All transformation requires disruption. And it seems to me that no one changes because it’s a good idea. We change, if much at all, because someone provokes us and invites us to truth and goodness.
I volunteered on the Seattle streets to prostituted teens and young women in 2008 and 2009. We met together at nine in the evening and stayed on the streets until three in the morning. Once a month I was required to attend a daytime meeting and almost always the topic was race and racism. I thought that because I was under the authority of my two African American supervisors, as well as, the diverse leadership of New Horizons Ministry that I had achieved what I needed in understanding racial disadvantage.
I thought that I had embraced my white privilege. I knew these meetings were important, but sometimes I wondered if they were making too big of a deal about it. Frankly, I resented having to give up six hours a month to attend the mandatory meeting.
I was granted permission to be on the streets on Friday and Saturday nights because of the training at New Horizons, a ministry to street teenagers in Seattle. But, in reality, my supervisors, Sheila and Dottie, enabled me to serve the prostituted community. It was their skin and stories that empowered me to stand on the streets. I care deeply for them and because of our kindred love for Jesus we respect and enjoy one another.
I realized during those countless Friday and Saturday nights of outreach that every young woman I came in contact with was essentially just like me. It was simply that my family of origin had more money and more advantage. But more than that, it was also the color of my skin. There are many factors that cause a girl or a woman to be prostituted, but one major factor is economic.
Last month I was in Colorado for diversity training with The Allender Center teaching staff and my eyes were more fully opened. There were countless pieces of data, stories, and experiences but one threw me to the ground. My father, after WWII had access to a GI Bill that enabled him and millions of other white men to get a wildly reasonable loan to purchase a home. Every black man returning from the war was deprived of that opportunity. The result plays itself out today like an unseen ocean current that can endanger or kill an unsuspecting swimmer.
The rising value of my parent’s home enabled them to send me to college debt free and provide a small inheritance. When you add “redlining” the practice of not selling homes to African Americans and forcing them to live in appalling slum buildings it constitutes systemic evil to deprive a people group of wealth, power, and goodness. To make matters worse, banks wouldn’t give loans for mortgages in Black neighborhoods. Perhaps, what is most striking is I already knew it. I remembered that my grandfather purchased the home next to his to insure an African American family would not move in! My parents and Dan’s parents signed covenants not to sell their home to African Americans in Upper Arlington, Ohio.
I have directly benefited due to our families participation in systemic racial violence.
How could I know this from direct personal experience and “forget” it? Guilt. Helplessness. Busyness. Defensiveness. Chosen blindness. One of the comments made by a woman of color that broke my heart: “I am so tired of taking care of white people’s discomfort or being assaulted by your defensiveness. I don’t speak for all black women; I only speak for myself. I just want you to understand that no matter how hard your fathers and families worked for their nest egg, they got a one hundred meter start for a four hundred meter race.”
The instigator of this dialogue looked at me and said: “Willing to watch a documentary to see the chronic, systemic evil at work? What would it cost you to enter what the kingdom of darkness has done and wants to continue to do to sow chaos, division, and heartache?”
Then he turned on the PBS movie: Race – The Power of an Illusion. Episode Three: The House We Live In. I watched and wept.
Becky Allender lives on Bainbridge Island with her loving, wild husband of 40 years. A mother and grandmother, she is quite fond of sunshine, yoga, Hawaiian quilting and creating 17th Century reproduction samplers. A community of praying women, loving Jesus, and the art of gratitude fill her life with goodness. She wonders what she got herself into with Red Tent Living! bs
nbso
Becky, I am so grateful you told this story. The reality you described has washed over me over and over again since my college days in Memphis, TN. And I have acid in my stomach today as I think of how few racially diverse friendships I have maintained…it can grow all together too easy to get comfortable in our white and appropriate lives. Thank you for highlighting the ways in which honoring diversity and owning the evil that we ourselves have perpetuated against our racially diverse brothers and sisters isn’t just a “nice” thing to do–it’s something that makes us more human and whole. Standing with you across the distance.
Dear Katy, I did not realize you went to college in Memphis. I think of you being the quintessential kind and beautiful friend. Certainly maintaining friends of past is hard, but add to that race, even harder. I hope that the acid in your stomach today brings fruit that is not quite clear. What I know about myself, being white kept me distant from hearing what my friends, who are of color, wanted me to hear and step into. I want to get a African American History of the United States text book! There is so much for me to learn.
Your garage and naming this echoes the conversations that we have at Neighborhood ministries. I have a son-in-law who his father is African, living in Seattle. I am learning to see through new eyes the barriers there are to inclusion or even a job. In my work with women, I agonize because there are almost no Midwives of color in our city. And so my practices very diverse, but there are things that I cannot understand experientially. And so I asked Jesus for ears to hear and a heart to mourn what is my shared culpability in the story.
I love your heart to hear and mourn. I can only begin to imagine the understanding you know have with your son-in-law. And, I would love it if more women of color could be midwives. I had not even been aware of that! Thank you.
Courage. Aargh!!!!
Yes….courage!!!
Becky, thank you for your courage in writing your own struggle to understand racism and privilege…from a position of privilege. I have learned much about white privilege and systemic racism from my kids – I think their generation is demonstrating the will to bring significant change. It is convicting how often I realize I don’t even consider the power I have, and the judgments that come so easily. And I am still surprised at the number of times I hear things I didn’t know about our nation’s not so long ago history – like the GI bills only being for white soldiers. Unbelievably sad.
This sentence is brilliant: “It is convicting how often I realize I don’t even consider the power I have, and the judgments that come so easily.” And knowing your heart and Chris’s heart with your sons and their families. I love that your eyes and voice have already been the reason for others to be aware and to change!
Feeling like I am awakening from a deep slumber… we had race riots in my high school in the early 70’s… a group of us just had a mini reunion. One friend saved newspaper articles from that time… The articles were just appalling… we all took a collective gasp … no wonder African Americans felt as the did… and feel as they do now…how did we not get it back then… how can we not know now… but now I have a choice… to continue to choose ignorance or choose to stare it down to knock it down… powerful words like your call me to keep looking no matter how uncomfortable it make me or others around me!!!
Wow, Ro! We had race riots my sophomore year in college at Ohio State! My roommate and I moved home a week early and then commuted to finish our exams. It seems I never looked back. How wish I had taken some Black History classes to have opened my eyes to the injustice. I am going to order a Black History/American History text book. I feel the need to educate myself and not look away. Injustice is still rampant in our nation!
I watched the documentary. I was shaken that I did not understand what redlining meant or the devastation that still reaches out today because of it. My heart breaks that slavery did not end with the Civil War but continues to change forms to control and deprive privilege. Growing up in the South has given me a front row seat to racism. I now want to move white privilege into the spotlight. I want to invite others to sit with me and see how our journeys have been paved with ease while we have allowed black friends to travel with extra burdens and with no head start. I want change in our country and in my own heart.
Oh my gosh!!! My heart is pounding. POUNDING with your reply. YES. YES. YES. It is way past time to stand up and say NO on my watch. Your reply….makes this post worth it. SO WORTH IT!!!!! THANK you. Would you like the reading list that I was given? It is stunning and has rocked my world.
I welcome the reading list! Please share.
Raw truth that reminds me to look closely, feel deeply, and grieve what my white privilege has stolen from my friends. I have great difficulty grasping the enormity of it. Thank you for calling my heart to remember…it is so typical of me to lazily “forget”. Love to you, Christine
Oh yes….so easy. So easy to forget. And not speak. Evil is brilliant and do we want it to win.!!!! NO… Thank you Christine. Thank you. I pray for your teaching and for your husband and family. YOU make a difference!!!!
“All transformation requires disruption.” That’s my life in a nutshell!
Thank you for shining light on this. May God open our eyes!
Just finished watching the PBS video. There is a cost that’s not financial. When I drive into my neighborhood with all those closed garage doors, rarely seeing anyone in their yard, the “suburb” has become a prison of isolation. It’s not that healthy of a place to live. Our elderly sit alone as their TV drones on in endless advertisements. Our children aren’t learning to be with us or each other as texting distracts them. And suicide rates soar. We don’t know each other. Our cars take us miles from each other to go to church. I know at least 6 divorced women with their own “home” and washing machine who eat alone day after day. From Story work, we know we crave connected and want to give ourselves away, but these suburbs have created an odd anti communal experience in general. It is “safe” here. But I wouldn’t necessarily say it is “happy” here.