What does white privilege look like? (3 stories from my life)

"I'll take it without a bag." I said as I bought a snack at the corner grocery store.  The picture of the island of plastics in the Pacific Ocean has been getting to me, so I have been trying to cut down on unnecessary plastic.  I grabbed my Arizona Green Tea and headed out the door.  How easily I had saved the world the burden of disposing of a piece of plastic, a process that could take hundreds of years I am told.  Why doesn't everyone do this?  Then I looked around, and thought for a second.  What would happen if the young men of color in my job development program would choose this option?  Immediately it clicked.  There is no way in a million years they would want to walk out of a convenience store with anything not in a shopping bag. The optics of that could be dangerous.  If police would happen to be there, there is a good possibility they would be questioned or worse.  Its just not something you do if you are a young man of color.

It got me thinking about the relationship betwen white privilege and moral superiority.  I felt like I was doing the right thing, and for a second this satisfaction was making me feel a step above, but . . . white privilege was making it all possible.

It happened again the other day.  There was an incident at one of our internship sites.  Two customers got into an argument that escalated into an altercation.  Our participant, a young man of color, tried to break up the fight and got physically involved. As I was hearing about it, I thought immediately, "Noooooooooo."   I knew where the story was headed.  The security guards at the site responded and our young person was implicated along with the two who were fighting.  He was trying to do a good thing but lost his job because of it.

How would that have been different for me?  If I was in that situation, hopefully I would have done the exact same thing.  As with him, safety would have been my concern; losing my job would not have been.  Why is it that our young men of color have to be taught not to help break up a fight?  I, on the other hand, would have been considered a hero.

Allow me one more story, I like to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon each year.  People like the notion of a middle-aged guy staying healthy, raising money for the poor urban community of Cypress Hills. Then yesterday, I worked all day in the backyard doing normal stuff, setting a few stones for a patio, painting a chair, trimming the rose bushes, basic manual labor. At the end of the day, I was beat.  I was not interested in doing a training run for a half marathon.  Then I thought of the two men who pick up my trash each Tuesday and Friday, and the thousands of sanitation workers in this city, many who are middle aged men of color.  Every single day, they put in a day of physical work like I did yesterday, more physically rigorous actually.  They are not going to be using their evenings to train and run a half marathon for charity.  Yet I am the one lauded for fitness and overall good will.  They are no doubt much more fit and doing a more needed service.  What value is there really in running 13.1 miles when a train would easily get you there?

Why do I share these stories?  Who knows? but I wonder if one of the ways white privilege persists and remains invisible to us White folk is that it doesn't present itself like we think.  When I hear the word white privilege, my initial picture is a smiling Southern belle sipping sweet tea.  In reality, it is much more subtle, and often comes with a self-rewarding hint of moral superiority. I wonder what the rest of you think.     

What if grace applied to corporate sin?

Have you ever been engaged in a discussion on racism that degenerated?  What starts as a vulnerable and productive process ends in hurt feelings and more rigidity. What starts as bridge-building ends with a widening chasm. 

I have been there.  

"Why are you trying to create division? Its time to move on" people tell me. My heart weakens.  Division is the last think I am trying to create!  

This is usually followed by some snarky comment from me about "White fragility," and a deep freeze settles in. Like Elsa in the movie "Frozen" something inside of us says, "Let it go, let it go, the cold never bothered me anyway," and we build our ice castles.

So the question I ask myself is, "What better option could there be?"  Might the Gospel actually provide a different path.  Is there something about the Gospel that empowers me to engage in ever deeper ways. Is there a theological framework to think about race that energizes me as a White Christian for the difficult conversations and gives me hope for better living in this racially charged world? 

I think there is.

Here are some pieces of a theological framework I am finding helpful. 

1. Sin can be corporate or systemic in addition to the individual acts we normally think of. As a White person, it is easy to get stuck on this point.  "I don't hate Black people. I don't cause mass incarceration or discrimination in hiring today? How can you somehow implicate me in racism?"  This represents a very Western view of sin.  We forget that the Bible is full of examples of systemic sin. All through the O.T. the prophets railed against the sin of this group of people or that nation. Jesus did it too. He calls out a couple of Galilean towns for their sin (Matthew 11:21) and weeps over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37).  

2. Sin is also generational. Have you heard this exasperated declaration from White folk? "Slavery was a long time ago. Jim Crow was over before I was born. Why are we still talking about racism?"  We forget that there is an element of sin that is generational.  We are less than three generations from a campaign of terror in this country. On average there was one lynching a week for 80 years. The psychological trauma of this sort of intimidation is hard to comprehend. God said that he visits sin up to three or four generations (Exodus 34:7). And have you heard of the story of the Amlakites(I Samuel 30:1-2)?  Its a hard story for me to read, but the implication is clear.  This is a group of people that sinned once and were judged some 400 years later. This is evident in the New Testament as well.  Romans 5 goes to some length to talk about how Adam's sin was passed down to us. Could it be that specifc sins are passed down as well?  I find quite a bit of evidence for generational sin by looking at genetic studies. "Family studies that include identical twins, fraternal twins, adoptees, and siblings suggest that as much as half of a person’s risk of becoming addicted to nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs depends on his or her genetic makeup"    (https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/genetics-epigenetics-addictionis).  Feel free to do the research on your own, but my recollection from my Social Work education is that a great many social vices follow generational patterns, so why not racism?  You may have heard of the nature vs. nurture debate about whether behaviors are taught from one generation to the next or whether they are influenced by genetics. My hunch is that there is a little of both. In either case, sin follows groups of people for generations. Why would racism and its effects be any different?  

We may like the famous line, "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul," but the Bible seems to say that we are born into streams of generational sin. Its a paradox, but past sin is present. This is probably a topic for a longer discussion, but I suggest to you that at the very least my fathers' sins are my unique temptations.  Sins against my fathers, are my unique vulnerabilities. 

3.  Self-justification is a dead-end street. Universal sin is stated in the most graphic of terms in the Bible.

"As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
     there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.

All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
    not even one.”[b]
 “Their throats are open graves;
    their tongues practice deceit.”[c]
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”[d]
     “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”[e]
 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
     ruin and misery mark their ways,
 and the way of peace they do not know.”[f] Romans 3:10-17).

And John says it straight up, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." (I John 1:8).  

Practically speaking, if you try to say that you are a good person because of the virtue of your race, we have a bit of trouble, mostly because every race has a lot of flaws and historical evil. . 

4. It may be that these first three points are a bit depressing -- sin is systemic, sin is generational, self-justification is a dead end street -- but here's the good news. .  

First, a bit of background. One of the problems with discussing generational or systemic sin is because we feel some responsibility, but don't know how to deal with it.  We know how to address our individual sin, but how do you find redemption for sins that I didn't commit? We, therefore, avoid conversations about race because we think it is a dead end street to perennial guilt filled with grief and shame.  It feels counter-productive.  Naturally, we then build all kinds of defenses or rationales to silence the issue and make it go away.

But acknowledgement of sin, doesn't have to be a dead end street. It can lead to redemption and freedom instead.  

While grief over sin for the Christian may be perennial, guilt and shame are not.  The Gospel releases us from these things and gives us the power to grieve and really listen to our brothers.  This is not a dead-end road.  I have found it to be highly productive and energizing. Sugar-coating the truth, ignoring facts, having to convince everyone of your position is the dead-end road. Repenting of the sin of our culture and generations leads to freedom.

This freedom from guilt and shame is available to us simply as a gift called grace.  This grace is not only for our individual stuff, but also for the systemic and generational stuff as well.  

Genesis 19 tells the famous story of God's corporate judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, but did you ever stop to think about God's bargain with Abraham?  God is willing to spare the entire city if as many as 10 righteous folks are found. Beautifully, the individual repentance of a few results in a sort of corporate redemption.  A similar example occurs when Israel was facing judgment.  God was threatening to judge them because they had deliberately and emphatically walked away from his care by worshiping their own golden calf.   Because of Moses' prayer and willingness to face the consequences of the corporate sin of Israel, the systemic judgment doesn't fall (Exodus 32:32).  Similarly, Daniel prays for his sin and the sin of "his people." (Daniel 9:1-19).  This approach seems instinctual for Isaiah when he cries out, 

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King,the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:5)

The pattern is incredibly beautiful. People of God identified with the sin of their people and through their act of solidarity, humility, and repentance, God's judgment was spared. These heros identified the sins of their tribe as their own and repented of it and found grace.

This is, of course, precisely what Jesus did when he became one of us, identified with all our stuff and embraced the consequences for our hate. "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (I Corinthians 15:22). 

As I identify with the sins of my own White race, redemption comes, and oh how sweet it is!  

I struggle with words to describe how amazing this has been in my life. Tears come as I write.  When we repent as a member of our race, good things happen. I dare you to pray this, "I am a racist, and I am part of a country that has always been deeply racist. Lord, have mercy on us sinners."   I don't completely understand it theologically, but I have found freedom in that sort of prayer and energy for the struggle. It is hard work to have to defend your people and your race. Freedom comes when you fully accept all of your systemic and generational identity and let it all go at the same time. Try it, perhaps an angel will come and put a searing hot coal on your lips, but you will never be the same.  The American or Canadian or ethnic Mennonite in me is transformed in that moment, and I am raised up as part of the kaleidoscope of God's redeemed kingdom -- a beautiful multi-color kingdom that retains its diversity into eternity (Revelation 7:9).

There is no more need to justify any of my sins -- individual, systemic or generational. You can say many things about me or my race that grieve me; indeed I have already grieved many times over my sin and the sin of my people and will continue, but it is not a depressing pointless grief. Its a sweet, empowering grief, because the greater my sin, the greater God's grace, and the greater his grace, the more power I have for action. 

So is it easy to talk about racism as a White person?  Of course not, it is hard for me to think about belonging to a race that has caused much pain for about 400 years. It is harder still to discover ways that I struggle to love my neighbor today, but God has grace for it all!  Here's a verse I like.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

In this experience of repentance, grief, and grace, I die and am raised again with new power to be a strong aly as a White person in the struggle against evil in all its forms. I highly recommend this grace.