People keep asking why I don’t just schedule private interviews with clergy serving in cross-racial appointments and then compile the findings for pasteurized publication, instead of hosting a Blog that people are afraid to use for open and sensitive comments. This drumbeat of caution and caveat prompted my own revelation: Thomas Jefferson would still be one of my American history idols had I not learned about his black mistress, Sally Hemings, when I was in my 40’s. One of Jefferson’s black great-great-great-grandchildren lived in Downingtown when I lived in West Chester. The Thomas Jefferson I learned about as a college undergrad was scrubbed, combed and propped up on a throne in every book about him that I read. I’ve learned a lot about this popular President since then that was disappointing, to say the least. When people started speaking up and out against normative historical accounts, and I was no longer limited to the published research of a handful of historians, most, but not all, of what I admired about President Jefferson changed. The moral of the Blog is that we all deserve to hear and live the truth. And much of the truth cannot be found in the library.
About Me
- Cross-Racial Clergy
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Joyce M. Anderson is a Provisional Elder in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church. She draws on her MBA and MDiv education and nonprofit and for-profit corporate work experiences to encourage an “Art of War” approach to spiritual warfare.
"People keep asking why I don’t just schedule private interviews with clergy serving in cross-racial appointments and then compile the findings for pasteurized publication..."
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea! I really think the theme of this blog is onto something and a book or interviews would only add to it. I didn't follow the TJ reference though and how it related to the question. I learned about TJ in my college classes and in the books assigned to me. That truth can be found in the library, it's making sure you know how to look for it and even if the library isn't self-censoring. I recall Rage Against The Machine's lyrics of "They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove them."
You're on to something here! Get more peeps involved!
I'm asking people to speak about race issues - and in this case the church environment - in the 21st century public square - the Blog/ Internet - instead of waiting for it to be corroborated and published in textbooks. I'm saying that the raw stuff about why worship in mainline denominations is still so segregated gets said here. We get to say what we are really experiencing without someone's approval.
ReplyDeleteIf you went to grammar school in the 50's and 60's in a predominantly black environment, and college in the early 70's in a predominantly white environment, you would know, as I do, that no one was, shall we say,throwing Thomas Jefferson under the bus as a womanizing slaveowner who fathered black progeny, and if there was discussion, my American history professors weren't leading it.
And as far as "truth being found in the library" it all depends on the library's location. I did not learn one minute of textbook black history until I was a junior in high school, and it was all of 3 weeks. And back then no one dared criticize any of our "great" presidents in any way, especially GW, TJ and Honest Abe.
So I'm saying that in an effort to save our mainline denominations from continued decline, maybe instead of cautiously edited textbooks, we need more open and honest dialogue about our racial issues, which we have in spades (pun intended.
I'm saying that had black folks of my time been conditioned to speak up openly and honestly about the okey doke we were being fed called "his"story, I would have been given the opportunity to perhaps build some sympathy for President Jefferson as a human being overtime, instead of being creeped out by learning of his hypocrisy later in my life. I'm saying we ain't gotta live like that no mo'.
By the way, Luke, when my daughter was in middle school in Chester County Pennsylvania in the mid-1990's she came home with a history textbook that insisted that it was "ridiculous" to believe that slaveowners whipped and abused their slaves, because after all, slaves were valuable assets, profitable chattel.
ReplyDeleteThe textbook opined that Hollywood, in its insatiable hunger for the sensational, was responsible for the misrepresentation of how slave operations were conducted in America. It was hard for us as parents to decide not to intervene, but with that, we really pushed our daughter to think for herself and to always wade through the bunk, with or without our help.
"I'm saying we ain't gotta live like that no mo'."
ReplyDelete-and I'm fully on board. Maybe it's the time I was raised in, my teachers, and my mom who sought to teach me otherwise and why I love conversations and topics like what you're offering on this blog.
However, not everyone is so willing. You admit that as well in the post from THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011. So how to get more peeps in on the conversation? Maybe private interviews, some one-on-one might help get more peeps in on the conversation?
I'm in every possible clergy and theological support, prayer and chit-chat group imaginable within a 20-mile radius, so I've got lots of "one-on-one" stories and anecdotes, even without really pushing or prompting for them. For many groups in which I am 1 of 1, or 1 of 2 black folks, I have agreed to some level of confidentiality, so at best, I have to mix and match stuff so that the suspects and victims remain completely anonymous. I have aggressively pressed everyone of different ages and nationalities in those groups to write on this blog, even as a favor to me. Why should I have to do that in a free country with 24-hour access to a media kaleidoscope?
ReplyDeleteIf a grown white professional business owner is still referring to a admirably retired elderly black man as "boy" in Northeast America in the 21st century, how much substance is really derived from me, as a black 3rd party, recounting the story?
Just this week someone told me about a denominational summit-type dialogue and initiative that got shut down when race became the central focus. Race = Game over! because white folks in America get frustrated at hearing about their intrinsic racism, and black folks don't know how to explain or express their own experiences and frustrations without white folks ending up feeling defensive and/ or sending them into orbit. We need to practice shooting straight out in the open.
Awesome! Agreed, we need to shoot straight and in the open. I cringe at the story of the white business guy saying "boy" to the elderly black man... ugh. Part of this is to remove my blinders and to step up and state that this can no longer happen. As well as to figure out a way for me and my congregation to figure out a solution rather than continue the problem.
ReplyDeleteIt helps to realize that our ultimate goal is not to be “color-blind”, but to hear one another. Like just a few years ago (2009), when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it as a pastor, so I went on a job interview with a large corporation in center-city Philly. I was more than qualified and appropriately dressed, but when the white interviewer came into the lobby to meet me, she was – in my assessment – so surprised and disappointed at what she saw, that she not only immediately dropped her jaw, but her smile and her personality. She pretended not to see the hand I stuck out to shake and greet hers, ignored my smiles and chit-chat, and we rode up 12 floors (!!) on an elevator alone and she said nothing to me and did not look at me. She walked 5 steps ahead of me to her office, and never turned around. When we got to her office she gave me a painfully scripted “interview” with not one second of eye contact, and I was literally fighting back tears when I decided to ask her about the child in a picture on her desk. I tried to show genuine interest in her baby’s Halloween costume, hoping this would transform me into a human being, and miraculously, it did. And this woman was major senior management in accounting!
ReplyDeleteOkay, so at least I avoided more humiliation. How this relates here is that when I wove this into my sermon a few Sundays later, several white people at my church attempted to explain it away by suggesting that perhaps the interviewer was “just having a bad day – had a bad morning with her husband - maybe she treated everyone that way - the kid smeared jelly on her suit in the morning rush, etc. etc. Besides, look how much things have changed! We’ve made great strides – haven’t we?” Really? These were their verbatim “excuses” for this woman’s behavior.
Okay. But give me some credit. As a black woman with the tell-all combination very dark skin, kinky hair, a big nose and big lips and no spoken accent to legitimize me as some non-African American ethnicity, I am old and seasoned enough to recognize that initial jolt that says, “I wasn’t expecting you to be African American!” I can smell it a mile.
When I tell that story within the body of Christ, it’s even more humiliating and degrading to have someone blow it off as someone else’s bad day. When I walk into corporate America with an MBA and decades of relevant experience, I expect the turnaround from the “shock” of my being black to be more civil (and graceful). More importantly, I expect the beloved of Christ to hear me and not to act like I just arrived in this country last week. I need someone to hear my stories and validate my pain, and walk with me, especially if I’m brave enough to preach about it. I don’t need the denigration of someone who has never walked in my shoes diluting my truth.
"t helps to realize that our ultimate goal is not to be “color-blind”, but to hear one another. "
ReplyDelete-Absolutely, one of my biggest pet-peeves is that statement "I'm color-blind" cause I pull the B.S. card every time.
When I state "remove my blinders" I am referring to privilege. A privilege that has taken me a while to recognize. Growing up below the poverty line in Appalachian, Ohio I didn't feel like I had much privilege. Everybody in the town knew who I was and my clothes and speech reflected it.
Now the clothes and speech no longer reflect lower class, but part of me still identifies with it. You can't see that, but I want to talk about it.
I want to talk about your struggle and story too. When I see a person of color, or an out-LGBTQ person, I want to run up and say "I see that you're black/hispanic/LGBTQ/Asian/etc, how cool is that?! Tell me your story!" I think that's my idealistic Millennial-generation side coming out. But that's usually my starting place. I see others who react the way your misguided interviewer and I want to witness against that.
Thanks for your story, and for the conversation!
Those of us who are or have been married know how much work even the best relationships can be. How much more difficult will they be with people whose origins, orientations and perspectives are so very different from our own, and more so people with whom we have no civil or sacred covenant?
ReplyDeleteThe revelations come with showing genuine interest in the other person's story because their personal story is worth hearing with the expectation of a mixture that spans the familiar (what you can relate to) and the unfamiliar (what you cannot fathom). For example, I am hardly interested in a stereotypical account of the cumulative experiences (or oddities) of PWT in Appalachia. But I would be fascinated to hear about your life there, and I would thoroughly expect it to intersect with my po' black folk tales just several hundred miles away and a few decades before. I suspect there may be an alcoholic parent, or a parent with musical or aptitudinal genius that the schools could not appreciate or accommodate, and "love" children, and seedy, adulterous pastors, and church financial improprieties that never made the news - you know the normal stuff of the human condition that has nothing at all to do with skin color. Just lost-ness, sloth, mediocrity and separation from God, which is what ultimately binds us and simultaneously separates us from each other.
Amen! and Amen.
ReplyDeleteIt's the personal stories that really get to me, that solidify the collective and corporate story of racial and class lines that often go unnoticed or unspoken about, but dictate so much to people.
We had a "Sacred Conversations on Race" educational series at our church about a year ago. It was lead by a wonderful professor of African-American Studies who was African-American herself. I asked her why I could relate to many of the stories she told and she said, "More than likely it's due to the fact that we were both poor. Got ourselves through college on our own dime. And have arrived in a similar place. Poverty maybe a great equalizer."
Her words have stuck with me.
I remember a conversation I had at LTS with a fellow black colleague. We both told stories of being followed around a small town grocery store. For him, it was due to his skin color, but for me it was due to which side of the tracks I lived on. We both had alcoholics and tales of father-figures behaving badly and ultimately abandoning the family.
It was those stories that united and solidified our relationship. Yet there were things that neither of us could get to, that cannot fathom part was always in play.
I love your line, "Just lost-ness, sloth, mediocrity and separation from God, which is what ultimately binds us and simultaneously separates us from each other." Oh the wondrous paradox of being. Our shared separation and past wounds bind us to others with similar wounds.
May we heal each other and the world.
Luke:
ReplyDeleteRE: the "cannot fathom part that is always in play":
The Psalm 42:7 phrase, “deep calls to deep” suggests that unfathomable element that we seem to hold in tension in our struggle with issues of race. There is a depth at which we, understandably, communicate and ultimately connect as human beings.
The Psalmist continues, “In the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.”
In the rushing waters and crashing waves of our everyday lives we seem to keep missing each other until we go deeper. We might, for example, meet each other on the ocean bottom of disdain and ostracism due to our shared poverty status and the dehumanizing experiences that come with it. But when we head back toward the surface we swim back into the waves and breakers of gender, skin color and race and other labels.
Maybe if we can just keep the two depths connected.