My heart is a patchwork of people whose actions and attitudes have stitched together my own perception of the world. What I’ve become is a bridge. The American story is written in my DNA. I’m a child of the south, the deep south. Seven generations back into the hills and farmlands of South and North Carolina. My mama’s family tree decorated by confederate and revolutionary war soldiers. Proud, stubborn Scot’s blood made for quick tempers and deep grudges. Racism was reality. I grew up with its language.
But I’m also a child of the melting pot. The daughter of a military brat born in California to a Puerto Rican mother and father with a Jewish heritage. Those two worlds created the fabric of my life, and it wasn’t without conflict. The blend wasn’t easy, or natural. My mother felt pulled between her family and its past, and who she was becoming with my father.
As a child I sensed the tension between my South Carolina grandparents and my dad. It’s taken me a long time to understand it. For generations my grandparent’s family had married people like them and stayed put. The coves and hills of the Carolina’s were unchanging. Then my grandfather fought in a war that encompassed the whole world. When he came back they left their tiny town, but they didn’t go far. Later my mama went to Atlanta and married a young man outside the boundaries of the traditional south.
The Civil Rights movement was spoken of with great scorn in my grandparent’s household, and even occasionally by my mother. Mama fought to be reborn, with a new understanding of the world and people, but it was a struggle. She insisted her parents refrain from using racial slurs around us children. Old habits die hard and I could read between the lines. Neither of her parents ever stopped referring to northerners as damn Yankees. It was as if reconstruction was fresh in their minds. The feud was real. I remember as a teen asking my mom if her dad had been part of the Klan. She didn’t know.
I’m not sure if my grandparents ever made peace with the reality that my mother married someone so different from them. My sister and I have acknowledged that our grandfather would have had a problem with her own marriage to her husband of Filipino heritage. So probably nothing really changed.
My grandparents, my mom, and her brother are all gone now. An adult with a family of my own, I live in north Georgia, not far from my roots. I see the south of my childhood through a different lens. I understand now what I only suspected then. To make sense of the present we must be students of the past. The world’s past, America’s past, and our past.
What grabs me most about white supremacy is what a normal face it wears. My Pawpaw was a deacon in his Baptist church, a WWII veteran with a purple heart. The other thing that surprises me about racism is our own surprise by it. Why in the world are we surprised by intolerance? Do we think we have come so far?
In the bible’s account of the first family we meet Adam, Eve, and their two boys, Cain and Able. In a fit of jealous rage the first son kills the second. Murder in the second generation of humans. Those boys were a generation removed from perfection – perfect parents, perfect garden, perfect relationship with God. At the heart of the issue between the brothers is offended pride, a fight for first place, and selfishness. No generation since has been free of the fight for first place, or selfish tendencies that can turn murderous. Not a one.
My family has been a small microcosm of that reality. Who will we love? Who will we preserve? Our own selves, our own family clan, our interests? Or will we consider the needs of our neighbors and future generations as more important?
I could write about the complexities of how we got to this place. I could write about Southern history and its complicated issues. I could write about the way Jesus is used as a pawn by people spouting all kinds of ideologies. I could chastise, rebuke, and scold.
But I won’t.
Instead I will confess. Confess how racism shaped me from birth, and selfishness still chafes my soul like a pebble in a shoe. Confess that I have a lot to learn. Confess that Jesus’ teachings on loving our neighbor, much less our enemy, makes me uncomfortable. Especially uncomfortable given that he lived out those beliefs to the point of death. I confess that I have been part of the problem.
God is not so small as to be America’s God or the Republican’s God or the Democrat’s God or any other group who claims him. The bible tells us that God’s kingdom is one of unity. Where all of creation and mankind are unified under the authority of his son Jesus. God is exceptionally inclusive. That’s not to say all paths lead to God. But all people are welcome to come to him through his Son.(Ephesians 1)
The face of privilege stares back at me in the mirror every day, and I take it for granted. But one thing I’ve learned at the feet of Jesus is that strength is for service. If you find yourself in a position where you have the upper hand, God’s call is clear, reach down and pull others up to stand with you, and when necessary go and sit at the bottom with them until they can get on their feet. There is no other option if we claim to be Jesus followers because that’s where he’s leading – to the margins, to service, to humility.
I don’t fear white supremacists. Most people aren’t so radical. What I fear is a more subtle racism. The kind that creeps into our churches and relationships so quietly it’s hard to notice. I fear the darkness in my own heart. That’s where this battle must be fought. In our hearts. Where we examine motives, and shed old ideas, and look through God’s eyes. That’s how we fight the darkness. We start with ourselves – in here, not out there.
We have to make peace with our past, but we don’t have to repeat it. I choose a new confederation, a confederation of hearts stepping into the light and being sewn together in love, not hate.
Becoming a Woman of Influence 