Like many, I have felt rage, sorrow, grief, fear, despair, hopelessness, helplessness, and anxiety from uncertainty-and even questioned my work and impact in this world since May 25. I cried myself to sleep on May 26 and did not wake up the next day feeling any better. In fact, I struggled through the work day. I later learned that my experience was not unique as Black people all over the world found it hard to function in the days after George Floyd was callously killed on camera, his breath snuffed out over 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
As a Christian who is Black, I turn to Christ and my church family in good times and in bad. And yet over the years, it has become increasingly hard to turn to my church family. In fact, I have questioned, do I have a church family? Do I belong? Way too often the answer has been no. Way too often the reception has been one of denial or centering white comfort.
All around you, your Black colleagues, family, and friends have had to struggle through being professional as they show up to work every day and are not doing okay. We are not okay. The impact of systemic racism and the violence that we know has always been there is now captured on phones for all to see. And because of 24-hour news cycles, repeat viewing (often unintentional) we experience trauma, stress, and anxiety.
In the weeks since George Floyd’s murder, the country has been engulfed in a racial awakening. I have watched the larger faith community continue to struggle to find its voice. On one hand, it was affirming to see many churches take firm, bold, and unapologetic stands decrying systemic racism, decrying police brutality, and some even owning the failure of the White Evangelical church to proactively address White supremacy in the church. As in prior incidents of racial terror and dehumanization however, it was also painful to also see many churches remain silent, or offer weak statements that included equivocation.
My story is not universal, but I also know my pain and disappointment at the failure of the church to step up and stand up for Black lives, racial justice, and racial reconciliation has felt like an abandonment. The posture of not strongly addressing racism as part and parcel of the call for us to love our neighbors as Christ loves us has communicated that we, as people, are loveable only in as much as our pain, our experiences, and the injustice we experience can be hidden from view and discussion. In this, we continue to fail. You cannot love a person you won’t see and grow to know. As people, we are not visible if we must conform. Belonging requires authenticity and that we bring our whole selves. This is true in our families, our churches, and in our workplaces. This is why every time we show up on Sunday after yet another racial tragedy and there is silence from the pulpit, we hurt.
Some Christians hide behind a theology that says we need only love each other and racism will disappear. To those, I say, “God asks us to do the work”. We are here, as His representatives, to do the work. God shows up in those around us, through us. We must remember that the same God who told us the Holy Spirit will always be with us to guide us also told us, through apostle Paul, that we must continue to renew our mind. And guess what? We are not showing up when we choose not to confront interpersonal and systemic racism.
In the last several weeks, I have read think pieces claiming the current movement for Black lives and justice is worldly and not from God. I have read pieces decrying all sorts of things -- from Critical Race Theory to the organization Black Lives Matter. From these same people, I have NOT seen their alternative approach or their engagement in the fight for justice. I see criticism with no accompanying action. I hear excuses and deflection and no love.
Racism, like shame, hides behind silence and grows in the dark. Our unwillingness to speak of it, to deconstruct it, and to stand in the discomfort of what our deconstruction unearths allows it to continue to permeate our institutions, beliefs, and churches. Believe me when I tell you that White Supremacy is still in the church.
Despite the failure of your country and our church to adequately stand up for Black lives, Black people continue to epitomize resilience. From slavery until today, we see a people who deal with racial trauma and continue to keep trying. Our country demands of Black people a constant reassurance of forgiveness. In fact, in our churches, the stories we love to tell to highlight reconciliation seem to be the ones where Black people instantly forgive racial aggression. There is nothing wrong with forgiveness. However, it is the unwritten expectation of forgiveness from this one group of people, more than any other, that is problematic.
Black resilience shows up in the fact that many a Black Christian has made space to listen to their White Brethren and Sistren tell them how shocked they are at how bad things continue to be. We have held space for our White brothers to wax poetic about Critical Race Theory and its flaws, while saying nothing about Black blood spilled in the street. We’ve sat to explain why a sensitivity to the words White Supremacy should not negate a commitment to fight for equality, if you are a true ally. And yet Black Christians continue to do this -- make space, get back up again, even while dealing with their own racial trauma. The trauma from racism, the repeated acts of racism we face daily, from micro-inequities to explicit violent bias, impact us physically, mentally, and psychologically. And yet, we get up, we go to work, and we go to church and worship, often with fellow Christians who may not even acknowledge what is happening around them when it comes to race.
Two weeks ago I was on a town hall video webinar for a bar association with a global footprint. We were discussing racism, allyship, and policing. We were “Zoom-bombed” by people who used violent language towards us. We were called Nigger Apes and more. My family was threatened. It was awful and those on the video webinar were visibly shaken and upset. The speakers, all Black professionals, stayed calm and finished the program. I went back to work. Work for me is making space for difficult conversations, focusing on policy changes to create equity, strategic planning, counseling, mentoring, coaching, interrupting systemic problems that lead to inequity, teaching, designing educational curriculum, wiping tears, and the list goes on. You can bet that with the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial pandemic work has meant longer hours, more stress, more demands, and more needs for strong leadership. And like millions of Black people, I go back to doing myself after being threatened and verbally abused with words that, for hundreds of years, have been used to instill fear and humiliation.
The work that remains to be done is not about hearing more stories of black pain and trauma. The work that remains to be done is for the church to hurt the way God’s heart hurts around racial injustice and inequity. The work that remains to be done is for us to move from thoughts and prayers to action. I have said this before and strongly believe that the church is Plan A. Let’s be Plan A.
