I didn’t experience race tensions growing up—with good reason, as the rural community I grew up in was almost exclusively white. During my childhood, I remember getting to know only one black woman and her daughter who visited our community from the city for a while. And one fiery black preacher—Ludlow Walker, for those who remember him—who packed out the walls of our little country church.
I brushed racism here and there—often without realizing it. A childhood nursery rhyme in an old reader: “Catch a n***** by the toe.” An author I loved—Gene Stratton Porter of the 1930s—who talked in a derogatory way about the Japanese. I didn’t think of either that little black man running across the page or those dangerous, deceptive Orientals as real people. They were just stories from a different era, a different world than my own.
Soon after 9/11, I remember going on a train ride after hot summer sun had tanned my dad nut brown. He got that way every summer from working his fields, and I loved it about him—he looked so handsome with his black hair and dark skin. But this particular trip, the security officer gave him a hard time, checked him twice over. “They thought I was Arab,” my dad said later.
In my adult years, I’ve brushed racism occasionally: in the comments people make, the jokes they tell—but almost always, it’s been a product of ignorance or thoughtlessness. Not malice. Not that that makes it okay, but there is a difference between that and intent to harm, which I have also glimpsed.
There is a difference also when you are with the people on the receiving end of racism, like when I sat in a van with Native Canadian friends and heard how a police officer had given Robert a hard time for no apparent reason. “I guess he was racist,” they said gently, offhandedly, in the tone of people who have experienced this before and don’t find it surprising. That felt very different—more unjust—than reading about racial profiling in the news. In the news, one can always think of Reasons that make Sense, that don’t have anything to do with the color of someone’s skin or the shape of their eyes.
I was walking the streets of Pittsburgh with Malaysian American friends a few years ago, trailing behind with the woman of the family while her husband and two sons walked ahead. We passed a few white people on the sidewalk, and the youngest son came hurrying back to walk with his mom. “I don’t like that man,” he said.
“Why not?”
“He pointed at Dad and said ‘F*** you.’”
The utter injustice of that incident angered me in a way I have seldom experienced. We were minding our own business, enjoying the day, hurting no one. The only possible explanation for a complete stranger’s ire was the color of my friends’ skin. And that is an unfairness that can’t be expressed. It’s not reasonable. It’s not just.
I don’t feel I have anything profound to say on the subject of racism, but I want to give people who do have something to say a chance to be heard. For that reason, I am sharing links to two bloggers who’ve been writing on the subject recently: Keeshon Washington and Asher Witmer.
“My Voice in All the Chaos: How Concerned Mennonites Can Help” by Keeshon Washington.
“We’re Still Missing the Point of ‘I Can’t Breathe'” by Asher Witmer.
I’m also sharing a link to what is (in my opinion) the greatest speech ever given by an American: Martin Luther King Jr. This web page offers both a written and audio version of his speech, but I find the resonance of King’s voice in the audio version brings the words to life in a way the written one cannot. Some of his words amaze me with how well they fit current events. Listen, if you haven’t for awhile.
“I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr.
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Feature photo by Victoria Uzoni.
Timely post with an experience much like my own, growing up among white Mennonites in rural Pennsylvania. However, I have had a rich heritage of inclusion as I highlight in a long ago post of my Aunt Ruthie and her care for immigrants and refugees of all colors of the skin rainbow: https://marianbeaman.com/2017/12/13/grandma-bedroom-holy-family-refugees/
Timely post! Thanks for sharing your personal experience. My brother is very dark. Looks almost biracial. He has experienced some of the same things you write about. It angers me when my brother talks about what people say to… but let’s remember there is One who loves us all the same. Color is just skin deep.
Thanks for this Luci. You found a way to say this. My raising in that same rural community produced in me wonderful innocence and unhelpful ignorance, too.
My parents bought the farm where I lived my entire childhood from an older, retired black couple. And we visited Mrs. Madre regularly in the rest home until she went to be with Jesus. I didn’t have a clue that we should veiw her as different from any of the rest of us.
Is Ludlow Walker still living? I believe he held revivals at our church in 2004. Your mention of him made me wonder.
I am not sure. I wondered the same thing.
As a child in a white city that was quickly becoming more racially mixed, I witnessed racism. It was when I married a man from another race, though, that I really became aware of how widespread the issue was, how many people it affected and how much ongoing pain it caused.
This past Sunday, in an unusual sermon, Andy Stanley addressed the issue of racism. He is clear, compelling and brief. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Osxas0kMDk
Holly, thank you for sharing this. I appreciated what Andy Stanley has to say very much.
Last Saturday, a young man from our youth ministry in the city spent the afternoon at our place. He’s a calm, gentle, quiet, thoughtful young man with beautiful nut-brown skin and a mop of curly black hair. As I contemplated with horror that what if something like the recent happenings should happen to him, I felt incensed, livid. I pray and I talk about Jesus, and I hope that someday soon our churches are filled with many shades of brown… (One of my small things that allows me to breathe, is that I always mark the blank “Race” on documents with “Human” and qualify that there is only one race, and I belong to it. God has made of one blood all nations, and I love thinking about how someone can give/receive the same few types of blood no matter what shade their skin is. (How much or how little melanin our genes tell us to produce…)
I love that you mark “human.” I always resent just a little having to answer that question…as though that somehow decides my identity… so maybe I will also write “human” in the future.