Me Racist? - Spiritual Disciplines for White Folks

“That’s racist.”  She said firmly.  I sat stunned.  I’d been eager to share my most recent reflections and ideas about ministry with a respected colleague.  This was the moment I feared most.  

I’d been attempting to come to grips with racism for over a year.  I’d read books to understand racism historically, relationally, and theologically.  There had been hard conversations, apprenticeship under leaders of color, and immersion in non-white contexts.  None of it had been easy.  Still, when this friend looked clearly into my thoughts and perspective and named them racist, I felt exposed and raw.  I wanted to quit, hide, fight, and cry all at once. 

For many people, particularly those of us who grew up in majority culture, the fear of being confronted as racist is paralyzing.  We’re eager to distance ourselves from overt white supremacy, like the KKK, and even covert white supremacy like gentrification and redlining.  We want to be seen as a ‘safe’ person, an ally, or even an anti-racist.  These are (mostly) good goals.  (I say mostly good, because the focus of these efforts can be self-protective rather than others-centered, turning our efforts in on ourselves when our energies are needed elsewhere.)

Here are some spiritual practices that can help us move from fear to faithfulness as majority culture (white) people.  

1.     Name the fear.  Underneath the fear of being called ‘racist’ are often other unspoken fears.  We fear being judged as incompetent, a challenge to our sense of self.  We fear being disconnected from others, especially if there is a lingering sense that we are unlovable lurking in our past.  We fear for our safety, whether our physical safety or the security of our place in the community.   We fear rejection.  

Naming the fear enables us to entrust ourselves to God and to others.  Christians who proclaim forgiveness of sin and reconciliation through the cross have nothing to fear when confronted with sin.  Fear and failure lose their fangs if we can name them in the presence of God.  

2.     Focus on getting better vs being good.  So much of our anti-racist engagement can be an attempt to be good.  We think if we say, vote, act, and relate in the right ways, with the right terms, and the right associations we can protect ourselves from critiques of racism.  Racism is much more subtle than that.  In fact, the effort to prove yourself a ‘good’ or ‘safe’ white person does little to challenge racism.  

Another word for getting better is discipleship.  Look at Jesus’ disciples.  They didn’t get it right.  But they didn’t allow their failures to stop their discipleship.  Focusing on getting better enables us to turn attention away from protecting ourselves and creates emotional space for active engagement.  

3.     Cultivate humility.  Classically defined, the Christian virtue of humility is the conviction that every person we encounter is created in the image of God, combined with the commitment to treat them as such.  Theological racism, a trend that has been going on for hundreds of years, is at its base, a sin of pride.  When we assume that European concepts of God, cultural forms of worship, and education are right, we’re not just guilty of cultural imperialism, but of pride.  The gospel has always moved cross-culturally and the missionary task is not complete until, as native theologian Ray Aldred says, “those who have received the gospel, rearticulate it to those from whom they received it in a way that calls the missionaries’ cultural assumptions to conversion.”  

If we are cultivating humility we can hear and see the critiques of our own ideas, perspectives, and practices that need change.  If we are cultivating humility, we will be quick to listen and slow to defend. 

4.     Do small things with great love.   Another way pride undermines our anti-racism is by pressing us towards grandiosity.  We want to change everything, immediately.  The more we see the ways racism has infected our systems, the more eager we can be to burn them all down.  This impulse isn’t necessarily wrong, but integrity requires us to move away from the grandiose to the hidden.  

What are the racist ideas, assumptions, practices, or attitudes in your heart, household, or neighborhood?  What simple change could you consistently make in these places?  Do those with all your heart, as unto the Lord.  Do them anonymously.  As you, ‘get better’ expand your horizons, but always conscious of the temptation of grandiosity. 

5.     Bring your whole self.  Becoming anti-racist requires us to bring our full cultural selves to the work.  There is no way to be engaged in the work of anti-racism without carrying our cultural stories, perspectives, experience, and values into relationships and activities.  This inevitably means exposing ourselves to critique, but it also means opening to relationships that can lead us beyond ourselves.

When Paul exhorts us to, “Let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus…” (Philippians 2:4-8) he is not inviting us to be divine, nor inviting us to renounce our cultural background, he’s inviting us not to cling to status and authority but become a servant.    

More than twenty years later, I’m grateful for this colleague and her willingness to confront my racist ideas.  These practices are not comprehensive.  They will not dismantle the racism on their own.  They will help us to do the spiritual and emotional work necessary to sustain long term engagement in the work of anti-racism.  Practicing these disciplines will help us engage when we want to quit, fight, hide, or cry.