Racism, Discrimination, Diversity & America (Part 2) - Growing Up in a White Neighborhood

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

-       The Pledge of Allegiance, 1954

I don’t know about you, but every morning from grade school through high school we recited the Pledge of Allegiance (with our hand over our heart) before starting our school day. Anyone else? I have no problem reciting the pledge of allegiance, so I am not here to dissect it as much as to point out the last three words… “justice for all.”

Our current racially-charged climate has all of us reflecting upon those words. We’re asking questions such as “what is justice?” “What is injustice?” “How do you regulate an injustice?” “Who can rightly judge what is right and wrong?”

Just read the comments on any social media site and you can see the plethora of opinions out there. It is interesting how the word justice has produced so much emotion within us and out of us…and sometimes, even emotions we didn’t know that we had. Justice seems to be on all of our hearts and minds. It makes me think… who is just? Who is judge? Can anyone judge a situation without bias? Who is telling the truth? What is truth? What is fair? And the list could go on and on.

This is my second post about race, discrimination, and diversity in America. In my first post, I focused on my personal experiences as an African American in America and honed in on one of the things I see severely lacking in our world today, which is advocating for African Americans and people of color.

In this post, I will write about the significance of dialogue, processing, and understanding as it relates to our race conversations. I strongly believe that the issue of race and discrimination would look different if there was a priority placed on literally sitting down with, looking someone in the eye type conversations. Not only would that tame the conversation to a degree, but it would offer a tangible opportunity to experience another person and perhaps foster the chance to evaluate the similarities between people. I am going to focus on cultural understanding, justice, and grace because we need all three of them in order to move forward together. 

The Beginnings of My Education on Race & Cultures

Grand Island, New York

I grew up in a place called Grand Island, New York which is located 12 miles outside of Buffalo, New York and 6 miles from Niagara Falls, New York. Yes, it is a real island and it’s surrounded by the Niagara River which flows into Niagara Falls. To quench your curiosity, no, I’ve never been over Niagara Falls in a barrel and yes, the Buffalo Bills really did go to four straight Super Bowls and lose all four (from 1991-1994). I’m not bitter about the Bills Super Bowl losses…I’m just still recovering from them.

Grand Island’s (GI or the island) population is about 21,000 people, and as you dig further into its demographics you will learn that GI is majority white (95.8 %), conservative, and safe (safer than 83% of US cities...who knew?).

Grand Island is not for everyone, but I enjoyed growing up there and can get nostalgic about my childhood when something reminds me of my experiences or the friendships I created.

If you have read my last post, you will know that I am an African American male, so growing up on the island I was one of the few minorities. I can literally picture all of the other minority students I went to school with and even if we weren’t the best of friends or talked much…a bond existed between us because we were different. 

For me, these differences were not barriers to relationships and my friends’ differences made me curious more than anything, so I did one of the things I do best…asked questions. Because of the time we spent together, my friends and I developed a strong kinship and it was safe for us to have conversations about anything. Looking back on it, those moments taught me more about people and cultures than any book I read. 

In my curiosity, I learned more about other cultures and cultural celebrations of my friends, such as Dyngus Day – a Polish American holiday (a celebration of the end of Lent, plus who doesn’t like to see polka dancing?), the Italian Heritage Festival (amazing authentic Italian cuisine), all of the Jewish holidays/festivals (like Yom Kippur) and how passionate people get about St. Patrick’s Day (an unofficial Buffalo/WNY holiday) just to name a few.

I also learned that not many of my friends knew about the Juneteenth Festival (a celebration of the ending of slavery), so I got to talk about that. For me, it was an enriching experience getting to learn about other cultures through their food, honest conversation, and familial history. Once I got to know a friend’s history, I had a better understanding of where they could have formed their opinions, preferences, and the lens by which they view the world.

An Uncomfortable Past

            While I loved my childhood growing up on Grand Island, I am fully aware that not all people view the island the same. In fact, I was all excited about talking about my hometown and how I began to learn about different cultures represented on the island that I forgot about its history with the Seneca Native American tribe.

For those who don’t know, you can find out that part of the island’s history here.

In case you didn’t read the article, the Seneca tribe claim that Grand Island was taken from them unfairly and have fought the State of New York in court over this issue. You could say that the Seneca tribe’s experience on Grand Island was not like mine. The interesting part for me, was that I was tempted to not tell or share this part of its history. Some of the thoughts that ran through my head were:

 

“I shouldn’t tell them”        “my friends are going to be pissed”

“let those who don’t know find out about it on their own”  

“let’s stay positive here”  “I had nothing to do with it, so no need to share”

 

            As you can read, my thoughts were catered towards covering up the uncomfortable parts of the history instead of sharing them, but I wouldn’t do the Seneca tribe justice if I didn’t mention their fight and plight for Grand Island.

            Interestingly enough, this is how many African American people feel about our history…there’s a lot of covering up. If you want to read about some of the untold stories in African American history, read this. If you read Erica B’s tweets, you will read one gut-wrenching, race inspired violence against African American people after another. I never heard many of these historical events myself and it is a lot to take in.

African Americans have an entire month dedicated to its history, BUT be honest…how many of you actually teach anything about black history during the month of February? How many of you actually read any black history during any month outside of February? I would argue that most people do not and because of that, do not understand the history and mentality of being Black in America.

            Black history in America is rich, courageous, resilient, and can be disheartening. This may make you feel uncomfortable and we may want to cover up or disregard these parts of history, but we can’t. It is a part of our American history whether we like it or not. We build with each other when we learn from our past…both the good and the bad.

We All Need Grace

In the Bible, there is a book written by one of Israel’s prophet’s named Micah. The book of Micah is about God judging His people for their refusal to embrace His purposes by their actions (or inactions) on the way He commanded His people to live. If you were to read the book of Micah, you’d read about a lot of judgment God had for His people for things such as abuse of power for those in leadership, forsaking following God’s laws, and worshipping things other than God.  One of my favorite verses in scripture is from the book of Micah because it gives clear direction for God's people.

 

Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, o man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (ESV).

 

God asks His people to do justice (do what is right, to serve, & protect), love kindness (to show love to our fellow man), and to walk humbly with Him (check your heart, is it right with God?), but if we’re honest… there’s just one problem. We fall short of this all of the time. I fall short of this all the time.

In Romans 3:23 of the Bible, Paul (the Jesus hater turned Jesus follower whom I wrote about in the previous post) says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (ESV). Paul realized as much as anyone, that we all are in need in grace. In fact, Paul says later in the book of Romans, “for I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” (ESV). 

Paul knew it was easier said than done to do what was right. None of us can claim perfection. This leads ultimately to the act of forgiveness. Which is why when we wrong someone, we should seek forgiveness and we should seek to make what is wrong, right. We don’t always do this; nevertheless, I don’t see how we can converse about righting social injustices without admitting how we play a role in the problem. 

I read a story online about a minority mother who brought her daughter to the park to play. While at the park, like most children, the daughter found some kids her age to play with, but was denied play time by the kids because her hair wasn’t blonde. This may seem insignificant, but interactions like this are important for us to teach kids the value of being made in God's image. The minority mother talked to the girls about being inclusive and had a conversation with her daughter about the value of her skin and hair color. This mother wanted her daughter to know that she had value and to not look at herself in a negative light because she had different hair or skin color than the other kids.

I have heard countless stories from black kids or other children of color who have been excluded from parties, teams, and gatherings because of their hair or skin color. We may think that these are one off instances, but those experiences stick with people, sometimes even into adulthood.

When I think about those situations, I know I didn’t do what is right all the time, nor do I always live justly, or always love kindly, or am always humble. This is why we all need grace, especially when it comes to race related interactions and conversations.

In my conversations about race, I know I need to be filled with grace as I may hear something that pushes up against my worldview or internal bias. Without realizing that I may offend (unintentionally or not), I need to be able to hear their perspective, seek to understand it, and constructively talk about it.

 

Growing In Our Understanding about Race, Discrimination, and Diversity

We’re all taught prejudices and discrimination by our culture and our experiences which shape and develop your worldview and bias. I believe our conversations about race are so volatile because they hit the core of what we believe about humanity and touch on our insecurities. When someone speaks of an injustice, we filter that injustice through our worldview or internal bias and it can be hard to hear what that person is saying or understand the injustice they speak of.

Here are some action steps for conversation as we talk about race, discrimination, & diversity:

 

Seek to understand – you’re trying to see and hear the passion/purpose behind their viewpoint on an issue. It’s wise to ask for clarification or further explanation of their viewpoint rather than make an assumption. We must realize that we have our own filter or lens by which we see the world and that may mean we need to ask more questions to understand their lens correctly.

 

Respect their perspective - the goal is not to win the conversation or argument or win people to your perspective. I think our country is visceral about this and it causes more division. You don’t have to agree with someone, but you can’t ever move forward if mutual honest conversation never takes place.

 

Have conversations in person – I love having conversations over text or email, but race conversations can easily be taken out of context through technology. Yes, COVID-19 complicates this, but the more we can sit with a person of another race and talk, the more constructive conversations we can have about hard topics. I love having conversations that help me understand someone better and I especially love having those in person because I can hear and observe their verbal and non-verbal attributes of communication.

 

Build a bridge – find similarities. If you are talking about an injustice with someone, listen for any similarities in your conversation. See how you can help make that injustice corrected. If you’re learning about their culture, find out similarities. For example, a fun one, but growing up I thought only black families put leftovers in their used gray Betty Crocker butter containers. It was always a fun game guessing where the butter was. Who knew other people did the same!

 

Do the deep work (reflection) to grow - take time to reflect upon what you heard, process it, and change your behavior or mentality (if necessary) to build up rather than tear down. This is where the rubber meets the road.

 

I think a lot of people do many of these things fairly well, but don’t do the deep work of allowing the conversation they had to permeate their heart or actions. I understand that this is the hardest to do because of our own internal bias, upbringing, and experiences may have taught us something different. That makes building a bridge with another culture a heart issue. We will either harden our hearts or open them for change (this affects all cultures).

If we really want to fight racial injustice, we have to do the internal work to make an external impact. That’s a lot easier said than done, but absolutely necessary.

I thank God for humbling me so I can listen and build bridges between cultures. I know that I am not perfect and that I myself need to continue to learn and understand as I seek to build more bridges amongst all people. I pray that I will continue to do that and you will as well.

Dr. John M. Perkins, a civil rights activist, and a pastor says this, “there is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view- you have to enter into the pain of the people. You’ve got to feel their need.” When we open our hearts to hearing others perspective…we can build bridges, friendships, and right some wrongs.

May we all be a people who live this and do the deep work necessary to create real, lasting change instead being afraid to do something different because it is counter cultural. Who do you need to start having real, messy, growth inducing conversations with?