Grace

As a Christian, I believe the world is messed up because we are in enemy territory. This enemy generally hates when we communicate effectively and so he clouds and smokescreens and sows lies entangled with truth. When I experience depression, the lie is that I should pull in and not talk because I am contaminated and will spread it. The truth is that if I speak and reach out to safe people, light floods in and the enemy, like a cockroach, scurries for the darkest corner. So I am not giving him 1 mm of space here. He is not going to keep me silenced on the sidelines out of fear, picking through each word in my vocabulary worrying that one wrong word will launch a thousand ships. Even if I mess up and say something wrong, Jesus has given me enough grace that I can securely own up to my mistake and commit to doing better next time. So here is my imperfect blog with all its rough edges, ready for iron-sharpening-iron.

Here is the stage I am in. I was aware of systemic racism before seeing the video of George Floyd. The concept lined up with many of my life experiences and testimonies of people close to me. I am still educating myself. I think the officer was operating in the safety of thought that the system would protect him and excuse his actions. I think there is so much truth in every inch of this video it could take a lifetime to unpack. This week I was in horrified hibernation just reflecting on one word spoken by Floyd in his distress— “officer.” The juxtaposition of this term of respect and what was happening to Floyd as he said it just highlighted the abuse of power even more. It made me recall things that I haven’t thought of in a while. It made me meditate on the evidence from my own life that racism is real, generational, and very serious. 

I am one of the privileged. I grew up in safety, with constant encouragement, being told to follow my dreams. I lived in a predominantly white town in Upstate New York with one stoplight and more cows than people. I remember there being one black kid in my entire high school. My education about racism started in this town in the middle of a fairly normal conversation. I was on a walk with a girl, getting to know her for the first time, when she dropped this bomb: “I am racist and proud of it.” I had no idea what to even say to that. I never spoke to this person again and never thought about that conversation again until this week.

I moved to Jamaica, Queens in 2001.  I arrived naive and excited about teaching in “hard to staff” schools, ready to give 150%. I loved being immersed in diversity I had always sought but never had access to. I had a pastor that said if God had a calendar, it wouldn’t show mountains or pristine landscapes, it would show a NYC subway at rush hour. I thought of that each time I stepped on the F train at Sutphin Boulevard. People’s first question upon meeting me was always “Where are you from?” I learned quickly that “Upstate New York” was not an acceptable answer. They wanted to know where I was from. Since I am a mixed-breed with one branch of the family tree that is hard to trace, it was a much longer answer than they were expecting. (My relatives are still arguing over whether we are Irish or Scottish.)

I spent 10 years in Jamaica and it was a steep learning curve for me. Years of living with our front door unlocked and the keys in the ignition of our parked car were replaced by multiple deadbolts, bullet-proof turnstiles at KFC, and bars voluntarily placed over windows. Each day I passed scrawled R.I.P. memorials near the entrance to the subway and became desensitized to seeing Bloods or Crips. I only started to worry and get well out of the way if I saw them approaching each other. I began to notice my presence stirred up anger. I wasn’t sure why, I just knew it was there. People were highly suspicious of my presence. I had a group of middle-schoolers follow me to the subway one day yelling threats and asking if I was from a cult or a church. Adults would calmly inform me I was in the wrong neighborhood. The longer I lived there the more I began to understand the anger. I thought that living far out in Queens as the only white person would help me understand what it was like to live as a minority. It didn’t. Privilege followed me into Jamaica and gave me opportunity to move back out.

The question the middle-schoolers threw at me that day echoed in my mind each day. Why was I here? l was here to teach but there was such a gulf of understanding between me and the lives of the students I taught. What was I doing? Was I being helpful or harmful? There were many times when this educator suddenly became the educatee (yes, I made up a word). I faced unique challenges that colored outside the lines of every education textbook I read.

My first year teaching they decided last minute to place the children from the homeless shelter in our school. This meant the the kids all went into my classroom, since it was the last one formed. I had children who were imitating the act of sex using their pencils to show other kids what they had seen in the shelter’s common area while other kids stole supplies (because they owned nothing) and hid in the closets and under tables. These kids were hurting and needed extra help and attention. I still kept the teaching bar high, but I had to shift priorities to make sure each one of them felt loved and accepted first. By God’s grace alone I was able to establish routine, order, and what I hoped resulted in a feeling of safety within the walls of their classroom.

During parent-teacher conferences I found out the methods of discipline I came to the table with were pretty much useless. It is hard to limit television and institute reward systems when there are 3 families living in a one-bedroom apartment. I began to understand that when parents were not able to attend parent-teacher conferences, it was probably because they were working three jobs to make ends meet and couldn’t afford time off. I thought of this as I went through training for teaching Gifted and Talented. A salient question we had as educators was how can we make sure all kids have access to testing and an equal opportunity to perform well when they were up against parents with more awareness, access to materials, and money? The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison helped make me aware of language and examples in testing materials and making sure that they matched the experience of the population of kids in my current class. This obstacle I had never even thought about was made even more real for me when a few students came up to me—extremely worried—because they had never seen blue eyes before and they thought something was medically wrong with me. I also had a student come up to me to ask me for a “rubber” and I had to take a beat.

“Is there another word for that?” Thankfully the reply was “eraser.”

I had a parent scream in my face one day and something told me to just let her get it all out. She was worried her first grade child was going to end up in a gang because he got hit in the lunchroom. She apologized once she calmed down and I told her no need. I was not a mom then, so I told her I didn’t know the pressures of parenthood and I certainly didn’t understand the pressures of raising a child in South Ozone Park. (This mother is who I thought about as I watched that George Floyd video—a mother who had to worry as early as first grade.)

When an amazing Korean man took a chance and asked me to marry him, I learned through his stories what it was like to walk through the city and encounter true, deeply seeded racism. He had been threatened and harassed on multiple occasions. It broke my heart and opened my eyes more. I began to see the pervasiveness of racism. It became a more complex beast in my mind, not limited to one race or location. 

We attended a wedding once in the midwest. Ray was the only Asian there and quite possibly the only person of color as far as could be seen. This man approached him and said loudly “Apparently, you’re Oriental!” My blood turned cold and every feisty defensive instinct bubbled to the surface. I was ready to take this guy out. My husband’s reaction was a little different. He smiled a huge, inviting smile, shook the man’s hand, and started a conversation with him. 

I had a flurry of questions when we hit the car—Weren’t you offended? Isn’t it awful that he used that word? Are you okay? I’m so sorry.

He pointed out that this man was the only one who had approached him to talk to him. Were his words perfect? No, but he made an attempt and my husband was happy to meet him where he was. 

My husband made a choice in that moment. He could have created an obstacle and put up a wall with the person because his language was not PC. Instead he was gracious and chose to prioritize communication and connection.

He taught me so much in that moment about the role of grace in communicating with and as a marginalized person. Sometimes I am so scared to speak because of the obstacle course created by politically correct language. It happened to me writing this blog. All my experiences swirI behind this dam of perfection and I am the cause of the nothing that I am saying.

I met a woman at a conference who came out of the bathroom in a wheelchair, fuming. Apparently the sinks and dryers were all too high for her to reach. How could I relate to what she was going through? I had no idea what to say, and then to my horror I blurted out— “Tell me about it! Every store I go into the petite jeans are on the top shelf!” I had a moment where I wanted to drop through the earth. Then, to my delight she laughed—hard! With tears! When she recovered she said it was the best thing she heard and could she use it? 

Grace is the true social lubricant. Grace will get us through small talk to the hard, complex stuff we have to unpack. We all have these little pieces to the puzzle and we have to work together if we are going to figure it out. Grace works both ways and makes connection possible. Instead of being scared speechless, as a white woman who truly cares about people of color I need to be brave enough to at least start the hard conversations. There is a good chance that grace will meet me on the other side, but even if it doesn’t and I run into a scared mother who screams, I need to remember that they may be the ones most in need of being heard and receiving grace themselves. 

God sent Jesus because He knew we would need grace before we could change. Jesus came and erased all the lines we put down between ourselves and others. Grace and loving all people were His goals and as a Christian who chooses to follow Him, it means they are mine too.

As I said, I am still educating myself and I have a lot of work to do. I do want to say to the people reading this: make me uncomfortable. If you are holding onto frustration, anger, fear—share it with me, no holds barred. I want to know how you feel. I will sit in the discomfort with you. You are not alone. You do not need perfect words or a perfect tone of voice, especially if you have been holding onto it for a while. Just share. If I am not good at it, tell me how I can be a better listener. If you are too tired to do that, lean on me. I may be small, but I am feisty. I will fight for you, through prayer and any other hopefully legal way possible. God planted me where He planted me to take care of the people around me, and that means you!

If my travels in the belly of the whale have taught me anything, it is that extreme discomfort leads to an equal level of change. This whale blog has been beached for days with me looking only at the negative in myself and I almost died under my own weight. Then God pulled me back to Him and I was back in my element—washed in grace—where there is buoyancy and movement is possible. 

For the past few weeks I have been educating myself, listening, and reading a lot. I want to point to an amazing person who embodies grace and love. She believes people are capable of change and has put and lot of work and effort into educating people on her Facebook group. Her name is Latasha Morrison. Her Facebook group is called Be the Bridge (she also wrote a book with the same title.) If you are looking for a place to educate yourself, I highly recommend this space. It has been a safe place for a white girl like me to learn. There are challenging modules to read through before you start actively commenting. It is a safe place for people of color to speak and heal. They are now organizing to start local chapters for each state so we can all start learning from each other. This is a space where grace is used to power change.

Lord, You alone have the power to eradicate racism at its roots and we ask for that in Jesus’s name NOW. Focus us on Your Son and His Ways and may the level of Grace He offers us be what we measure out and offer to each other. May Grace lead to Truth and Truth lead to change. Amen.