Okay. We shared a significant experience - more profound for some, perhaps even frustrating for others.
I thought it might be a good idea to kick off the conversation with a look at what we are all thinking and doing about anti-racism in this critical time following the event.
One aspect of this conversation is accountability. That both frightens and encourages me. Perhaps with greater accountability, Christ will do more through us, more quickly and decisively.
I'm still pondering the implications of what I learned about the three levels of racism's inisidious power. One thing strikes me as needful right now. Unless and until I expand my circle of close contacts with people of color, anti-racism can remain a never completed duty (at best) or just one of a thousand competing intentions.
The longer I procrastinate about all this, the longer people I say that I love will suffer. So this week, I am taking inventory of my friendships and close work and business related associations with people of color and I intend to create some kind of icon that will help me to keep the urgency in this process of deep conversion to a pro-reconciliational lifestyle.
How about you? (Respond by clicking "Comment" or by posting your own thoughts at the top of this blog.)
BR-H
3 comments:
Bill,
Thanks for setting this up. I am eager to hear back from others. I am sorry I had to leave early for General Board. Although this is not a new experience for me, having been on the team since 2002, I still feel deeply moved every time I go through the training events and re-learn what I had thought I really understood before. This time through, I was especially struck by comments from Ann Stewart during the meeting with team members after a meal time late Friday. She held out the hope that Crossroads has significantly changed the stage three training module to help prepare teams for next steps--including ways of having this issue truly confronted by groups of white people who do not have the gift of the presence of a critical mass of people of color in the event. I think this will be critical to our process here in Mid-America, especially in parts of the region that are geographically scattered and that have little concentrations of populations of people of color.
I look forward to hearing what struck others in the sessions.
Bill,
Thanks for helping me to set up my blog. Gee! it worked find this time. Candy is having problems getting started also. I know she would appreciate your touch as much as I did.
The AntiRacism/ProReconciliation (ARPR) training was helpful, I think. But I am not sure if I know what the title means. Maybe someone can parse it out so it will make sense to me. For me, a person of color, how can I be "antiracism?" and what race of people am I suppose to reconcile or be "pro" with? Once I can wrap my mind around the concept of "Anti... then I can began to process the training. Hopefully, at the followup session with NEA on Monday, some of this will come out.
Again, thanks Bill.
Winnie,
Good question. I'm probably not the most qualified to converse about this.
I wonder if Anti-Racism is more about the sin of "racism" and less about race relations (which was more of my military and formal education about diversity)? If racism is an abuse of power and restriction of access to resources based upon the artificial (and self-serving) concept of "race," than I suspect that any of us of any ethnicity could be anti-racist. For me, to be "anti-racist," is to so live and work and collaborate in opposition to any advancement of a racist nature and to help in de-legitimizing racism's place in the homeostasis of North American culture.
I appreciate the challenge to also be Pro-Reconciliation. To me this the challenge to be proactive in a collective effort to restore balance and fairness to systems that have become so unbalanced and unfair as to be impossible to self-correct or to evolve to a better place naturally.
I find it fascinating that this dovetails so well with Missional Church initiatives - a benchmark of which is fascillitation of cross-cultural mission and the calling together of hgihly functional and long-lived cross-cultural communities of faith.
communities of faith.
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