think there was a disagreement between 2 families and one family said, "we're going to build our own church!" Now those 2 churches share a pastor and have almost completely blended, almost! But that county is still pretty homogeneous.
1. I grew up in a very small community in South Dakota which was actually a white settlement on the Sisseton Wahpeton Reservation--a Native American Reservation. The diversity there was the difference between Lutherans and Catholics and we had a few Native Americans in the community and in my school class of under 20 students.
ReplyDelete2. What are you looking forward to learning in this book study? What - if anything - are you anxious about? I'm looking to find what my hidden biases are. As divided as our country appears to be right now, I'd like to explore what ideas I have been defending that might actually be an unconscious bias.
3. If you could change one thing about the way you were raised, what would it be? I think my parents and grandparents actually did good job of looking at people as individuals and not by race.
4. What stereotypes about people of another race do you remember hearing and believing as a child? Were you encouraged to question stereotypes? I remember my grandmother talking about running a cafe in California and being confronted when she served black people. I didn't understand why people would object to her serving them. I also remember stereotypes of Natives that they were lazy and would wreck things.
How interesting that you grew up within a reservation. Did that proximity give you a perspective about Native American’s that helps you to see them as they are instead of through a stereotype. I have very limited experience with Native Americans and primarily as an instructor at a Technical College. I can probably count on one hand the number of past students who shared they were Native American. The students I worked with seemed to have a more laid back attitude then the Anglo students. The class I teach requires a student to be on time and if any student was late, it was usually the Native student although Anglos were certainly guilty of tardiness too! I’m not sure if this is a bias or stereotype I have unfairly placed on those students.
DeleteHow interesting that you grew up within a reservation. Did that proximity give you a perspective about Native American’s that helps you to see them as they are instead of through a stereotype. I have very limited experience with Native Americans and primarily as an instructor at a Technical College. I can probably count on one hand the number of past students who shared they were Native American. The students I worked with seemed to have a more laid back attitude then the Anglo students. The class I teach requires a student to be on time and if any student was late, it was usually the Native student although Anglos were certainly guilty of tardiness too! I’m not sure if this is a bias or stereotype I have unfairly placed on those students.
DeleteInteresting Laurie. I am so very bound by time, and being on time. That has always been part of who I am. I know in Ethiopia the sense of time is completely different because of their culture. Do you have any sense if the laid back attitude you see in regard time is cultural for your Native American students?
DeleteI do think it’s a cultural difference. I think a laid back attitude is better than the pressure many put on themselves to be early and in a manner be perfect.
Delete1. I grew up in a suburb of the Twin Cities, before moving to a small rural community at the age of 11. My childhood school and home was diverse and rich in culture. There were people who wore beautiful scarves on their heads, people with different beliefs and different skin tones than me, and I never batted an eyelash. My first friend in elementary school was a young black boy named Sean who had been adopted into a white family after suffering as a young boy at the hands of his biological parents. I would continue to have friends of all diversities while I lived there. When I moved to the rural community, the racial diversity disappeared and I became one of many white people. Again, I never saw this as a bad thing or a good thing, just a thing. There were a few people of diverse backgrounds, but I was never close friends with any of them and never knew much about them.
ReplyDelete2. I am looking forward to better understanding the path to racial equity where we live. I look forward to being able to enjoy life with all diversities and races. I am anxious about the potential reactions of some how may not understand racism and what it's like to be of privilege compared to those who have dealt against privileged people their entire lives. I'm also a bit anxious about being able to share my knowledge from this book study with those who may not see the same "a-ha" moments that I may see.
3. I wish that when my family had moved, we had continued to attend school and live in a town of rich diversity. When moving from one to the other, I lost that ability to not see differences in people. That, coupled with my parents' misunderstanding of race based on news programs in the late 90's and early 00's, could have been prevented by my always staying grounded in understanding other races firsthand.
4. What stereotypes about people of another race do you remember hearing and believing as a child? Were you encouraged to question stereotypes?
My grandmother was in her 20's when she saw her first black person. When I was growing up, she would say things that I now realize were racist, only because she didn't have proper exposure to people of different races. My mom tended to associate black people with mug shots on television when I was a kid as well. I was never told here nor there what to think of others, but I do remember these glaring obvious marks of racism that were ingrained in the earlier generations as I was growing up.
I'll try this again....
ReplyDelete1. I grew up on a farm in a white rural community. Attended a small school. Diversity consisted of religion and maybe political affiliation.
2. I hope to broaden my understanding of racism and my part in it and then change my behavior as necessary.
3. I had a happy childhood. Not everything was perfect, but I am satisfied with it. We didn't have much exposure to anyone outside of our familiar community.
4. I heard about Jewing people down (a term used to bargain for a better financial deal). My dad would say, "did you kids go to a Jews school referring to we all talking at once and being noisy. As a small child I though he said juice school. My grandmother talked about the dangers of meeting up with Gypsies who she said would steal chickens from farmers and maybe kidnap kids. I never met or saw a Gypsy that I know of. My mother called Blacks darkies, though not in a derogatory way that I recall. Native Americans were always portrayed as the bad guys in western movies and TV shows.
2.
1. I grew up in Billings, MT. I would say it was a homogeneous environment. The other ethnic group was mainly Native Americans, called Indians at the time. They had their own schools so I didn't have occasions to interact with them. I moved to So. St. Paul, MN the middle of my sophomore year in high school. I did not have any black kids in my class in either state that I remember.
ReplyDelete2.I am looking to be enlightened and learn about racism from other perspectives. I also want to learn how others perceive white privilege.
3.I had a happy childhood and was content. I wish we had more family conversations about current affairs. My parents didn't seem to discuss those things with me. Maybe they thought I learned about them in school and that was enough.
4.When we would drive through Chicago before there were interstates, we rolled up the car windows and locked the doors as my dad said it wasn't safe.
I don't remember my parents saying unkind things about races of people probably because we weren't exposed to them unless we traveled.
My grandmother called black people darkies or coloreds.